Regeneron, Sanofi will invest $2B for new cancer drugs

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Westchester and the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi will extend their 6-year-old global collaboration with a joint investment of more than $2 billion to discover and bring new antibody cancer drugs to market.

The two companies on Tuesday announced their agreement to collaborate on new treatments in the emerging field of immuno-oncology. They said they will jointly develop a programmed cell death protein 1, or PD-1, inhibitor and plan to begin clinical trials next year with new drug candidates.

Sanofi will make an upfront payment of $640 million to Regeneron, which has grown to be New York’s largest biotechnology company from its headquarters on the Landmark at Eastview campus in Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant. The companies agreed to invest $1 billion for discovery through early-stage studies of immune-oncology antibody candidates used alone or in novel combinations, with Sanofi putting up $750 million and Regeneron contributing $250 million.

The companies also committed to funding in equal shares an additional $650 million for development of a PD-1 inhibitor now in Regeneron”™s drug pipeline.

The collaborators also agreed to reallocate $75 million for immune-oncology antibodies from Sanofi’s current annual contribution of $160 million to Regeneron. In addition, Paris-based Sanofi, which works closely with Regeneron scientists from its U.S. headquarters in Bridgewater, N.J., will make a $375 million milestone payment if a PD-1 product and any other collaboration antibodies used in combination with a PD-1 product exceed $2 billion in aggregate sales in any consecutive 12-month period.

The companies said they will share equally in worldwide profits from sales of the immuno-oncology medicines.

“The field of immuno-oncology has shown the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for patients with certain types of cancer,” said Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, Regeneron”™s chief scientific officer and president of Regeneron Laboratories, in the announcement. But he cautioned that the field “is still in its very early days.”

“We believe the approaches most likely to deliver the best results to patients will combine multiple innovative therapies acting on different pathways both in the tumor and the body”™s immune response ”“ and will precisely target these medicines to the right patients,” Yancopoulos said.