Thursday’s agreement with Orano Med is the second in as many months. Sanofi in September made its first foray into the radioligand space with a $110 million licensing deal with Orano Med and Texas biotech RadioMedix.
Sanofi on Thursday announced a partnership with radiopharma-focused Orano Med, paying approximately $326 million to obtain a 16% stake in the biotech.
The companies will work collaboratively to advance next-generation radiotherapies for rare cancers. Leveraging Orano’s expertise in alpha therapies, the partners will discover, design and develop radioligand treatments based on lead-212 alpha-emitting isotopes. Sanofi and Orano have yet to reveal specific disease targets.
Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson in a statement said that the agreement “unites our respective expertise in biopharma and nuclear technology to drive groundbreaking progress in the fight against cancer.”
The partnership also falls in line with the pharma’s ongoing efforts to reshape and reprioritize its pipeline assets, with a focus on difficult-to-treat malignancies including hematologic cancers and solid tumors with “critical unmet needs,” according to Sanofi. Among Sanofi’s high-priority targets are multiple myeloma, acute myeloid leukemia and certain types of gastrointestinal and lung cancers.
Orano’s targeted alpha therapy platform combines two key advancements in cancer therapeutics—the targeted nature of biologic treatments and the “short-range cell-killing capabilities” of radioisotopes, according to the biotech’s website. Candidates developed using this platform consist of an alpha-emitting lead-212 atom, a biological vector and a linker between the two.
This structure gives rise to the unique mechanism of action of targeted alpha therapies that allows them to destroy target cancer cells while also minimizing off-target impacts and damage to nearby healthy tissues. According to Sanofi, Orano’s alpha treatments aim to change “the standard of care in some rare cancers,” potentially prolonging patients’ lives while also boosting their quality of life.
Sanofi last month made its first foray into the space with a $110 million licensing deal with Orano Med and Texas biotech RadioMedix. At the center of the three-way agreement is AlphaMedix, a lead-212 targeted radioligand therapy, being developed for gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs).
Targeted radiotherapies have continued to be an attractive area for Big Pharma investment.
Novartis is currently the radiopharma frontrunner with its FDA-approved prostate cancer therapy Pluvicto, alongside the GEP-NETs treatment Lutathera. In August 2024, Novartis put $2.7 billion on the line to further deepen its radiotherapy expertise, inking a peptide discovery partnership with Japan-based PeptiDream to use its platform technology to discover new macrocyclic peptides that it can conjugate into radioligand therapies.
Close on Novartis’ heels are Bristol Myers Squibb, which in December 2023 acquired radiopharma specialist RayzeBio for $4.1 billion, and Eli Lilly, which in October 2023 bought Point Biopharma for $1.4 billion.
