Sanofi CEO Sees ‘Stunning’ Results for Cancer Drug
bloomberg.com
June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Sanofi-Aventis SA achieved “stunning” results in an ongoing human trial for its novel cancer drug aimed at breast and lung tumors, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher said.
The treatment, BSI-201, is in the third and final stage of testing generally needed for U.S. approval, Viehbacher said today in an interview. It is the most advanced drug in a new family of medicines known as parp inhibitors that are designed to stop tumors from repairing DNA blasted by chemotherapy.
Sanofi gained the medicine when it bought San Francisco- based BiPar Sciences in June 2009. The drug is one of 18 projects Paris-based Sanofi has added to its cancer pipeline in the last year through acquisitions and partnerships. Viehbacher aims to expand in a global cancer market valued at $52 billion last year, according to IMS Health Inc. of Norwalk, Connecticut.
“We’ve seen some very stunning things on an individual- patient basis, which certainly gives us lots of reason for optimism,” Viehbacher said in the interview at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago. “As I look at the oncology unit, I see the transformation of Sanofi-Aventis.”
Sanofi fell 95 cents, or 1.9 percent, to 48.01 euros today in Paris trading. The shares rose 4.1 percent in the past 12 months.
Dozen Acquisitions
The drugmaker has spent $9 billion on more than a dozen acquisitions since Viehbacher joined in 2008. Sanofi has four cancer drugs on the market, five in the final stage of human testing, and at least nine in early- to mid-stage human testing. Its drugs and experimental compounds are the subject of more than 150 research summaries at the cancer meeting.
“We’ve got one of the better pipelines in the industry one year later, and we’re certainly not going to rest until we have the best pipeline,” Viehbacher said. “We’ve announced eight or nine partnerships already this year, and we continue to shop vigorously.”
Viehbacher cut programs in neurological and metabolic disorders to focus on building a broad new oncology unit run by Debasish Roychowdhury, his former colleague from London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc. Roychowdhury said Viehbacher’s strategy of buying risky new compounds and quickly developing them is part of what attracted him to the company. An example of that strategy’s execution is BiPar Sciences, the maker of BSI-201, which Sanofi bought six weeks before last year’s cancer conference, Roychowdhury said.
Team Empowerment
“At BiPar, they wanted to start a study in phase three breast cancer,” Roychowdhury said in an interview. “Within 15- 20 days the protocol was written, approved, the study started. That’s the kind of empowerment you want to give to teams. They started the lung cancer study in that same kind of a time.”
AstraZeneca Plc in London, Abbott Laboratories in Abbott Park, Illinois, Merck & Co. in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, and Pfizer Inc. in New York are also investigating parp inhibitors in earlier-stage human trials. Most cancer treatments work by blasting DNA in the malignant cells with chemotherapy or radiation. Cancer can fight back by using parp enzymes to fix damaged strands of DNA within tumors. The new medicines are designed to block the enzymes, helping standard treatments to kill the cancer.
“Investment in Risk”
Viehbacher’s latest attack on cancer is twofold. First, he is boosting Sanofi’s “investment in risk,” by adding to the company’s catalogue of early-stage treatments that have the potential to transform cancer research. Second, he is seeking licensing deals and acquisitions of new medicines that work in tandem with other cancer drugs.
Roychowdhury said that after years of modest improvements, cancer research is on the verge of major breakthroughs accomplished by combining multiple treatments to keep tumors at bay or wipe them out completely. Finding the right drug mixes can only be done by working closely with academic research institutions and other companies, Roychowdhury said.
An instance of Sanofi’s collaboration strategy was its licensing last year of the experimental cancer drug XL147 from Exelixis Inc. of South San Francisco, California. Sanofi also licensed the compound MM-121, from Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“One of the reasons we wanted these two molecules is that we wanted to build the combination,” Roychowdhury said. “We think this is going to be a very important combination for us.”
Collateral Damage
Each type of cancer is different, with unique causes and treatments. Older drugs poisoned the cancerous cells, while collaterally damaging healthy tissues. Newer treatments seek to target the specific tumor in various ways. They may choke off blood supplies or attack the mechanisms by which mutated cells reproduce. Cancer cells evolve quickly, and eventually most tumors find a way to evade the treatments.
So-called combination therapies may hold the key to turning deadly malignancies such as triple-negative breast cancer into chronic diseases that can be managed for years. It is the same strategy scientists have used against HIV, which is attacked with triple-drug therapies and can be suppressed at undetectable levels for decades, Roychowdhury said.
“We’ve had single-agent targeted drugs for a while,” Roychowdhury said. “Many of the drugs work, but then stop working. These combinations we are developing are essentially trying to get over this resistance mechanism or completely overwhelm the cell.” |
