Sanofi’s next-gen he­mo­phil­ia drugs take a PhI­II bow — but can they still make their mark at this stage?

Back in ear­ly 2018, when Sanofi put up $11.6 bil­lion to buy Biover­a­tiv and its he­mo­phil­ia drugs Eloc­tate and Al­pro­lix, the deal looked out of step to many.

Roche had just scored a ma­jor win with an ap­proval for Hem­li­bra, which quick­ly swelled in­to a block­buster, set­ting a new stan­dard in ther­a­py as Sanofi was forced to fol­low up with a $2 bil­lion write-down on dis­ap­point­ing sales for Eloc­tate. Mean­while, gene ther­a­pies from Bio­Marin and Spark were threat­en­ing to dis­rupt the whole fac­tor VI­II re­place­ment sec­tor with once-and-done treat­ments that promised a re­li­able and in­def­i­nite sup­ply of blood clot­ting fac­tor he­mo­phil­i­acs lacked.

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