Sanofi ready to emerge from innovation drought

Sanofi says its spluttering research and development pipeline is about to unleash a wave of new drugs as it tries to convince investors to keep faith with the company after the dismissal of its chief executive.

Serge Weinberg, chairman, said France's biggest drugmaker was emerging from its long innovation drought into a "period of successive new product launches".

Mr Weinberg took over the chief executive's job on an interim basis last month when Chris Viehbacher was fired after a clash with the board over management style.

The decision alarmed some investors because Mr Viehbacher, a straight-talking German-Canadian, was generally perceived to be making progress in efforts to reinvigorate one of France's biggest companies.

Mr Weinberg stressed there would be no change in strategic direction as he set out plans to launch up to 18 new medicines by 2020.

"These potential launches affirm Sanofi's strategy, which has been in place since 2008, and clearly demonstrate the strong momentum of Sanofi's R&D pipeline," he said.

Mr Weinberg, a veteran French business leader with strong political connections in Paris, will address investors in Boston later on Thursday in an attempt to assuage concerns that the management change signals a rejection of Mr Viehbacher's efforts to make the company more international and dynamic.

The search for Mr Viehbacher's replacement is under way, with speculation focused mainly on French executives with international healthcare experience, including Olivier Bohuon of Smith & Nephew and Christophe Weber of Takeda.

Sanofi said new product launches had the potential cumulatively to add more than €30bn over the first five years of sales, including the world's first vaccine for dengue fever and a next-generation treatment for high cholesterol.

Elias Zerhouni, Sanofi's head of R&D, said the company had an industry-leading pipeline in rare diseases, cardiovascular care, diabetes and immunology.

"Sanofi has the potential to launch up to six new medicines in 2015 and approximately one new medicine every six months between 2016 and 2018," he added.

The forecast came two days after AstraZeneca gave a similarly bullish update on its R&D prospects.

Sanofi and UK-based AstraZeneca have been among the worst victims of a broad malaise in the pharmaceuticals industry over recent years as older drugs have lost patent protection without enough new ones being developed to replace them.

However, the improved outlooks for Sanofi and AstraZeneca reflect growing optimism that big pharma is moving beyond the patent cliff with innovation pipelines looking more robust across much of the sector.

Nearly 200 new drugs are forecast to be launched worldwide in the next five years, according to a forecast issued by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics on Thursday. This would represent the strongest wave of innovation since the mid-2000s.

More than 2,000 products are currently in late-stage clinical development, of which cancer therapies make up a quarter of the pipeline.

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