January 12, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Biotech followers are tittering about the noticeable snubbing of MannKind CEO Al Mann during Sanofi ’s presentation at the “Super Bowl of Biotech,” the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, on Monday, scant hours after MannKind said Mann will retire and be replaced as CEO by current President Hakan Edstrom.
Sanofi was expected to say at least a little something about Mann after betting $925 million on MannKind’s inhaled insulin device Afrezza last April and the close partnership that still exists between the two.
But Elias Zerhouni, Sanofi‘s president of research and development, instead spent the majority of his talk hyping 18 drug launches expected in the next six years. Among those will be three new diabetes medicines—but no release date (or projected cost) for Afrezza itself, other than the device would be available sometime in 2015.
Sanofi made the announcement at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference which begins Monday in San Francisco and the oldest and largest conference of its type. It will include 300 of the largest biotech, healthcare and biopharma companies presenting their top-line data and estimates to a sea of eager bankers, analysts, institutional investors, hedge funds and journalists.
The noted diss to Mann may have something to do with a difference of opinion over how revolutionary Afrezza is considered by its two parent companies.
In his remarks, Zerhouni’s didn’t say much about it except how convenient it is to inhale insulin as opposed to injecting it, a marked departure from when the company acquired the technology from MannKind last spring. Then, Sanofi touted Afrezza as a “nice upgrade” to its current pipeline, but on Monday, investigational basal insulin Toujeo was the apple of Zerhouni’s eye, described as “the new gold standard.”
