Sanofi makes cuts to phase III pipeline
pharmafile | April 30, 2009 | News story | Research and Development | Sanofi-Aventis
Sanofi-Aventis has suspended development of four late-stage drugs and ten other projects following an R&D review.
The decision was announced as the French company revealed stable sales and a rise in profit for the first quarter of the year.
Net sales were 7.1 billion euros, down 0.2% year on year, while net earnings were 2.2bn euros, up 15.7%.
The company confirms it expects earnings per share to grow at least 7% in 2009.
In its pharma business, sales of insulin product Lantus in Q1 were up 27.1% to 747 million euros.
Plavix, the blood-thinner which Sanofi markets with Bristol-Myers Squibb, was up 3.6% to 685m euros.
In oncology, Taxotere was up 8.3% to 534m euros, but generic competition forced sales of Eloxatin down 7% to 344m euros.
Meanwhile a review of the development pipeline has seen a number of late-stage projects axed. This follows a cull made earlier this year. The latest rationalisation sees Sanofi stop four projects in phase III, another four in phase II and six in phase I.
Chief executive Chris Viehbacher explained: "We took all 65 projects from phase I to phase III in both pharma and vaccines and we gave them our own version of the 'stress' test."
This involved asking four searching questions: Did they represent a level of innovation? Did they represent a true value-added for patients? Did they represent an acceptable level of risk in terms of both technical achievement and commercial risk, and will they get a good return?"
This means phase III antidepressant saredutant and AVE5530 in hypercholesterolemia have been halted, while the rights to TroVax have been returned to Oxford BioMedica.
Trials of the vaccine Unifive have been stopped and those resources reallocated to Hexaxim.
In phase II, AVE0657 in sleep apnea, SSR180575 in diabetic polyneuropathy, anti-IGF 1 AVE1642 in oncology, and the company's melanoma vaccine have hit the buffers.
As well as the six projects in phase I that have also been shelved, the company will decide in the next few months whether or not to continue with another four products currently in trials: AVE1625, xaliprodene, idrabiotaparinux and Sanofi's West Nile virus vaccine.
The phase I terminations were "no big deal", said Viehbacher.
Speaking about the compounds that remained, he said: "We can accelerate and concentrate on those projects."
"We're going to be looking outside now to supplement that portfolio," he added.
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