Sanofi plans to shake up 'stagnant' industry

That's according to Dr Marc Cluzel, head of R&D for the pharma giant, who was speaking at yesterday's R&D meeting in Paris. He went through the 48 drugs that the company has in Phase IIb or Phase III trials, which he predicted could yield 10 blockbusters. With drug attrition rates as high as ever, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently describing drug development as 'stagnant', how realistic that claim turns out to be remains to be seen, although Cluzel said that the pipeline has matured in recent months and left the company with a clearer idea of which drugs will make the grade. A team of analysts at Dresdner Kleinwort described this many new drug filings in three years as an "unrepeatable wave"​ but were left more in the dark about what to expect in the near term. "​Although lots of potential was shown, few near term triggers to crystallise this value appeared. It will take another 12 to 24 months more of data." ​ They went on to point out that Alzheimer's drug xaliproden had been dropped and described amibegron, a drug to treat depression, as too high risk - two events that reduced their 2012 predicted sales by €2bn. However, new Plavix combinations due to file in 2009 could raise sales by 2009. One way in Sanofi plans to improve their pipeline is to increase the number of biotech products through both internal work and licenses, with Cluzel admitting the company was "a little bit weak" in this area. However, he did say that small molecules look set to "remain the cornerstone of our work, just because they can occupy all the different segments from prevention to therapy and they are very good value for their cost."​ In the longer term, Cluzel said that the company plans to enter at least 20 drug candidates into development each year, in order to get two onto the market annually. In principal, the meeting went down well with investors as Sanofi is sometimes accused of not being open enough. "Overall, after 4 hours and over 250 slides, in English for the first time rather than French, management demonstrated a willingness to try and be more open with investors," said the Dresdner Kleinwort analysts in a note to investors.