Sanofi boosts investment in mRNA to keep pace in vaccines
Sanofi plans to invest €400m a year to develop vaccines based on the novel mRNA technology that has disrupted competition among the world’s biggest vaccine makers since the pandemic began.
The French pharmaceutical group will open a “dedicated vaccine mRNA centre of excellence”, with 400 employees spanning research and development, and manufacturing at sites in Cambridge in the US and Lyon in France, it said in statement on Tuesday.
The group aims to have at least six mRNA vaccine “clinical candidates” by 2025, although it did not specify for what infectious diseases.
The move comes after Sanofi was beaten to market last year in the race to develop Covid-19 vaccines, with new challengers including BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna proving the speed and agility advantages of mRNA platforms. The French drugmaker has two vaccines in development.
The investment is a recognition that Sanofi needs more expertise in mRNA technology to defend and expand its vaccine business, which brought in about 16 per cent of its €36bn revenue last year and has relied on traditional manufacturing techniques.
Just under half of Sanofi’s vaccine sales come from flu shots, which analysts say could also be disrupted by mRNA technology in the coming years.
Before the pandemic, Sanofi was one of the world’s biggest vaccine makers by sales along with GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, but it slipped down the rankings last year as mRNA technology created new winners.
Investors are now paying more attention to the once slow-moving, unglamorous vaccine business as they try to understand the extent of the potential disruption.
Meanwhile Sanofi faced a roughly six-month delay to its Covid-19 vaccine rollout after a dosing error derailed the clinical trial. The jab, based on the more traditional recombinant DNA technology, is being developed in partnership with GSK, and the groups aim for regulatory approval by the end of the year.
Sanofi also has a Covid-19 jab based on mRNA technology in early-stage testing in partnership with US company Translate Bio. It began working with the Lexington, Massachusetts-based company on mRNA vaccines more generally in 2018, and the two expanded their partnership last year to broadly “address current and future infectious diseases”.
Sanofi and Translate Bio announced last week that they were beginning an early-stage or Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating a mRNA-based vaccine against seasonal influenza.
“We’ve all witnessed the promise of mRNA technology during this pandemic and are now looking to extend that promise to select annual vaccines,” said Jean-François Toussaint, who heads Sanofi’s vaccine R&D, in a statement.