Months af­ter Pfiz­er launched its sec­ond drug war­ran­ty pro­gram, Sanofi is hop­ping on the trend.

The French phar­ma gi­ant set up a war­ran­ty pro­gram for Ca­blivi, of­fer­ing med­ical in­sti­tu­tions a po­ten­tial re­fund if in­pa­tient treat­ment doesn’t work out. Pa­tients must re­ceive the drug in a hos­pi­tal set­ting in or­der to qual­i­fy, and Sanofi will on­ly cov­er the cost of up to six dos­es for pa­tients who don’t re­spond, or up to 12 dos­es for those who wors­en while on treat­ment.

In 2019, Ca­blivi be­came the first drug ap­proved in the US for a rare but dead­ly blood dis­or­der called ac­quired throm­bot­ic throm­bo­cy­topenic pur­pu­ra, or aTTP. Sanofi se­cured the drug, al­so known as capla­cizum­ab, in its $4.8 bil­lion Abl­ynx buy­out and won a quick ap­proval in Eu­rope short­ly af­ter. Pa­tients with aTTP suf­fer blood clots in the small ar­ter­ies that can lead to strokes, brain dam­age or death.

Sanofi set the ini­tial list price at $270,000 per course, rak­ing in €164 mil­lion ($177 mil­lion) in 2021. Sales con­tin­ued to rise through last quar­ter to €52 mil­lion ($56 mil­lion) in Q3, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s lat­est earn­ings re­sults. Sanofi con­firmed Fri­day that the cur­rent whole­sale ac­qui­si­tion cost is $7,925 per vial.

To make that cost a bit more palat­able, the com­pa­ny is now of­fer­ing in­sti­tu­tions a re­fund of up to the full whole­sale ac­qui­si­tion cost (WAC) or ac­tu­al ac­qui­si­tion cost, whichev­er is less. The drug must be ad­min­is­tered ac­cord­ing to the la­bel and dis­con­tin­ued by a health­care provider to qual­i­fy.

“Be­cause aTTP is a life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion, Sanofi is, through this Pro­gram and oth­er ef­forts, work­ing to help re­move as many bar­ri­ers as pos­si­ble for pa­tients and the health care providers who sup­port them,” Jef­frey Schaffnit, Sanofi’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of US rare blood dis­or­ders, told End­points News in an email.

A pa­tient is deemed to have no ini­tial re­sponse if their platelet counts re­main be­low 50 × 109/L af­ter four days of com­bined treat­ment with plas­ma ex­change (PEX) and im­muno­sup­pres­sive ther­a­py. Sanofi con­sid­ers pa­tients who wors­en as those who ex­pe­ri­ence “a new drop in platelet count af­ter ini­tial platelet count nor­mal­iza­tion (>150 × 109/L), ne­ces­si­tat­ing re-ini­ti­a­tion of PEX af­ter hav­ing ruled out any caus­es for the drop in platelet count oth­er than aTTP patho­phys­i­ol­o­gy,” ac­cord­ing to the pro­gram’s web­site.

Pfiz­er sim­i­lar­ly launched war­ran­ty pro­grams for its drugs Xalko­ri and Panzy­ga, al­though those pro­grams re­im­burse pa­tients as op­posed to hos­pi­tals.

Panzy­ga was ap­proved in 2018 to treat pri­ma­ry im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy (PI) in pa­tients two years and old­er and chron­ic im­mune throm­bo­cy­tope­nia (cITP) in adults. It lat­er bagged an in­di­ca­tion in chron­ic in­flam­ma­to­ry de­myeli­nat­ing polyneu­ropa­thy (CIDP), a con­di­tion that’s char­ac­ter­ized by weak­ness of the arms or legs, tin­gling or numb­ness, and a loss of deep ten­don re­flex­es.

Pfiz­er said it will re­fund cer­tain CIPD pa­tients for their out-of-pock­et costs for the first four treat­ments if they must dis­con­tin­ue treat­ment for “clin­i­cal rea­sons,” up to a max­i­mum of $16,500 per treat­ment or $50,000 to­tal.

Un­der the pro­gram for its can­cer drug Xalko­ri, el­i­gi­ble pa­tients can get their out-of-pock­et costs cov­ered if they dis­con­tin­ue the drug be­fore the fourth 30-day sup­ply is ad­min­is­tered.

Oth­er com­pa­nies are join­ing the wave. Bio­Marin has pre­vi­ous­ly said it plans to of­fer an out­comes-based war­ran­ty for Roc­ta­vian, which would be “ready to im­ple­ment with pay­ers at launch” if the drug wins an ap­proval in he­mo­phil­ia A. And back in Oc­to­ber 2021, Take­da inked a deal with in­sur­ance provider Point32Health that pro­vides cer­tain lung can­cer pa­tients ac­cess to Alun­brig through an “out­comes-based struc­ture.”

“If a pa­tient cov­ered by Point32Health does not re­main on the drug for at least three months due to ef­fec­tive­ness or tol­er­a­bil­i­ty, Take­da will re­fund a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the drug cost to Point32Health,” Take­da con­firmed via email on Fri­day.

When asked whether Sanofi plans on ex­pand­ing the war­ran­ty pro­gram to oth­er drugs in its port­fo­lio, Schaffnit said: “Cur­rent­ly, the Pro­gram is lim­it­ed to the use of Ca­blivi in the in­pa­tient set­ting. De­pend­ing on how the Pro­gram pro­gress­es it could be ex­pand­ed.”

Roche announced another leadership shuffle Thursday morning – the head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will take over as CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals in March while the company’s corporate executive committee will make a spot for Levi Garraway, CMO and executive VP of global product development.

Thomas Schinecker will take over the top spot as Roche group CEO in March, leaving his spot as head of diagnostics.

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.