Welcome to the Sanofi presentation at the 43rd J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. I'm Richard Vosser, European Pharma Analyst at J.P. Morgan, and it's my great pleasure to welcome not just the CEO, Paul Hudson, who's there at the end, but also CFO, François-Xavier Roger, and Houman Ashrafian, who's in the middle. I've tried my best on that one, you'll notice, Paul. So before I hand over to Paul, this session's going to be a couple of slides, then we're going to have a bit of a dialogue between the three of us, and then we'll leave some time at the end for your questions, so put up your hands at the end. Paul, great welcome.
Thank you. Thank you for such an energizing opening, Richard. Oh, it settles us in very nicely. We have just a couple of slides. I've got the team with me because we're getting so far into our journey now, and people have heard it from me a few times. It's nice to hear it from others, Houman Ashrafian in particular. Well done, Richard. So we've worked really hard over the last five years plus to put the company in this position, and we're extremely proud of the progress that we've made. But more importantly, I remember being here last year after we just changed our guidance and renewed our vows with science, that there were some raised eyebrows. There were some people saying, you know, is this the right move? And others applauding us for it, actually.
A year on, it's easy now to be able to say we made the right decision, the proof points of building. We're excited about what's happening in the company. Importantly, we've also made some big moves. Becoming a pure-play biopharma company has meant that, of course, we're exiting our consumer business, exiting it to American PE, making the right decision on behalf of the company, doubling down on our growth rate and our science, and putting us in a superb position. We believe we'll be the world's leading immunology company. We made some declarations about who and what we should be by the end of the decade, and on a business of more than $40 billion annual sales, we grew 11% through September of 2024. That is an industry-leading growth rate. I mean, that is really quite outstanding, and I think it shows that our machine is really purring.
Through September, also $2.9 billion in what we call new money or revenue outside of Dupixent, but coming from launches. We're well underway, Beyfortus becoming a blockbuster in its first real full season where we had good supply. Altuvio set up to be a blockbuster in hemophilia A this year, showing we can launch what we bring through. I mean, we're really on the right track. Three launches this year for fitusiran and hemophilia A, excited about that. Tolebrutinib, a breakthrough designation, secondary progressive MS. These are industry-leading, these are disease-leading, first-in-class, best-in-class launches. And of course, rilzabrutinib in ITP. So we're really setting ourselves up for three launches, multiple data readouts, Houman will come on to talk about in the moment. We had other good news in 2024, Dupixent readout in COPD will be the first in there.
It's a huge unmet need, adds again to the number of indications for Dupixent, what incredible medicine. We declared that we'd be EUR 13 billion for Dupixent in 2024, and we expect to be able to deliver that when we show full results in a few weeks. Interestingly enough, and a lot of people raised it with me while I've been here, we had a readout for our TL1A in partnership with Teva. We're thrilled. We think the data could be best in class. We'll see if that holds true as we get through the phase 3s, but we're now phase 3 ready to go. We're very proud of that partnership. We think it was efficient and well-timed for both companies. Of course, we're into phase 3 with our pneumococcal vaccine.
So lean immune organization, growing the launches, growing the top line, much more efficient, delivering on the pipeline, a very proud position for us to be in as we exit 2024 into 2025. Houman, maybe I'll hand to you to do a little bit of pipeline.
Thank you. Good morning. Excited to be here. Thanks for joining us. As Paul has said, as we transition into a true growth story powered by science, our pipeline underpins the value and the growth. As Paul has already argued, three excellent results in 2024, with tolebrutinib and SPMS, with rilzabrutinib in ITP, and much more to come. And as we go forward, we will continue that drumbeat. You can see that in 2024, we have a substantial body of phase 2 molecules that are going to read out. We're excited about those as the stepping stones for our future. That is the wealth that we will use to power our growth story. But of course, we also have substantial phase 3 activity leading to launches this year, obviously itepekimab mid-year, to continue to underwrite our prominence in our COPD franchise.
Later in the year, we have the primary progressive MS readout for tolebrutinib, underlining our strength in MS. Those will be important and will drive launches for next year. As we look forward to 2026, as well as the phase 2 readouts, as you can see at the tail end of the year, we have two likely launches, one driven by amlitelimab in atopic dermatitis, but with a battery of lifecycle management opportunities behind it, as you can see, for asthma, hidradenitis suppurativa, prurigo nodularis and beyond, but also really rilzabrutinib, underpinning our increasing importance in the neurological space for the treatment of CIDP.
Excellent. Thanks, Houman. Cracking socks, by the way.
You're lucky he's wearing socks. I mean, there's plenty of occasions where he can manage that.
What are you going to say to that?
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, this says a lot, actually. But maybe on Opella, we can start there on the sale that you mentioned, Paul and François. Maybe just give us an update where you are with the sale process to start with.
Okay. First of all, we are very happy with the transaction. I think it makes sense for a pure biopharma company, which was the objective. Very happy with the transaction. I think that we extracted very attractive value. I mean, 14 times EBITDA now in terms of valuation, which is great. We'll get about close to €10 billion of cash proceeds, most probably in Q2, at the earliest in Q2, when we expect to close that transaction. We will retain a 48%-49% stake in the company. We do believe that there is significant value creation going forward, which is a good way for us to retain part of the future value as well. The end game is clear. Anyway, we will exit over time, but it will take probably a few years, whenever probably our private equity partner will leave.
How should we think about those proceeds? What's the balance between shareholder returns and allocation to opportunistic business development?
So we have a clear capital allocation policy. First and foremost, we invest in our business. That's what we decided to do, by the way, in 2024, to raise our investment in our own R&D, raising it by about EUR 700 million. We'll confirm the exact figure in about two weeks. We invest a lot as well in industrial assets. We are building new plants. We invest a lot in sales and marketing. We have a very heavy program, so we are really in an investment position, which is actually super interesting for us as well. We have a clear dividend policy as well. We have increased our dividend in absolute value in euro for the last 29 years. We are part of these Dividend Aristocrats to a certain extent. So there is a clear intention to continue that way.
We are very much interested in investing in external growth, BD and M&A. We have done quite well, actually, I would say. I looked at it when I joined nine months ago. We have invested EUR 40 billion over the last 10 years in BD and M&A with good results, actually. We lost only EUR 4 billion out of the EUR 40 billion, which is not that much, but for the remaining EUR 36 billion, we did create a lot of value. So obviously, we will look at further opportunities on the market. I think we have a duty to do it without feeling any pressure. At the end of the day, we will enjoy a high level of growth till the end of the decade, so there is no pressure for us to go there. We have announced as well that we will do a share buyback program.
We did not share the exact amount yet, which we will do in two weeks at the occasion of our full year results, but we will, I do confirm, we will go for a share buyback in 2025.
Excellent. And focus areas, maybe more broadly on business development. Any focus areas we should think about?
I think, I mean, I'll be, Houman will have a view too. I think in the therapeutic areas, you know, immunology, rare, neurology, vaccines, where we can be accelerated faster, where we know investigators, pathways, regulators, patient groups. We're showing that in immunology in particular, we really know how to get things done. We'd like to be in or close to the TAs, if it makes sense. We're already fully deployed in those areas. Then outside of that, it's really about what stage of asset. Should they be a little bit later to add to our growth profile? Depending on some of the sell-side commentary, we could be after the obesity companies, the fastest growing big pharma through 2030. Can we even add to that? That would be nice if it was priced correctly.
Then perhaps a bit more importantly, towards preclinical and phase 1, we've got our eyes very focused on the launches 2034 to 2040, based on the fact that we've got a good mid-late stage pipeline just slightly ahead of us. Houman, you may want to add to that.
Yeah, Paul's said it beautifully. Just to clarify a few things that people often don't think about. And we are 100%, by the way, focused on financial discipline. My background, especially, but also much more broadly in the company financial discipline is critically important. There are two vectors that are important. One is obviously the therapeutic area. Not only are we focused on our current therapeutic areas, especially immunology, but we are 100% also focused in terms of the growth story on the 2032 to 2040 story. So one vector is ensuring that we build the drumbeat all the way through to sustainability. I think that's important from a company perspective. And the second is that we speak about BD and M&A in a relatively coarse way.
And what you will have seen, Richard, is over the last 18 months, what we've put in place are multiple instruments to enable partnering. So we have a Sanofi Accelerator Fund that allows us to do stuff in the late stage with companies as a first step in our relationship with them. We obviously have Classical Venture and BD. But actually, we're opening our optionality and R&D, allowing people to access our platforms in different ways, whether it's an early stage to work with us to create molecules, mid-stage where we will risk share in our translational medicine and early-phase clinical trials, or do more classical late-stage BD. So I think one of the innovations you'll see from Sanofi isn't just whether we'll do BD or M&A. What we're trying to do is be outstanding partners and provide a bespoke solution for everybody.
And Paul, you touched on very strong growth in the nine months from the top line. And I think you've highlighted a strong rebound in business EPS growth in 2025 already. Maybe you can contextualize that and give us an idea of how to, you or François, to think about how we think about the different elements in terms of growth leading to that business EPS.
I'll let François follow. So first and foremost, we confirm the strong rebound in EPS for 2025. I would say not in spite of, but on the top of the fact that we will deliver a stronger EPS than originally planned in 2024. We started the year with a guidance indicating a low single-digit negative EPS development, and we raised our guidance twice during the year 2024, up to low single-digit positive in terms of EPS growth in 2024. But in spite of that, we do confirm the fact that we will have a strong rebound in 2025. It will be supported by a strong growth level again. I mean, we have grown in the first nine months of 2024 by more than 11%. We will continue with strong growth in 2025. We will see our gross margin development moving into positive territories.
We will keep our R&D relatively flat, maybe slightly up as per our original guidance. We will keep a tight control of SG&A cost as well. So we will really have the benefit of growth leverage as well. So these are the building blocks of the strong rebound that we expect for EPS in 2025.
You mentioned slightly higher R&D. That is maybe a context of Houman saying there's lots of pipeline readouts. How do we think there's lots of phase two transitions potentially, etc., in 2025? How do we think about R&D going forward as well?
So two comments. Just to be crystal clear, we made very clear comments about what we do in 2024 and 2025, and we will absolutely stick to our knitting in that regard. There's no deviation from that. It's an important near-term comment. And then beyond that, Richard, you asked me last year and then during the year about how we would manage those. And I said at the very beginning, we've got a very disciplined lifecycle management strategy. We have an unprecedented series of phase two transitions, and we will prioritize appropriately. And again, we have multiple tools in our toolbox to manage how we control spend on those, both from a prioritization perspective, but there's also creative ways to finance things if we need to or want to. So rest assured that we've got our eye on the ball in terms of how to finance phase three going forward.
Before we move and talk about some of the growth drivers, I'd like to just there's a bit of healthcare reform that has to be digested this year with the IRA, new administration. Just any thoughts on the impacts of Sanofi, how you're seeing the business outlook in the US?
Well, I think it's won an election. We all got to enjoy that. I think the IRA, not by design for Sanofi at all, but the nature of our pipeline and our portfolio means we have much lower exposure than most companies. And while I just build on exposure, in terms of loss of exclusivity, we have the lowest in the industry, roughly 2% between now and 2030, when some of our peers are 30%-60%. So we're a much leaner organization, growing much faster and doing first-in-class, best-in-class innovation. They're the sort of variables you need to be robust and resilient with what lies ahead of us. We don't know.
We don't expect things to be incrementally negative in the change in the U.S. administrations, but it may be chaotic for a time, not least with what happens with RFK and how that, whether he's confirmed and what that means, but we are not strangers to dealing with these somewhat chaotic environments. Being one of the biggest healthcare companies in Europe, we're dealing with it in Germany, in France, in Italy, and other things, so I think we're well prepared. I think our portfolio is set up. I think we have very low exposure on IRA. I think the industry faces challenges with 340B. As a trade association, we're working very difficult to try and make people understand what's getting marked up and what is the issue there. I think we have to be realistic about that.
I think as a proud leader of one of the world's biggest vaccine businesses, we have to be sensitive to the social media and what may lie ahead of us. We think there may be increasing calls for transparency around vaccines. I'd like that to begin with understanding how transparent we are already. So people having the facts and then making informed interventions, that's okay with us. So we prepare really hard to make sure that the incredible pipeline that we're putting together is not lost in a melee of dis or misinformation over the next few years. I think we feel like we're set up as resiliently and as proactively as we possibly can.
Touching on immunization, because it's not really a vaccine, you mentioned the Beyfortus launch thus far, I think, in your opening remarks. I mean, maybe you could give us an update how that has evolved, how supplies evolved throughout the year, how is it going, and how you see sort of the outlook into 2025 for that. I mean, clearly the uptake's been very good.
Yeah, look, I mean, first and foremost, take it as a barometer of how Sanofi can launch. Because we've not been in a full launch mode for some years, but with Altuvio, with Beyfortus, with Dupixent, I think we're showing people we know what we're doing, first off. Secondly, the Beyfortus performance is truly outstanding. In the countries, Spain was an early adopter, France an early adopter, where they've had very high vaccine coverage rates of infants, like 90% plus. They're getting 90-plus percent reduction in visits to the hospital for newborns. This is staggering. This is the number one reason why newborns go to hospital or intensive care on any given year. It comes in a very short period. It exhausts NICU teams, and they are seeing literally no cases.
There are countries that have been more slow to adopt Beyfortus, and they're seeing very difficult RSV seasons right now, really challenging for the infants and the families. Where we have got very high coverage rates, we're really proud of what we're doing. We made a choice, right? We're in healthcare. I'd like to believe all of us to do the right thing. It's a monoclonal antibody that we priced as a premium vaccine because it's the right thing to do to give access to as many people as is possible, all infants. That was our goal. We could have been more selective, even those babies more at risk, but we figured it was better to offer help to everybody and protection. I think we've been vindicated for that, and we're really thrilled with how it's gone.
As for looking ahead, well, I think we expect to see an even better performance now once we get into more countries being adopted. Of course, there's competition. We have to treat those respectfully, but we hope they drive coverage rates up so that more babies get protected. No, we have more growth to come in Beyfortus.
Importantly, supply is not an issue.
Yeah.
That's the key.
Yeah. The vaccine markets have entered in periods of oversupply and undersupply, and tenders have become, in certain areas, flu was many years ago like that, and you repriced the flu market. But do you see that as a risk with the competition with Beyfortus or?
Not particularly. Look, first of all, the real-world evidence dataset that we're putting together real-time is a huge differentiator, and it's a big hurdle for those that follow, right? Obviously, there are some technical differences between the approaches, and we think we are well differentiated. But the dataset we're putting together and payers' confidence, physician confidence means it's a high bar for those that follow, and I think that's okay. These are not like traditional vaccines. The mAb shelf life is different, and the pressure on volumes and the strain element isn't really there. So we can produce, and we can be confident that we can have more than a season, if you like, in terms of protection. So no, I think we feel really good about where we are with Beyfortus. In general, flu coverage vaccination rates are a little bit down this year.
Still, over the last few years, trending up on pre-COVID, even if there's some pressure, people have a little bit of fatigue for getting vaccinated. We'll go in. Our plan in the next year or two is to bring a flu-COVID non-mRNA approach forward, which we think is what the market really wants. We're proud advocates for mRNA, but of course, people want to have the no reactogenicity, no immunogenicity. They want to feel like they can safely get a flu-COVID vaccine. I think in the U.S. in particular, we'll disrupt that. Our flu high-dose business performs extremely well, and it is pressurized. I think in the standard dose flu sector, there is some pressure on pricing, and I think that's sort of to be expected, which is why we're happy to see the market fragment to high dose and flu-COVID, and we think we're building a beachhead there.
And another law you mentioned just now, Altuvio has been a very fast launch into what was hemophilia. People stay on the drugs for many years. Maybe you could give us an update how that's going, how you're seeing it develop post Q3.
I think I read one of your notes. You were not that enthusiastic back at the time.
You shouldn't listen to what I say.
No, no, we do, we do, we do. And the Hemlibra took the hemophilia A market and forced it into a choice between efficacy and convenience, and they hadn't had that opportunity before. And we've seen a lot of Hemlibra patients migrate towards weekly for monthly just to get efficacy. But it was clear, given how well they did at launch, that the market wants convenience or efficacy. It understands the trade-off. What I think surprised everybody, and that's to a little extent, that because of the sort of normalized bleeding rate with Altuvio on a weekly, patients were able to live a normal life for the first time. Young adults who want to do things or kids, it's a big deal. It's a huge deal to be able to just go kick a ball around at recess or do whatever you need to do. This is transformational.
Plus, the PTSD from getting infused three times a week dropping to once a week and moving from there is a real thing. So I think the patients are saying, "I want perfect efficacy or I want convenience." And I tee it up like that because Altuvio should be a blockbuster this year. So we're very proud of that. But Fitusiran doesn't get much coverage because it's more of a needle to thread in terms of tailoring dose. But it genuinely will be an eight-weekly injection for those that are prepared to work with their physician to get to the right levels. And that convenience argument's going to come back. So we think we've got both of the important sectors covered. Altuvio will continue to grow.
It's taking share from factor, even from Hemlibra, and I think we'll offer an even more convenient medicine in Fitusiran a little further out this year, and I think that's pretty cool for patients that have great choices now with the Sanofi pipeline.
Dupixent, which is still a huge growth driver for Sanofi. You've mentioned the EUR 13 billion. You seem on track to exceed that, and you're going to be launching in new indications next year, COPD. You're launching already. How should we think about the development there? What's going on in the market?
Houman, maybe you want to have a go at this one.
Yeah, so Dupixent is obviously incredible. It will continue to grow to its very last day. We are super committed to Dupixent, and we will continue pushing. Let's talk about some facts. COPD, large unmet medical need, further patients die within a year of exacerbations in hospitals. It's an incredible drug which can reduce exacerbations by over 30% in the average member of the population with COPD, with eosinophilic chronic bronchitis, and actually reduce exacerbations by over 50% in those which have a particularly high Th2 phenotype. Most importantly, forgetting about all the science for a second, it's a drug that improves patient symptoms and their breathlessness. So what you'll see, you ask the marketplace, what you'll see is a substantial overlap in the physicians that treat asthma and are used to the use of Dupixent, who are used to doing blood tests for assessing eosinophilia and Th2 phenotype.
So what you'll see in the hands of my esteemed colleague, Brian, sitting in the front row here, is he will drive COPD into the patients to ensure that they get the best outcome. We're very excited about COPD, but not just COPD, CSU, bullous pemphigoid, and a whole slew of other indications as they come through. Dupixent has been a great drug.
We communicated before. You will see an inflection in Dupixent this year based on COPD. There's a lot of education to do because there's no advanced therapies. We're used to running the playbook with Dupixent. We run it again, and it'll be a good year for Dupixent.
Competition, I mean, it's always talked about, Paul, and there's Lilly's product, there's even Galderma's product. Are you seeing any in the core indication of atopic dermatitis, are you seeing anything there, or are they broadening the market with you?
You know, so Dupixent will be EUR 13 billion in 2024, and only 10% of the people eligible for it receive it. 90% of the patients that are biologically eligible in AD and other diseases get them. There is so much room for everybody. Who would have thought there'd be nine blockbusters in psoriasis, right? It's just the nature of the game. Heterogeneous patients, low biologic penetrations, there's room for everybody. Patients' demands, even switching and doing different things, is really an opportunity. We've seen it time and time. What are they going to be, three, four IL-17s? And then we'll do well because everybody is moving, every penetration is going up, the noise grows the market. Where lebrikizumab, even tralokinumab, are launched in other countries, Germany is a good example, there is really just an acceleration in Dupixent.
When you're the leader by some way, like 80% share and the market gets bigger, you just take a disproportionate number of the new patients in that space, and that's okay. In fact, we need some competition because when you look at the biologics penetration in psoriasis or in rheumatoid arthritis, they really didn't step up until more companies came. It's an expensive investment to drive these things. So we welcome competition because of what it means for patients and what it means in terms of our growth rate. We like the competition to be not quite as good as ours. We think that is definitely an advantage, and so far, we believe that. I'm sure my peers in the other companies would like to debate it.
We feel IL-13 and IL-4, addressing both those cytokines, are the real opportunity, and I think that's been proven in the track record of Dupixent with over a million patients on it right now. But as Houman and rightly said, starting with Dupixent will grow until its very last day because it's incredible efficacy, incredible safety profile. It's a high bar. More competition is good for everybody.
Perhaps we could pivot to the pipeline, and maybe we'd start with Tolebrutinib. Obviously, we had great data in SPMS. Maybe you could give us an update where we are on the filing and how we should think about the SPMS opportunity and coming to market?
Yeah, we'll give you a formal update on the filing at our Q4 earnings. It's nice to leave a little mystery for you till then, I think.
You can tell us here. We're among them.
It's only two of us here. On a serious point, what's extremely important is what we committed when we were here last year. Tolebrutinib was completely discounted. Our messaging, Richard, you wrote this up, in fact, so we do read you carefully, is that the head of R&D said it would fail on RMS based on relapse rates, but it would be successful in disability. Played out exactly that way. You asked me exactly what the bar was. I said 20% in terms of disease progression would be great, 25% would be good, 25% would be good, and over 30% would be great. It was 31%. Tolebrutinib did what it said on the tin. We were able to find a regimen that worked for patients in terms of liver monitoring.
Tolebrutinib will launch likely in SPMS this year, subject to regulatory review and approval, but that's our confidence and our aspiration. And later in the year, PPMS will follow. So Tolly's been a success. And just an addendum on the epidemiology of the disease, SPMS was initially considered relatively small during these kinds of conversations. But what's emerged is there are three categories of patients with SPMS. Number one, people who are labeled SPMS, very straightforwardly going to clinics, who are a large reservoir of patients with SPMS who just didn't show up to clinic because there was nothing to treat them with. And then thirdly, a number of patients who are already on CD20s labeled as relapsing disease, who are truly SPMS. And what we'll see is that fractionated market space allow us to have a nice smooth growth dynamic.
We think that with secondary progressive and primary progressive, we'll have a meaningful chunk of this $23 billion market.
On that PPMS, I mean, you've shown good disability data actually across all the trials.
Yes.
So does that increase your confidence in terms of PPMS? How should we think about that?
It certainly increases the prior probability compared to the Hercules study. It proves us to be cautious. I think it's always important sitting up here to remind people that we're humble in the face of disease and biology can sometimes surprise us. However, there is a substantial genetic commonality between secondary progressive and primary progressive. And there's a Nature paper out of Melbourne a couple of years ago suggested that commonality. It's pretty clear. So we are optimistic about its role in PPMS, and we'll see the results this year.
And there's no competition in SPMS, but PPMS has a drug approved. But I mean, how do you see the unmet need, even in the face of having competition there? Is it still large?
As Kissinger would have said, the answer is in the question. Ocrevus has had a 24% response rate in PPMS in a pooled data analysis. I think there's lots of efficacy left on the table. I think strategies, whether they're combination therapies or sequential therapies, are definitely on the table for PPMS. Actually, without getting into detail, I think there's still room left on the table in relapsing disease. You'll see not only with tolebrutinib, different strategies will adopt post-launch in that area. I'd be remiss of us not to talk about frexalimab while we're here. We're making a commitment to patients. Sanofi no longer talks about individual assets. We talk about franchises, and we are committed to providing patients with MS and indeed broader neuroinflammatory conditions with a variety of solutions.
Makes sense. You mentioned COPD in the context of Dupixent, but there's a readout this year, itepekimab, the IL-33. I suppose two questions, really. First question, there are actually three readouts. There's readouts from your competition as well. How do you see your asset placed versus the competition? And secondly, Dupixent had a very broad label, or broader than we thought, and everyone thought, I think. How much room is there for itepekimab as well?
Yeah, so three quick points. Number one is target credentialing for IL-33, both in asthma and COPD. Genetically, it's extremely favorable. The Rabe study published in Lancet Respiratory Medicine a couple of years ago provided that genetic analysis pretty straightforwardly. Point one, point two is the target is validated in COPD, right? I mean, it was a post-hoc analysis in that paper, but patients who were former smokers responded beautifully, not just on the primary endpoint, but also in terms of pre- and post-bronchodilator treatments. And they were super clear in all secondary parameters too. So A, the former smoker story is pretty interesting from our perspective and orthogonal to Dupixent. But also, subsequently, we've worked out exactly why former smokers versus smokers respond. And it's to do with the effect of cigarette smoke on differentiation of suprabasal cells secreting IL-33, and you can measure IL-33 in those lungs.
So point two is we think that it will be differentiated. It works importantly to date in our phase two in both high and low eosinophil patients. It's important. People have misunderstood that. So it really is an orthogonal population. And then finally, it's just important to note that when it's sitting alongside its friend, Dupixent, commercially, there are all sorts of advantages that will appear. So I think that we'll be first to launch. And in that context, I think that we will have a significant impact on the marketplace.
Yeah, maybe I'll give it to Richard, and Houman sort of said it, but we've chosen the right patient population. We'll yet to find out whether our competition have? Two, as Houman suggested near the end, we are proud of our partnership with Regeneron and the work we've done with Dupixent. Itepekimab is the next real asset that comes up behind. And there are, of course, commercial opportunities to make sure, much like, how could I give an example, Humira, Skyrizi. There are real moments, which I think are a high hurdle again for our competition.
Makes sense. I do want to talk about amlitelimab, but are there any questions from the audience? I do see one question. We'll take that one question, and I'm desperate to get amlitelimab in.
Yeah, we should move some time for that.
Yeah.
Thank you for the great conversation, Abe Delpassand from RadioMedix. I wanted to ask any updates regarding Sanofi's entrance into radioligand therapy by acquisition of AlphaMedix from RadioMedix and Orano Med. And is this going to be the only one, or the plan is to extend the pipeline in the radioligand therapy?
Yeah, I can provide a quick answer to that. I think thank you for the question. We're proud to develop the relationship with a French partner. Those that have heard that we're getting out of oncology will now understand that our commitment to oncology has been rationalized and focused where data allows us to play. And the data, the phase 2 data on neuroendocrine tumors was striking. So we're excited by the relationship. We're betting it in. We're working closely together, both on existing and future pipeline. And on the question of whether we do more radioligand work, TBD.
Thank you.
amlitelimab, to close, I think. I mean, very exciting asset, but we've seen with some competition where the data was maybe a touch disappointing based on the phase 2. What are your thoughts as we, I mean, it's next year maybe for amlitelimab, but what are your thoughts in the atopic derm space for the product?
Let me just start with an unequivocal statement of our continued commitment and confidence to Amelie. Not only because we've said all along that we think the ligand is differentiated to the receptor, supported by data over 20 years in preclinical models, but also because of both our respect for the people that were the custodians of the molecule in Kymab in Cambridge, but also the way who obsessed about the molecule, but also the way we brought it in and developed it internally, which has been a remarkable process for nine phase 3s in the OCEANA trial group. Let me be very clear about, as you say, the implications of the data from the competition. We said long ago that for many reasons, you needed proper dose coverage for the OX40 pathway, and that was not manifest in pre-existing clinical data out there.
Patient choice was important and that we would not compromise on patient selection for the safest speed in clinical trials. The clinical trials have performed very well, and it's a marker, by the way. It's a biomarker of Sanofi's predominance in the space, bearing in mind that patients have been very straightforwardly recruited into our trials. And that, as you know, is an interesting biomarker in terms of efficacy, and then finally, our view that Amelie will be critically important in atopic dermatitis because of its Q12 dosing, because of its durability, because of its broader impact on the immune response other than just TH2 disease. We're super committed to TH2 disease as we spoke about. Dupixent will continue to grow. We will continue to push Dupixent, but Amelie will find its own space, including potentially in terms of disease modification, altering atopic march.
I would be remiss if I didn't say, despite the criticality of Amelie in AD going forward, we have a host of phase 2 readouts in the next few months that will underpin the next wave of Amelie innovation.
Yeah, and maybe just to finish off on that. So we talked to them earlier. Dupixent grows to its very end, and at the same time, amlitelimab will grow fast from launch. That's the commitments that we have. The fevers and chills from the competition, you know, in derms are not enthusiastic about that. So we've chosen this profile. We looked at the whole marketplace. We knew what we were doing. We're developing it beautifully, and it's going to be a very important medicine for patients for sure, but transformational for the company from launch.
Just one last comment. As we make or have made the transition to a science foundation company driving a growth activity of the future, as Paul has said, with analysts recognizing us to be close in the pack behind the obesity duo, I think that amlitelimab is an example of how we partner beautifully. We partner early, we develop well, and we drive innovation.
Fantastic. Thank you very much all. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, François. Thanks, Houman. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.