Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son is fac­ing a fa­mil­iar ad­ver­sary in his ef­forts to cut up to 1,680 jobs from the French phar­ma gi­ant: French unions.

Around 200 union mem­bers staged a one-day strike Tues­day at Sanofi’s main Covid-19 vac­cine plant in Mar­cy-l’Étoile to protest the cuts, The As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ed, with oth­er mem­bers join­ing at oth­er fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try.

France’s fi­nance min­is­ter Bruno Le Maire, mean­while, went on French ra­dio twice this week to talk about the com­pa­ny. On Mon­day, per Reuters, he told RTL that Sanofi would not close any plants or lay off any em­ploy­ees in the re­struc­tur­ing. But on Wednes­day morn­ing, he re-emerged on BFM and said he would like three things from the drug­mak­er, in­clud­ing con­fir­ma­tion that there will be no site clo­sures and lay­offs.

The con­tro­ver­sy is the lat­est stand­off be­tween Sanofi and France’s sig­nif­i­cant la­bor move­ment. Chris Viehbach­er, the com­pa­ny’s first non-French CEO, re­port­ed­ly lost his job in part be­cause he pro­posed cut­ting 5% to 7% of the com­pa­ny’s work­force, trig­ger­ing mas­sive pub­lic blow­back. His re­place­ment, Olivi­er Brandi­court, put unions back on high alert two months af­ter he got the job, by talk­ing about the high cost of in­dus­tri­al plants and promis­ing a new five-year strate­gic plan.

The newest tus­sle is over Paul Hud­son’s own strate­gic plan. Short­ly af­ter the No­var­tis ex­ec was tapped as Brandi­court’s re­place­ment, he be­gan out­lin­ing the re­think. In June, he an­nounced plans to cut 1,680 jobs, in­clud­ing 1,000 in France, over the fol­low­ing 3 years. It was one step in a larg­er ef­fort to save more than €2 bil­lion by 2022 and re­ori­ent the com­pa­ny around a heav­ier but more tai­lored ap­proach to R&D, scrap­ping car­dio­vas­cu­lar and di­a­betes pro­grams but dou­bling down on ar­eas such as on­col­o­gy and gene ther­a­py.

In a state­ment this week pro­vid­ed to End­points News, Sanofi in­sist­ed that any em­ploy­ee de­par­tures would be vol­un­tary and not­ed that they planned to spend €6 bil­lion in R&D in France over the next 3 years.

“Sanofi has en­gaged in di­a­logue and in-depth lis­ten­ing to the sug­ges­tions of the so­cial part­ners in or­der to de­fine the so­cial sup­port mea­sures most suit­ed to the em­ploy­ment is­sues of each of the em­ploy­ees like­ly to be af­fect­ed,” they said. “Ne­go­ti­a­tions with our so­cial part­ners are based on ac­com­pa­ny­ing mea­sures that are ex­clu­sive­ly vol­un­tary and with­out con­straints.”

Le Maire com­mend­ed Sanofi on their de­ci­sion to shift R&D ef­forts, call­ing it “wise,” but asked for greater clar­i­ty on what that R&D strat­e­gy would look like for France.

CGT, the largest trade union in France, mean­while, has ar­gued that per­sis­tent cuts have ac­tu­al­ly ham­pered Sanofi’s R&D ef­forts, even play­ing a role in the sig­nif­i­cant set­backs they’ve seen in their ef­forts to de­vel­op a Covid-19 vac­cine with Glax­o­SmithK­line, the newswire RFI re­port­ed.  The cuts, they said, are part of a pat­tern of a 15-year-long dis­in­vest­ment that re­sult­ed in Sanofi “los­ing the race for the vac­cine against Covid.”

CRLs. 483s. CBER, CDER and RWE. For biopharma professionals, these acronyms command attention because of the fundamental role FDA plays in drug development. Now Endpoints is doubling down on regulatory coverage, and launching a weekly report focusing on developments out of White Oak, with analysis and insight into what it all means.

Coverage will be led by our new senior editor, Zachary Brennan. He joins Endpoints from POLITICO, where he covered pharma. Prior to that he was the managing editor for Regulatory Focus, a news publication from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.

One of Europe’s most high-profile biopharma investors is getting $540 million to invest in new crossover deals for late-stage companies.

The Paris-based VC says the fresh Sofinnova Crossover Fund raise positions them as the “largest crossover investor in Europe dedicated to late-stage biopharma and medtech investments.”

They got a leg up in France after winning a special “Tibi” designation from the French government, giving them access to a pool of €6 billion that helped them gain an edge with institutional investors. Since they were founded close to 50 years ago, the venture group has backed more than 500 companies and currently has more than €2 billion under management.

Seattle-based Presage Biosciences, which approaches drug development through its microdosing platform, has some new partnerships and cash to come with them.

Presage closed a $13 million financing round Tuesday, aiming to expand its network of clinical trial sites and advance development of its microdosing injection devices. They also closed partnership deals with Merck and Maverick Therapeutics.

The financing included $7 million from new investors, including the LabCorp Venture Fund, Bristol Myers Squibb, and InHarv Partners. An additional $6 million convertible note from Takeda Ventures will convert to equity.