Sanofi posted a strong set of first-quarter results Thursday morning, with its recombinant factor drug Altuviiio on track to become a blockbuster drug and its crown jewel Dupixent continuing to draw sales.
Sales of the French drugmaker’s hemophilia A treatment Altuviiio doubled in the first quarter to €251 million ($286 million), according to a company earnings
report
. Almost 90% of that number was driven by the US, where patients continued to switch over from older plasma-derived and recombinant factor medicines. The remaining €33 million came from other markets, boosted by a recent launch in Japan.
Altuviiio has been steadily gaining market share since it
secured FDA approval
in 2023, according to Sanofi. If it can replicate its Q1 sales for the rest of the year, the product should reach blockbuster status in 2025, a company spokesperson told
Endpoints News
in an email. Altuviiio is administered weekly, giving it a significant convenience edge over older recombinant factor drugs, which can require up to thrice weekly dosing.
Sanofi’s older recombinant factor medicine, Eloctate, saw sales drop around 21% to €70 million as patients switched to Altuviiio. But its broader hemophilia A franchise fared positively, with sales rising by 50% to €321 million.
That number formed part of Sanofi’s total first-quarter sales of €9.9 billion, which were up almost 10% from the same time last year. The figure came in 3% ahead of Wall Street consensus forecasts and was driven by continued growth of the company’s blockbuster inflammatory disease drug Dupixent, Jefferies analysts said in a Thursday note.
Dupixent sales were up around 20% in the quarter to €3.5 billion. The growth was driven by rising use in all established indications, as well as “emerging use” in its latest approval for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, Sanofi said. Dupixent is expected to reach
peak sales of $3.3 billion
in COPD alone, according to Wall Street consensus estimates.
Sanofi’s hemophilia offering was further bolstered by an
FDA approval
for siRNA medicine Qfitlia in hemophilia A and B last month. Qfitlia will be sold in the US at an average cost of $642,000 per year, but comes with a boxed warning for thrombotic events and gallbladder disease.
Sanofi also reported a Phase 2 disappointment for its oral TNF inhibitor, balinatunfib, in psoriasis. The drug did not hit statistical significance in the primary endpoint of PASI-75, which measures the proportion of patients with a minimum 75% improvement in their psoriasis area and severity index score. Sanofi said the failure was driven by “the limited nature” of the trial, adding it would share full data at a future medical meeting. For now, the company is considering potential combination approaches for balinatunfib.
Elsewhere, Sanofi made several cuts to its cancer pipeline. The drugmaker terminated a Phase 2 trial for NK cell engager SAR443579 in acute myeloid leukemia and a Phase 1 study of monoclonal antibody SAR444881 in solid tumors. The cuts are part of a broader pipeline prioritization that should help the company focus on its goal of becoming a world leader in immunology, the spokesperson said.
On a call with the media on Thursday, CFO François Roger said the company is continuing to
assess
how the looming pharma tariffs would impact its business.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to add information about the balinatunfib trial failure and the company’s comments on potential pharma tariffs.