Sanofi to acquire Amunix for an initial payment of $ 1 billion

(Reuters) – Sanofi on Tuesday announced an agreement to acquire Immunix Pharmaceuticals, a company specializing in immuno-oncology, for an upfront payment of $ 1 billion, marking the French group’s latest acquisition which has been active for several months to compensate for the delay in vaccines.

Sanofi, under pressure to revive its drug portfolio and commercialize its COVID-19 vaccine, added that it would disburse $ 225 million in milestone payments depending on the achievement of certain development goals.

In a statement, the French group said that this operation was part of its initiatives to “intensify and strengthen its contribution to the research and development of innovative drugs for cancer patients, with around 20 molecules currently in development “.

Sanofi will thus get its hands on a development portfolio of immunotherapies involving T lymphocytes and therapeutic cytokines, in particular with the drug candidate AMX-818, which should enter the clinical phase at the beginning of 2022.

“We look forward to rapidly developing the promising portfolio of Immunix and combining its innovative drug candidates with complementary molecules from Sanofi’s portfolio in immuno-oncology,” commented John Reed, Global Head of R&D at Sanofi.

The French pharmaceutical group announced this year the acquisition of the companies Kadmon and Translate Bio for respectively 1.9 billion dollars and 3.2 billion dollars.

Earlier this month, he also announced the takeover of the Austrian biotechnology company Origimm Biotechnology, which will allow him to develop a vaccine candidate against acne.

These acquisitions should allow Sanofi to develop its messenger RNA (mRNA) technology platform for which it is lagging behind its competitors and which it now intends to use for the majority of its candidate vaccines.

Too far in the COVID-19 vaccine race, Sanofi has abandoned development of an mRNA vaccine and is focusing on a serum developed via a more conventional protein-based approach, in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline.

The group, which hoped to be able to market this vaccine at the end of the year, finally announced last week that it would submit to regulatory authorities in the first quarter of 2022 more substantial data from the phase III trial.

(Written by Jean Terzian and Blandine Hénault, edited by Tangi Salaün)