Sanofi closes deal on Acambis

John Carroll — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:06:27 -0400

Sanofi-Aventis closes on its deal to buy Acambis today, but it's working hard to avoid losing the entrepreneurial spirit that attracted the French pharma company to the vaccine developer in the first place.

Wayne Pisano, who runs Sanofi's vaccine arm, says that Acambis would be kept at arm's length with a minimum of bureaucratic controls to slow it down. But Pisano also conceded that fostering a small-company development mentality in a big pharma subsidiary would prove to be a challenge.

But Sanofi definitely plans to grow Acambis. Pisano plans to finance new acquisitions as well as new development work for a general flu vaccines, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile and dengue fever.

- check out the report from the Financial Times

Sanofi to invest $6B in vaccine production

John Carroll — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:49:28 -0400

The growing wealth seen in developing nations is spurring a big increase in the worldwide demand for vaccines, and Sanofi-Aventis says it will invest more than $6 billion over the next eight years in order to meet the projected demand. Wayne Pisano, who heads Sanofi's vaccine division, estimated that total vaccine sales for the company will double to $34 billion by 2016. That growth will come in countries like India and China, where larger incomes are driving the demand for new flu and pediatric vaccines.

For years the low cost of vaccines made the sector a low-key player in biopharma. Now the relatively low cost of a vaccination and the significant health benefits that can be achieved from a major vaccination program have prompted more countries to step up their work in the field, making vaccines one of the hottest sectors in the industry.

"We have a number of diseases where there is not enough capacity today, where there is demand and there's not enough supply," Pisano told reporters.

- read the Wall Street Journal story