Boston Business Journal -- Sanofi-Aventis CEO Chris Viebacher outlined the research and development strategy that led to the purchase of Cambridge, Mass-based Genzyme Corp. for $20.1 billion, and will lead the company to further expand its partnerships and acquisitions.
“My goal as CEO is never to inaugurate a new research and development center,” Viebacher said during an MIT Enterprise Forum event, at the start of his first full week as CEO of Genzyme, now a Sanofi subsidiary.
He explained that large R&D centers can become lumbering, resource hungry institutions that aren’t very productive. He said he sees improving research and development productivity as job number one, not just for Sanofi, but for the industry as a whole, which spent almost $100 billion in public and private money for research and development last year, but produced only 22 new FDA-approved drugs and vaccines.
Viehbacher said that new capital models would be needed to spur early-stage innovation. But he said he did not plan to start a corporate venture group at Sanofi. Instead, he said he would consider co-investing in early stage companies, along with traditional venture capital firms.
More and more companies in pharma and biotech are finding out they can’t do everything, and are narrowing their scope, Viehbacher said. But he said Sanofi would push forward to create an even wider network of partnerships and acquisitions to drive innovation across many different disease research areas.
He said Sanofi has begun to think about diseases in terms of causes and not symptoms; accordingly, Sanofi will no longer have cardiovascular and central nervous system therapeutic areas, for instance, but will instead have a division focused on diseases of aging.
Viehbacher announced last week that he would re-start three languishing Genzyme Corp. programs: one to expand the use of Genzyme’s approved Synvisc-1 orthopedic implant for use in hips as well in knees, one for an ophthalmologic drug candidate, and a third potential therapy for the rare Niemann-Pick disease.
Asked whether he had identified any Genzyme programs that would be abandoned, he said “We haven’t finished evaluating the portfolio yet. Of course every research project can’t go forward, but we are very keen to stay in biosurgery, and oncology,” where Genzyme has assets, in addition to its well known rare disease drugs. Viehbacher also said that Genzyme’s research in renal disease may complement Sanofi’s diabetes drug pipeline.
And having said he wants to avoid launching new R&D centers, he already committed to doing that last fall. Separate from the Genzyme purchase, Sanofi plans to consolidate its ten oncology centers worldwide into one new $65 million center with about 300 employees in Cambridge.
