Sanofi reveals plan for 12 new blockbuster medicines

Sanofi has invited investors and analysts to a New York City hotel today, where the French drug giant will unveil a revamped pipeline and R&D strategy that aims to deliver 12 blockbuster medicines, each capable of generating $2 billion or more in sales.

Ahead of the event, STAT's Matt Herper sat down with Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson and new R&D chief Houman Ashrafian for an exclusive interview. The executives defended Sanofi's decision to reduce earnings forecasts for 2024 and ramp up spending for more research studies of new medicines they say could one day generate billions of dollars in annual sales.

When a broad outline of the plan was announced publicly in October, Sanofi's stock price dove and has yet to fully recover. Today's meeting is the company's chance to convince Wall Street that the new R&D strategy can work.

"I've been waiting four years for a situation where we could put [out] the pipeline, as impressive as it is, and declare that we're going to be the world's leading immunology company," said Hudson, who took over as CEO in 2019. "So it's quite an important moment for us. And it's an important moment to declare that we're back in science, because I could argue that we haven't been where we needed to be."

Markets

Cerevel's volatile week is starting to make sense

For three days, shares of the biotech Cerevel Therapeutics ran up despite no actual news, rising more than 40% from $26 a share to about $37. Then, last night, AbbVie said it will pay $45 a share for the company and its pipeline of treatments for neurological diseases, news first reported by Reuters.

AbbVie's interest makes sense. Two of the company's top-selling medicines, the autoimmune treatment Humira and cancer drug Imbruvica, are facing major headwinds, and its in-house efforts in neuroscience have largely led to disappointment. For Cerevel, one of biotech's vanishingly few SPAC success stories, the deal would be a roughly 125% premium to its trading price as recently as October.

What doesn't make sense is how so many investors seemed to magically presage this news, bidding up Cerevel's stock starting Monday morning and continuing all the way into yesterday's close. Someone should probably look into that.

M&A

Lilly's latest deal might come unglued

Eli Lilly wants to pay $1.4 billion for Point Biopharma, maker of cancer drugs that deliver a focused dose of radiation to tumor cells. But Point's shareholders don't seem to want to sell, and it's becoming a problem.

This week, Lilly extended the deal deadline for the third time, giving shareholders another week or so to talk themselves into taking the company's $12.50-a-share offering. They have little incentive to do so.

Any day now, Point will report data from a key study in prostate cancer. If the data are positive, Point's share price could rise to about $25, according to TD Cowen analyst Boris Peaker, which might compel another company to step in with a higher bid and edge Lilly out. If the study fails, Lilly is still locked into paying that $12.50, giving Point shareholders every incentive to keep waiting.

R&D

The best hope for a near-term HIV vaccine just failed

A study considered the last hope for an HIV vaccine this decade has ended in failure, investigators said yesterday, marking yet another disappointment after a half-century of work.

As STAT's Jason Mast reports, researchers halted the study after an independent data monitoring committee concluded there was little or no chance it would demonstrate efficacy. The trial, called PrEPVacc, had enrolled about 1,500 volunteers in East and Southern Africa and tested two different vaccine regimens.

PrEPVacc's failure leaves the field looking to earlier stage technologies that might finally result in an HIV vaccine. One, under development by Vir Biotechnology, involves sending HIV "wanted" posters to a specific set of immune cells by encoding them in another, more benign chronic virus. Another, adopted by Moderna and the NIH, is called germline targeting, in which researchers give a series of vaccinations jabs designed to nudge the immune system toward making antibodies for HIV.

Read more.

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