One quar­ter in­to the new year, Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son re­mains stead­fast on his mis­sion to re­shape the com­pa­ny — and that will mean some se­ri­ous pipeline prun­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the gen­er­al med­i­cines unit.

Olivi­er Charmeil

In late 2019 and ear­ly 2020, Sanofi’s gen­er­al med­i­cines unit boast­ed more than 350 prod­uct fam­i­lies, ac­cord­ing to Olivi­er Charmeil, EVP of gen­er­al med­i­cines. By the end of this year, the com­pa­ny aims to re­duce that fig­ure to about 125, ei­ther by di­vest­ing or dis­con­tin­u­ing pro­grams. And by 2025, the goal is to sit at right around 100 prod­uct fam­i­lies.

“I think the team­work that’s go­ing on be­tween the busi­ness unit heads…  is re­al­ly im­por­tant to give us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­de­ploy re­source ei­ther to the bot­tom line or in­to R&D, and I think we’re re­al­ly get­ting in­to a good ca­dence on that,” Hud­son said on the call.

That prun­ing will ap­par­ent­ly start with four in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al HSV 2 vac­cines for adults with re­cur­rent gen­i­tal her­pes. Sanofi re­vealed in its Q1 news re­lease that it’s dis­con­tin­u­ing a Phase I study test­ing the four vac­cines for safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy, with­out of­fer­ing much more de­tail.

All that flex­i­bil­i­ty should leave Sanofi open for some in­ter­est­ing R&D moves, Hud­son hint­ed, adding that he aims to trans­form the com­pa­ny’s on­col­o­gy and neu­rol­o­gy port­fo­lios in­to “in­dus­try-lead­ing pipelines.”

How­ev­er, when it comes to M&A, he said his strat­e­gy re­mains the same. While mak­ing it clear that Sanofi is look­ing to add to its pipeline, he said the com­pa­ny will re­main “dis­ci­plined.”

“It’s clear that some prices have fall­en, but it’s al­ways been for us about pick­ing the right tar­get and the right as­set. It’s nev­er been about size. It’s al­ways been about the right thing, and that hasn’t changed for us. I think that just stays busi­ness as usu­al,” he said. “If we see the right thing, we’ll move, that’s been the same since the very be­gin­ning, at least since I’ve been here.”

Hud­son was tapped to the helm in 2019 and has since been on a mis­sion to re­vive Sanofi’s rep­u­ta­tion as a leader in drug re­search. Noth­ing is off the ta­ble when it comes to re­struc­tur­ing the com­pa­ny, he said ear­li­er this year, adding that the team has al­ready come a long way.

The chief ex­ec­u­tive culled a hand­ful of pro­grams last year, he re­vealed in the Q4 re­port, in­clud­ing one eval­u­at­ing Sar­clisa in pa­tients await­ing kid­ney treat­ment, and an­oth­er for SAR445088, a com­ple­ment C1s in­hibitor, in im­mune throm­bo­cy­tope­nia (ITP).

Sar­clisa had strug­gled on the up­take, as the drug was first ap­proved about a week and a half be­fore the WHO de­clared a glob­al pan­dem­ic last year, lim­it­ing pa­tient ac­cess. Now, it’s dri­ving the phar­ma gi­ant’s growth in on­col­o­gy, rak­ing in €65 mil­lion (over $68 mil­lion), up from just €34 mil­lion (un­der $36 mil­lion) in the same pe­ri­od last year.

The com­pa­ny al­so re­vealed in its Q4 re­sults that it plans on shav­ing about 6,000 jobs in an ef­fort to be­come more “ag­ile.” Ex­ecs said at the time that they were aim­ing for a head­count of around 90,000 by the end of the year.

Bill Si­bold

Look­ing ahead, Dupix­ent will be a big part of Sanofi’s growth, ac­cord­ing to Bill Si­bold, EVP of spe­cial­ty care and pres­i­dent of Sanofi’s North Amer­i­ca op­er­a­tions. The megablock­buster — which tar­gets both IL-4 and IL-13 — earned €1.6 bil­lion (near­ly $1.7 bil­lion) last quar­ter, up 45.7%.

“We are still on­ly at the be­gin­ning of our jour­ney with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8% mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion in adults,” Si­bold said on the call.

Thomas Tri­om­phe

Just in the last cou­ple of months, the drug has snagged pri­or­i­ty re­view in eosinophilic esophagi­tis (EoE) for pa­tients 12 and old­er, and mod­er­ate-to-se­vere atopic der­mati­tis in kids be­tween 6 months and 5 years old. Sanofi is al­so look­ing to ex­pand the la­bel in­to un­con­trolled pruri­go nodu­laris and chron­ic pru­ri­tus of un­known ori­gin.

The com­pa­ny’s al­so pre­dict­ing an­oth­er record sales year for its flu prod­ucts, de­spite an 18.2% de­cline in the first quar­ter, which vac­cine head Thomas Tri­om­phe said is “tra­di­tion­al­ly a low quar­ter for flu sales.”

Tri­om­phe al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny is “all in and full speed” on mR­NA pro­grams, af­ter out­lin­ing plans last sum­mer to spend €400 mil­lion ($437 mil­lion) a year on its mR­NA ef­fort. Last month, Hud­son sketched out a $1 bil­lion-plus in­vest­ment for a new mR­NA cen­ter in France. And last year, the com­pa­ny laid out some pos­i­tive ear­ly re­sults for an mR­NA-based Covid vac­cine can­di­date.

Sanofi was one of the phar­ma com­pa­nies to get out ear­ly in the Covid-19 vac­cine race us­ing a more tra­di­tion­al ap­proach, but that de­railed when the com­pa­ny saw weak re­spons­es in old­er adults.

“While we may have been a lit­tle bit lat­er to the par­ty on mR­NA, cer­tain­ly we feel like we’ve caught right up and ac­tu­al­ly un­der­stand what it takes to go for­ward and dif­fer­en­ti­ate it,” Hud­son said. “I think we’re go­ing to pos­si­bly sur­prise every­body, which is al­ways a good thing.”

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”