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Author: Jean-Claude Muller, 穆卓Executive Editor at BtoBioInnovation, jcm@btobioinnovation.com

Sanofi has hired John Reed from Roche to head its R&D organisation and replace Elias Zerhouni who will retire from the French company on July 1.

Elias Zerhouni was appointed Advisor to the office of Sanofi CEO, Chris Viehbacher, in February 2009. At the time, I was in charge of the Prospective and Strategic Initiatives department, and I had several long conversations with Zerhouni to restructure and reshape Sanofi’s R&D. The major objectives I had set then, with his full support, for the R&D 2015 initiative were the following:

• Support the growth platforms (diabetes, oncology, vaccines and emerging countries) with innovative products.
• Refocus the company’s from small molecules to biologics.
• Tap into the new opportunities existing outside of the company through the “open innovation” concept and through new strategic collaborations.
• Optimize the existing and new assets within the Regeneron R&D pipeline (I had negotiated the very first R&D agreement between both companies in 2007).
• Transform the internal R&D organization to make it more efficient.

When Zerhouni was appointed head of worldwide R&D in 2011, he kept many of these objectives and took additional major steps to improve R&D productivity while launching several new innovative programs with academic institutions and biotechnology companies.

He was clearly successful in making the most out of the Regeneron collaboration with the launch of three new antibodies: Praluent, Dupixent and Kevzara.  He was also instrumental in the acquisition of Genzyme and the successful entry of Sanofi in the rare disease and multiple sclerosis domains. The launch of the one and only Dengue vaccine (Dengvaxia) is undoubtedly a major achievement of Sanofi Pasteur’s R&D (although not a commercial success). From the start of this tenure he has been a very strong advocate of tackling the complexity of most diseases with a multi-targeting compound rather than developing drugs with single targets and then hoping to combine them.  He shifted several of the main decision centers from Europe and New Jersey to Boston shortly after the Genzyme acquisition and focused his in-house R&D on major hubs located in areas of academic excellence.

Zehrouni has also been highly instrumental in forging a collaboration with Google to address a holistic approach of diabetes and with TriNetX to help improve the design and the monitoring of clinical trials through a cloud-based digital platform.

What is less successful is the struggle to find enough new products to offset the impact of weakening diabetes drugs sales and the disappearance of the oncology franchise, which was a major driver of growth for Sanofi in 2010. It is also particularly noteworthy that two of the major players of the vaccine business (GSK and Sanofi) have not become leaders in the immuno-oncology field, although as Zerhouni stated recently “To tackle the immune systems, we think we have the basis few companies possess”.  Similarly, not a single new infective agent clinical candidate was selected under Zerhouni’s tenure. Even more surprisingly, Sanofi is one of the rare major players who has no activity in the emerging domain of cell therapy, although the company had made a first entry in the field back in 2001.

As with most R&D leaders, only time will tell how strong the position Zerhouni leaves John Reed in, and how all his efforts, over more than nine years, will translate into successful commercial products in the near future.

What is up for Reed?

In my view his first order of business will be BUSINESS CONTINUITY.  If Sanofi Corporate roadmap had been a “Copernican Revolution”, the Board would have appointed an already outstanding up-and-coming biopharma professional under 40 years of age. A scientist convinced that new technology can deliver dramatic improvements in R&D and development programs and whereby new attitudes at work and about decision making would be welcomed.

Firstly Reed will have to finish what Zerhouni has started, in particular in accelerating the convergence of approaches (biology, miniaturization of devices, artificial intelligence, digital medicine, etc…) to trigger breakthrough innovation, targeting everything from obesity to cancer and autoimmune diseases as well as rare diseases, vaccines and anti-infective agents.

Second in making sure that the flow of products generated in the past by Regeneron will be successfully replaced by other sources externally and/or internally.

Thirdly by (re) building an immuno-oncology franchise which will be competitive with Merck, BMS and Roche.

Fourth: By making sure Sanofi Pasteur stays on the forefront of vaccine discovery.

Fifth: On deciding to enter or not the cell therapy field.

Sixth: On considering the microbiome as a target out of the usual stream to discover new drugs.

Seventh: By successful integrating new technology platforms such as the ones recently acquired from Ablynx and Bioverativ into the in-house research programs.

Eight:  On expanding the digital medicine concept over many other therapeutic fields, in forging new collaborations while integrating engineers and data scientists in all discovery programs.

Last but not least. Sanofi’s own R&D organization has been slow and rather ineffective lately in making much headway in drug discovery and development. Several harsh hitting restructuring, closing of sites, changes in priorities and in leadership positions have left many Sanofi’s scientists with a mixed feeling of being systematically and sometimes unfairly disqualified when facing American biotechnology competitors.

At Roche, Reed has strongly contributed to stabilize the R&D organization with heavy investment in in-house R&D and to rebuild recognized credit and proudness to Roche’s scientists confronted with the shiny and successful Genentech’s ones.

In the past Sanofi’s R&D has discovered and developed worldwide leading products in several fields, but has yet to become a worldwide recognized leading R&D organization.

Reed will have to walk the rocky road to get there.

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