Sanofi wants Genzyme R&D to keep doing what is has been doing without any interference from its acquiring parent. Sanofi's CEO Chris Viehbacher is visiting the Cambridge site weekly and is offering top people retention bonuses. He's making R&D funds available to Genzyme and is reinforcing the message that Sanofi bought Genzyme for the latter to keep filling the pipeline with novel therapies.
Sanofi also says that new R&D pacts with outside entitities will not slow down and is looking to create more. The company also plans to push for Campath's filing (Genzyme's treatment for MS that was the subject of the lengthy valuation discussions during the acquisition dance) later this year. It was further noted that Genzyme researchers now have access to Sanofi's pipeline and now can look at, for example, how Campath could work with Sanofi's MS phase III candidate terfluromide. See Fierce Biotech here and here.
Posted by Bruce Lehr May 2nd 2011.
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