Root­ing for a come-from-be­hind win, Black­stone in­fus­es $330M in­to Sanofi's CD38 de­vel­op­ment plan

Sanofi is get­ting a lit­tle bit of help to ex­pand its Sar­clisa fran­chise, with Black­stone Life Sci­ences putting down close to $330 mil­lion (€300 mil­lion) to fund clin­i­cal tri­als and re­lat­ed costs for a sub­cu­ta­neous for­mu­la­tion of the drug.

In ex­change, Black­stone earns the right to gar­ner roy­al­ties on fu­ture sales.

While Sanofi had placed high hopes on Sar­clisa as a bell­wether for its on­col­o­gy pipeline, the an­ti-CD38 ther­a­py had strug­gled on up­take, as it was first ap­proved short­ly be­fore the WHO de­clared a glob­al pan­dem­ic in 2020, lim­it­ing pa­tient ac­cess. The French drug­mak­er al­so faces a for­mi­da­ble in­cum­bent in J&J’s Darza­lex, which hits the same tar­get.

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