Vaccines: Sanofi will invest heavily in messenger RNA
A Sanofi technician, July 10, 2020, in the Val-de-Reuil plant.
Joel Saget AFP / Archivos
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The Sanofi laboratory will invest heavily in messenger RNA.
The French giant announced on Tuesday that it wanted to spend more than 2 billion euros by 2025 in the search for new vaccines, which use this innovative technology.
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Sanofi's goal is to develop a new generation of
messenger RNA vaccines
.
These vaccines will be targeted on infectious diseases, but the laboratory remains discreet about its exact ambitions.
The company will create a research center for this that will straddle two existing laboratory sites, in Cambridge, in the United States, and in Marcy-L'Étoile, near Lyon.
400 employees will work there, other job creations are also planned.
Sanofi thus wants to position itself in a technology that could represent an important market.
Because the French giant has already
fallen far behind
in the race against the Covid-19, attracting criticism relating to this absence from the front of the stage.
Race against time
It is now counting on marketing its anti-Covid-19 vaccine in the fourth quarter of this year, one year after the first messenger RNA vaccines from its competitors Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. A delay that the company puts into perspective. Last month Olivier Bogillot, president of Sanofi France said that his company was not totally late, it is "
just behind in the second car
".
The Covid-19 is also not the only target of the group.
The group also wants to use this technology to tackle the flu.
According to Jean-Jacques Le Fur, analyst at Bryan, Garnier & Co, interviewed by AFP, “
Sanofi cannot miss out on an influenza vaccine with messenger RNA if its competitors show that it is the future: it there is a race against time.
"
Last year, vaccines represented close to six billion euros in sales for Sanofi, or 17% of its turnover.
► To listen again: The International Guest: Covid-19: "Messenger RNA has really changed the paradigm in vaccination"
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