In­side look: How a po­ten­tial part­ner­ship turned in­to a $1.9B buy­out for Sanofi

A cou­ple of months be­fore the FDA was set to make a de­ci­sion on Kad­mon’s so-called “knock-your-socks-off kind of re­sults” for its chron­ic graft-ver­sus-host dis­ease drug, Sanofi put out feel­ers for a po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion. But an ear­ly ap­proval trig­gered an of­fer to buy the com­pa­ny out­right — and Sanofi didn’t win with­out a fight, ac­cord­ing to an in­side look.

Sanofi’s head of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and li­cens­ing Matthieu Mer­lin reached out to Kad­mon on June 26 with a sim­ple re­quest: He want­ed to in­tro­duce him­self and ex­plore po­ten­tial part­ner­ships, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing. It had been sev­er­al months since Kad­mon’s belu­mo­sudil ar­rived on the FDA’s doorstep, and af­ter de­lay­ing their de­ci­sion once, reg­u­la­tors said they’d have an an­swer by Aug. 30. But Sanofi wasn’t the on­ly com­pa­ny in­ter­est­ed in get­ting to know the ex­ecs over at Kad­mon.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER