Sanofi CEO Hud­son lays out new R&D fo­cus — chop­ping di­a­betes, car­dio and slash­ing $2B-plus costs in sur­gi­cal dis­sec­tion

Ear­li­er on Mon­day, new Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son bait­ed the hook on his up­com­ing strat­e­gy pre­sen­ta­tion Tues­day with a tell-tale deal to buy Syn­thorx for $2.5 bil­lion. That fits square­ly with hints that he’s point­ing the com­pa­ny to a big­ger fu­ture in on­col­o­gy, which al­so squares with a ma­jor in­dus­try tilt.

In a big re­veal lat­er in the day, though, Hud­son of­fered a slate of stun­ners on his plans to sur­gi­cal­ly dis­sect and re­assem­ble the port­foloio, say­ing that the com­pa­ny is drop­ping car­dio and di­a­betes re­search — which cov­ers two of its biggest fran­chise are­nas. Sanofi missed the boat on de­vel­op­ing new di­a­betes drugs, and now it’s pulling out en­tire­ly. As part of the pull­back, it’s drop­ping ef­pe­gle­natide, their once-week­ly GLP-1 in­jec­tion for di­a­betes.

“To be out of car­dio­vas­cu­lar and di­a­betes is not easy for a com­pa­ny like ours with an in­cred­i­bly proud his­to­ry,” Hud­son said on a call with re­porters, ac­cord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal. “As tough a choice as that is, we’re mak­ing that choice.”

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