John Reed brings NK cells in­to Sanofi's CD38 ri­val­ry with J&J — and of­fers thumbs up for Kiadis' new fo­cus

Sanofi doesn’t just want to be a chal­lenger to J&J’s dom­i­nant Darza­lex mul­ti­ple myelo­ma fran­chise. It’s look­ing to pi­o­neer a new ap­proach by pair­ing its own — new­ly ap­proved — an­ti-CD38 drug with an NK cell ther­a­py it’s just picked up.

The French phar­ma gi­ant has teed up $19.7 mil­lion (€17.5 mil­lion) up­front and close to a bil­lion dol­lars (€857.5 mil­lion) in mile­stones for a li­cense to Kiadis Phar­ma’s pre­clin­i­cal K-NK004 pro­gram, which con­sists of NK cells that have been ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered not to ex­press CD38.

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