Some of the biggest news and trends captured in PharmaVoice’s newsletter this week. Sign up here to receive the newsletter daily.
Sanofi’s vaccine bump
‘Sanofi’s vaccine sales are on the upswing this year, thanks to a boost from its newly acquired hepatitis B shot. That uptick came despite the controversial rollback of federal recommendations for hepatitis B immunizations levied by the CDC last year.
But the drugmaker’s vaccine sales were lifted by a modest 2.1% in the first quarter — a story of scraping by that was repeated in many of pharma’s recent earnings reports.
This week, we dug into the numbers to see just how hard vaccine markers are getting hit in this new regulatory environment.
FDA’s new commish
The hunt for a new FDA commissioner is underway, according to a post on X by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In the meantime, Kyle Diamantas, a lawyer who oversaw food safety at the agency, is stepping in as acting commissioner. While Diamantas is considered a relatively noncontroversial pick, he has gotten flak in the past for defending Abbott Laboratories in a legal battle over infant formula safety. Abbott ultimately lost the suit in 2024.
He also has personal ties to the Trump administration and was seen in a photo posted in 2021 on a hunting outing with one of the president’s sons.
Will this leadership shake-up reverse the fortunes of two biotechs that recently received controversial rejections? This week, we tackled that question.
India rising
India is on a quest to raise its global profile. With ambitions to leap frog Japan and Germany and become the world’s third-largest economy within the next 20 years, the country is counting on growth in its drug market to fuel that rise — and the projections are staggering.
Already a $55 billion market, India’s pharma industry is expected to swell to at least $120 billion in value by 2030, according to Bain & Company. Sun Pharma’s recent $11.75 billion acquisition of Organon is a testament to what the country’s pharma companies can do.
But will India follow in China’s footsteps and become a new global powerhouse of drug innovation? This week, we went on a quest to find out.
