Sanofi, the French pharmaceuticals group, has defeated its Danish rival Novo Nordisk in the battle to gain control of a Belgian biotech company that uses llamas to develop its medicines.
Sanofi said it would pay €3.9 billion (£3.4 billion) for Ablynx, founded by students at Belgium’s Free University who developed a range of treatments after refusing to draw each other’s blood for fear of catching HIV during a laboratory experiment in 1990 and instead were given blood from a dromedary.
Novo Nordisk, which had offered €2.6 billion for Ablynx earlier this month, said it was pulling out of the race after the French bid.
Sanofi’s move comes after it acquired Bioverativ, the American haemophilia specialist, for $11.6 billion last week. Like its competitors around the world, the French group wants to lay its hands on firms that are producing innovative medicines. Sanofi’s money-spinner, Lantus insulin, is in decline.
Olivier Brandicourt, chief executive, said: “With Ablynx, we continue to advance the transformation of our research and development, expanding our late-stage pipeline and strengthening our platform for growth in rare blood disorders.”
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Ablynx is working on 45 projects in the hope creating treatments based on the discovery during the university experiment that members of the camel family have peculiar antibodies. The discovery led the researchers to use llamas, which tend to be more manageable than camels or dromedaries, to develop antibody fragments, or nanobodies, that they say can cure diseases such as acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a life-threatening bleeding disorder.
Ablynx has asked for authorisation to market caplacizumab, a cure for acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, in the EU, and is expected to make a similar request in the US later this year.
Mr Brandicourt said caplacizumab would add to Sanofi’s existing treatments for blood disorders, fitting into a corporate jigsaw after the acquisition of Bioverativ.
Although the Belgian firm is expected to post an annual loss for the next two years, Sanofi said it will become highly profitable once its llama-inspired treatments are on the market.
Sanofi has made no secret of its intention to reinforce its portfolio of medicines to treat rare diseases, but missed out on targets such as Medivation, the Californian biotech firm that was bought by Pfizer in 2016 for $14 billion, and Switzerland’s Actelion, which was bought by Johnson & Johnson for $30 billion last year.
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Having got the ball rolling with the purchases of Bioverativ and Ablynx, Mr Brandicourt said further acquisitions were possible. “We have a strong balance sheet. We generate significant cashflow. We are going to look at opportunities on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
“We also identified consumer healthcare ... as an area where we want to sustain a leadership position and therefore you can expect us to evaluate opportunities.”