【New Sanofi CEO Hudson adds next-gen cancerdrug tech to the R&D quest, buying Synthorx for $2.5B】
December 9, 2019 05:42 AM EST
Updated 07:00 AM
Deals
When Paul Hudson lays out his R&Dvision for Sanofi $SNY tomorrow, he will have a new slate of interleukintherapies and a synthetic biology platform to boast about.
The French pharma giant announced earlyMonday that it is snagging San Diego biotech Synthorx $THOR in a $2.5 billiondeal. That marks an affordable bolt-on for Sanofi but a considerable return forSynthorx backers, including Avalon, RA Capital and OrbiMed: At $68 per share,the price represents a 172% premium to Friday’s closing.
As Sanofi’s chief strategist MuzammilMansuri exits the team, Hudson has been clearing house to make way for morepipeline projects, selling off the surgical products group for $350 million andreportedly mulling options for the consumer health unit. And Synthorx’s take onalternative IL-2 drugs for both cancer and autoimmune disorders — enabled by asynthetic DNA base pair pioneered by Scripps professor Floyd Romesberg — “fitsperfectly” with the kind of innovation that he wants at Sanofi, Hudson said.
“Additionally, it is aligned with our goalto build our oncology franchise with potentially practice-changing medicinesand novel combinations,” he said in a statement.
Oncology is where Hudson has previouslyindicated they will make the fastest headway, as global head of R&D JohnReed and development exec Dietmar Berger both have wide-ranging experience inthe space.
Reed sang more praises of the discoveryplatform and the lead IL-2 drug, THOR-707, as a potential foundation in thestring of next-gen immuno-oncology combinations to come. Especially with thenumerous in-house agents that his team has been shepherding to and through theclinic, from PD-1 inhibitor Libtayo to CD38 drug isatuximab to other moleculesthat modulate effector T cells and natural killer cells.
While Nektar has once been hailed as theleader in the second-gen IL-2 field, the waning response rates of its bigNKTR-214/Opdivo combo and controversial explanations of those mishaps haveseemingly opened up the title for grabs again. Roche is advancing a similardrug in early studies, while Alkermes is testing ALKS-4230 both as amonotherapy and together with Merck’s Keytruda.
The key question for all players is whethertheir tweaked versions can stir up IL-2 more selectively, rendering them saferbut just as, if not more, efficacious than Proleukin, the harbinger syntheticIL-2.
With THOR-707, Synthorx is pegylatingrecombinant human IL-2 at one specific site, by creating a hook with itssynthetic amino acid X-Y, so as to avoid binding with the high affinity IL-2receptor α chain (thus its characterization of the drug as “not alpha IL-2.” Itis designed to increase CD8+ and NK cell activity without causing vascular leaksyndrome.
Under CEO Laura Shawver, the company haskick started a Phase I/II trial in advanced or metastatic solid tumors lastfall.
Sanofi is now taking all that over, plustwo other Synthorin preclinical programs in the pipeline, acting on IL-10 andIL-15 respectively.
Theirs is an unusual union as many largepharma companies have elected for clinical collaborations instead of M&A,noted SVB Leerink analyst Daina Graybosch, who predicted that Sanofi will havelittle trouble getting the acquisition past antitrust regulators.
Sanofi does have another phase 1 cytokineprogram, SAR441000, partnered with BioNTech (BNTX, OP). Though we believe thislikely increased their biological understanding of cytokines and appreciationof THOR, SAR441000 (intratumor injection with IL-12sc, IL-15sushi, GM-CSF, andIFNα) is sufficiently different from THOR-707 for them both to have a place inSanofi’s pipeline; BioNTech also has two other IL-2 ribocytokine programs intheir portfolio.
用户评论