As Sanofi gears to change strate­gies to in­crease Dupix­ent sales and add in­di­ca­tions amid a sprawl­ing R&D trim, CEO Paul Hud­son gave some in­sight in­to how it plans to move for­ward.

The plan is two-prong: Hud­son told in­vestors and an­a­lysts on the phar­ma’s Q2 earn­ings call that it’s the “least ex­posed” Big Phar­ma to the threat of gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion through the rest of the 2020s, while its Re­gen­eron-part­nered Dupix­ent will be­come an even more im­por­tant tool in Sanofi’s reper­toire.

“Clear­ly, Dupix­ent re­mains the num­ber one dri­ver of our growth sto­ry. It will help to man­age the LoE of Auba­gio in the US in 2023, our last mean­ing­ful LoE in this decade,” Hud­son said on a Zoom call ear­li­er Thurs­day.

Hud­son called the mar­ket for Dupix­ent “large­ly un­der­pen­e­trat­ed,” not­ing while more than 450,000 peo­ple have been treat­ed with the drug since its ap­proval in 2017, the el­i­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion is some­where around 7 mil­lion. Of the 450,000 pa­tients treat­ed, 150,000 of them were this quar­ter, thanks to ap­provals in pa­tients with eosinophilic esophagi­tis, in­fants with atopic der­mati­tis in the US, and pe­di­atric asth­ma in Eu­rope.

Sanofi has spent the last few months trim­ming its pipeline, as in late 2019 and ear­ly 2020, Sanofi’s gen­er­al med­i­cines unit boast­ed more than 350 prod­uct fam­i­lies, the com­pa­ny said a few months ago. By the end of the year, the com­pa­ny is aim­ing to re­duce that fig­ure to about 125 — end­ing up at around 100 with­in three years.

Hud­son al­so men­tioned the com­pa­ny’s “Play to Win” mar­ket­ing and op­er­a­tions strat­e­gy that got its start in 2019 af­ter Hud­son joined the French phar­ma. Now that its first phase is near­ing an end, af­ter eight quar­ters of con­sec­u­tive growth and more than two dozen BD and M&A deals, the next phase is launch­ing to take the com­pa­ny through 2025.

“It is a proof point that our fo­cus on win­ning as­sets, com­bined with strong com­mer­cial ex­e­cu­tion, is clear­ly pay­ing off,” Hud­son said.

Hud­son added that sev­er­al key fac­tors will be in­stru­men­tal in the US. Those in­clude R&D pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­creas­ing in­vest­ments in “break­through sci­ence,” that is, first and best in class as­sets, with Hud­son adding, “We will have mul­ti­ple chances for trans­for­ma­tive launch­es in the up­com­ing years.”

In the short term, the com­pa­ny’s fo­cus is on nir­se­vimab, a long-act­ing an­ti­body to treat RSV in in­fants — and in Hud­son’s words, “mak­ing nir­se­vimab a suc­cess sto­ry.” Sanofi has al­ready filed for nir­se­vimab ap­proval in Eu­rope, with a de­ci­sion ex­pect­ed by years’ end.

Dupix­ent is Sanofi’s sales king, record­ing €1.96 bil­lion in sales this quar­ter (grow­ing 43%) amid over­all rev­enue up 8.1%. Sanofi’s spe­cial­ty care group was re­spon­si­ble for sub­stan­tial growth, with €4.1 bil­lion in sales this quar­ter, up more than 21%.

Cur­rent­ly, Dupix­ent is in­di­cat­ed for asth­ma, atopic der­mati­tis, eosinophilic esophagi­tis and chron­ic rhi­nos­i­nusi­tis with nasal poly­po­sis — and Sanofi has 11 ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tions in its pipeline for the drug, in­clud­ing chron­ic pru­ri­tus of un­known ori­gin and chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease.

Be­yond spe­cial­ty care, which in­cludes Dupix­ent, on­col­o­gy, rare dis­ease, blood dis­or­ders and neu­rol­o­gy/im­munol­o­gy, oth­er ar­eas of Sanofi’s port­fo­lio al­so saw gains. Vac­cines grew 8.7% to €1.2 bil­lion, and con­sumer health­care sales in­creased 9.1% to €1.3 bil­lion. How­ev­er, gen­er­al med­i­cine saw a de­crease, down 4.1%, with 3.6 bil­lion eu­ros in sales.

Over­all rev­enue topped €10.1 bil­lion this quar­ter.

Even though Sanofi is con­fi­dent in its abil­i­ty to re­main in­su­lat­ed from gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion, it’s an­oth­er sto­ry when oth­er Big Phar­mas seek mar­ket share. Eli Lil­ly re­cent­ly re­vealed long-term da­ta on its can­di­date le­brik­izum­ab in an at­tempt to chal­lenge Dupix­ent in atopic der­mati­tis. But Paul Hud­son has been pay­ing com­peti­tors no mind as he pre­dict­ed back in March that Dupix­ent would see $14.5 bil­lion in peak sales — which if true would send the drug clos­er to Hu­mi­ra-lev­el ter­ri­to­ry.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.

After a whopping $4 billion asset buy from Nimbus Therapeutics, along with a $400 million deal with Hutchmed for a colorectal cancer drug, Takeda executives touted pipeline optimism on its latest earnings call this week.

That’s because the TYK2 inhibitor for psoriasis Takeda is getting from Nimbus, along with the Hutchmed fruquintinib commercialization outside of China, are just two of what it reports are 10 late-stage development programs of promising candidates.

Regeneron faced a substantial slump in overall revenue last year, but the focus still remains on some of its biggest blockbusters.

The pharma with several high-profile partnerships — Sanofi and Bayer among them — said Friday that Q4 revenue was down 31% for the quarter, and down 24% for the entire year. However, that won’t stop blockbuster expansion plans.

One of those is Eylea, the Bayer-partnered eye disease drug that has been in major competition with Roche’s Vabysmo. While Eylea is currently only approved in a 2 mg dose, the company recently filed for approval to give a 8 mg dose, in hopes of making a longer-lasting treatment.