For sale: Long-act­ing PhI­II GLP-1 di­a­betes drug that’s way be­hind ri­vals, now spurned by Sanofi

Al­most ex­act­ly 4 years ago Sanofi came to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble with South Ko­rea’s Han­mi bear­ing $434 mil­lion dol­lars in cash and of­fer­ing about $4 bil­lion in mile­stones to in-li­cense their once-week­ly GLP-1 in­jectable. The pact was in­tend­ed to re­vive their ail­ing di­a­betes di­vi­sion. In­stead, it turned in­to a very ex­pen­sive grave to mark the end of Sanofi’s R&D am­bi­tions in the field.

Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son used ef­pe­gle­natide’s demise — while com­mit­ting to pay­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of more dol­lars to push it through 5 late-stage stud­ies — as a mark­er of the com­pa­ny’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to stay fo­cused on first and best-in-class drugs.

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