The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is strengthening itself with another acquisition in the USA.
Sanofi is taking over the Californian biotech company Amunix Pharmaceuticals for an advance payment of around one billion dollars (the equivalent of almost 900 million euros).
Amunix also beckoning success-related milestone payments of up to $ 225 million, as the group announced on Tuesday.
The takeover is expected to be completed in the first quarter.
Amunix specializes in cancer immunotherapies and does not yet have a drug of its own on the market. A first cancer therapy for the Americans is to be brought into clinical development at the beginning of next year. For Sanofi, it is the third purchase by a US biotech company this year after Kadmon Holdings for $ 1.9 billion and Translate Bio for $ 3.2 billion.
"The Amunix technology platform leverages a next-generation intelligent biologics approach to precisely deliver drugs that only work in tumor tissue while protecting normal tissue, promising more effective and safer treatment options for cancer patients," said John Reed, global head of research and development at Sanofi, quoted in a press release.
Investors were unimpressed by the acquisition, the price of the share listed on the Paris stock exchange started the day on Tuesday with slight losses.
In the morning he was slightly in the plus.
Setback with the vaccine
Last week, Sanofi had to report another setback in its corona vaccine development.
Together with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, the French do not want to announce important study data for the corona vaccine until the first quarter of 2022, despite positive initial results.
Originally, it was supposed to be done this year.
The two companies are jointly developing a protein-based vaccine.
After several delays, Sanofi withdrew from research into an mRNA vaccine.