Sanofi sends a pair of gene ther­a­pies back to Ox­ford Bio­med­ica. Are they sal­vage­able?

The same day Ox­ford Bio­med­ica signed a 5-year deal to make As­traZeneca’s Covid-19 vac­cine, the UK gene ther­a­py com­pa­ny an­nounced they re­ceived word Sanofi was send­ing a cou­ple of decade-old ex­per­i­men­tal drugs back to them.

In 2009, Sanofi and Bio­med­ica slashed a co-de­vel­op­ment deal on TroVax, a can­cer vac­cine that had been one of the cen­ter­pieces of the then 14-year-old com­pa­ny. But the pair im­me­di­ate­ly re­placed it with a deal, 8 years be­fore the ap­proval of Spark Ther­a­peu­tics’ Lux­tur­na, to de­vel­op gene ther­a­pies for two eye-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders.

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