While spec­u­la­tion that Sanofi is con­sid­er­ing op­tions for its con­sumer health­care unit erupts ahead of a planned strate­gic up­date next month, it looks like the French drug­mak­er is los­ing a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive in charge of strat­e­gy.

Al­ban de La Sabliere

Muza­m­mil Mansuri, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of strat­e­gy, and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment — and mem­ber of Sanofi’s ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee — is set to leave the com­pa­ny by the end of No­vem­ber, Reuters re­port­ed on Fri­day, cit­ing an in­ter­nal memo.

A Sanofi spokesper­son con­firmed the de­par­ture.

Mansuri, as planned, has de­cid­ed to re­tire at the end of the month af­ter play­ing a key role in re­shap­ing the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy, over­see­ing ac­qui­si­tions and struc­tur­ing part­ner­ships and al­liances, the spokesper­son told End­points News.

Mansuri start­ed out as a re­search sci­en­tist at the en­er­gy com­pa­ny Shell be­fore mov­ing to Bris­tol-My­ers. His last role pri­or to join­ing Sanofi in 2016 was se­nior VP of R&D strat­e­gy and cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment at Gilead Sci­ences.

Al­ban de La Sabliere, cur­rent­ly Sanofi’s head of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, and Lau­rent van Ler­berghe, head of strat­e­gy, will ex­pand their roles to take on al­liance man­age­ment, com­pet­i­tive in­tel­li­gence, and Sanofi Ven­tures as well as port­fo­lio an­a­lyt­ics and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, re­spec­tive­ly, the spokesper­son said.

Lau­rent van Ler­berghe

New­ly crowned chief ex­ec­u­tive Paul Hud­son, who took charge of Sanofi on Sep­tem­ber 1, is set to ad­dress in­vestors and of­fer a ‘strate­gic up­date’ for a cap­i­tal mar­kets day in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts on De­cem­ber 10. In prepa­ra­tion for the event, all of Sanofi’s busi­ness­es are un­der­go­ing a thor­ough re­view.

Hud­son, who suc­ceed­ed Olivi­er Brandi­court, in­her­it­ed a com­pa­ny with a slip­ping stock price, a di­a­betes arm large­ly in de­cline due to US pric­ing pres­sures, and an R&D de­part­ment that lags be­hind its com­pa­tri­ots, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter some key hic­cups in on­col­o­gy. In an in­ter­view with a gag­gle of jour­nal­ists last month, he hint­ed that the com­pa­ny is work­ing on jazz­ing up its prospects in can­cer and ex­pand­ing its reach in Chi­na, ex­pect­ing 30 drug launch­es in the re­gion by 2025.

An FDA advisory committee noted with concern a small safety database but unanimously endorsed a Horizon Therapeutics drug for a rare eye autoimmune disease that can blind patients: teprotumumab for thyroid eye disease (TED).

“It was a pretty easy vote,” said Erica Brittain, an NIH biostatistician and one of the 12 panelists on FDA’s Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee.

Timing is Everything
When we launched Octagon Therapeutics in late 2017, I was convinced that the time was right for a new antibiotic discovery venture. The company was founded on impressive academic pedigree and the management team had known each other for years. Our first program was based on a compelling approach to targeting central metabolism in the most dangerous bacterial pathogens. We had already shown a high level of efficacy in animal infection models and knew our drug was safe in humans.

Amid Shehnaaz Suliman’s lengthy resume it could be easy to miss her stint leading early-stage Alzheimer’s R&D at Genentech, where she oversaw a program for the ill-fated crenezumab and initiated one of the first prevention studies around the devastating neurodegenerative disease. But it is this experience that she — after thinking long and hard about her next career move over the past months — will be leaning heavily on as the first president and COO of Alector.

Biogen’s fierce focus on disorders of the brain has hit another roadblock.

On Friday, the US drugmaker — which recently resurrected its amyloid-targeting Alzheimer’s drug, aducanumab — said its anti-tau drug, gosuranemab, failed a mid-stage study in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare brain disorder that results from deterioration of brain cells that control movement and thought.