July 15, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
PARIS – French drugmaker Sanofi is streamlining its operations by reducing its number of global business units to five from seven starting in January 2016 to promote growth, the company announced this morning.
Olivier Brandicourt, Sanofi’s chief executive officer, said the reorganization “is a necessary step for ensuring that Sanofi‘s new medicines and vaccines continue to build on our heritage of providing innovative healthcare therapies.”
Sanofi is expecting to see significant growth over the next three years. The company said it will potentially launch up to six new medicines this year and approximately one new medicine every six months between 2016 and 2018.
The five units the company will maintain are General Medicines & Emerging Markets, Specialty Care, Diabetes & Cardiovascular, Sanofi Pasteur and Merial.
Under the restructuring plan, the General Medicines & Emerging Markets business unit will be led by Peter Guenter and will include Sanofi‘s established products, generics, consumer healthcare and all pharmaceutical businesses in emerging markets, the company said.
The Specialty Care unit, which will be called Sanofi Genzyme, will be led by David Meeker and will include Sanofi‘s medicines in rare diseases, Multiple Sclerosis, oncology and immunology, including the two, investigational biologics, sarilumab and dupilumab.
The Diabetes & Cardiovascular unit will be led by Pascale Witz and includes diabetes and cardiovascular medicines. The medications include Praluent (alirocumab), which is currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Sanofi Pasteur and Merial will continue to manage their current portfolios of vaccines and animal health products. Olivier Charmeil will continue to lead Sanofi Pasteur and Carsten Hellmann will continue to lead Merial, the company said.
The reorganization comes on the heels of Brandicourt’s telling French labor representatives he will be present a five-year strategic plan for the drugmaker in November that will take into account local drags on its bottom line, including issues with French unionized workers.
In addition to labor issues, the restructuring comes two months after Sanofi’s coming in second to Amgen gaining approval for its new anti-cholesterol drug Repatha in Europe. Amgen saw approval of Repatha in May. While Amgen appears to be the first to market in Europe, Sanofi is likely to beat the California-based Amgen to market in the U.S. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to rule on Repatha in late August and Sanofi’s Praluent will be ruled on by regulatory authorities in July.
High cholesterol is the most common form of dyslipidemia, which is an abnormality of cholesterol and/or fats in the blood. There are approximately 300 million cases of dyslipidemia in the U.S., Japan and Western Europe.
In February Sanofi replaced one-third of its sales managers in the United States in order to become more competitive with Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk A/S . One of the key issues facing the company was poorer than expected sales for Lantus, the company’s top diabetes medication. Lantus lost ground in 2014 to Novo Nordisk’s Levemir insulin, which is less expensive. To prevent losing more market share to rival drugs, which Sanofi CEO Serge Weinberg said “has nothing to offer compared to Lantus,” the company restructured its sales force with a focus on training its staff to better present the medication to U.S. doctors. In a call with analysts, Weinberg was reported to have said sales managers in the United States “were not doing their jobs” and that the sales team relationship with physicians was inadequate when promoting medications like Lantus.
Those poor sales numbers for Lantus may have been instrumental in the October dismissal of former CEO Chris Viehbacher. He was terminated one day after the company predicted Lantus would deliver little growth in the years up to 2018. Additionally the company brought in Andrew Purcell as head of diabetes in the United States. He replaced Anne C. Whitaker, who left her role as President, North America Pharmaceuticals at Sanofi Aventis one month prior to the shakeup to take over the top spot at Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. .
As New Jersey Biotech Booms, Will It Overtake Other States As Prime Location?
A week after Celgene Corporation announced it is officially the mystery buyer of Merck & Co. ’s former 1 million-square-foot R&D site in Summit, N.J., it quickly became our most popular story last week.
The company announced last Wednesday that it is buying the space, ending months of speculation about what Big Pharma company might move into the neighborhood.
The Summit, N.J. site is zoned research/office. The New Jersey site would put operations closer to some of the major biotech and pharmaceutical hubs on the East Coast.
But, by far, the most tempting part of doing business in the state remains New Jersey’s operating tax credit, which allows companies to sell their net operating losses to the New Jersey Treasury. One of the state’s most recognizable biotechs, Celgene, used the program until it became profitable, which was key to it staying in the state, said local officials.
That has BioSpace is wondering if New Jersey is becoming the new face of biotech. What do you think? Can the Garden State compete with other longtime stalwarts like California or Boston?
