Business Concentrates GLOBAL HEALTH
Sanofi ends Zika vaccine research Other vaccine efforts continue, even as virus abates Citing reduced funding from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority (BARDA), drugmaker Sanofi is shutting down development of its vaccine for Zika virus. Last year, BARDA committed $43.2 million to support the manufacture and Phase II clinical study of Sanofi’s Zika vaccine. Now, the government organization is limiting its contract with Sanofi to a Zika surveillance study, the results of which could benefit all vaccines in the pipeline. Although Sanofi will no longer pursue the Phase II study, the goal is to get the project to a point where it can be easily restarted if Zika roars back. Zika was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization in early 2016 after several thousand Brazilian women infected during a spring 2015 outbreak gave birth to infants with microcephaly—a rare condition that causes ba-
CAREERS
bies to have smaller-than-expected heads and brains. Since that time, industry, academic, and government researchers have been trying to understand the virus and develop drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines against it. Clinical trials of several other Zika vaccines continue. But even as infectious disease experts laud the speed at which those products are moving toward commercialization, they warn that vaccines are not a panacea for a virus like Zika. “One of the things we’ve learned in recent years with Zika, dengue, and West Nile is there are no easy solutions for these ecologically complex mosquito-borne arbovirus diseases,” says David M. Morens, senior adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases. The problem, Morens explains, is that vaccines are helpful for controlling major
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are the primary carrier of the Zika virus. outbreaks, but viruses tend to flare up, peter out, and then pop up again in small, unpredictable clusters. In Puerto Rico, the hardest-hit U.S. territory, new cases of Zika dropped from nearly 35,000 in 2016 to less than 500 so far this year. Although everyone is happy to see the virus abate, it leaves public health officials with a quandary: Who, if anyone, should be vaccinated? Still, Morens is encouraged by the number of Zika vaccines in the pipeline. “Show me a time when we’ve done so much in such a short period of time for any disease—I just can’t think of any,” he says.—LISA JARVIS
PHARMACEUTICALS
Jimenez
Narasimhan
Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez will step down in 2018, after serving eight years in the role. The drug company’s board has appointed Vasant (Vas) Narasimhan, the firm’s chief medical officer and global head of drug development, to take over starting Feb. 1. As CEO, Jimenez reorganized the company’s R&D efforts, trimmed its workforce, and consolidated manufacturing sites.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | SEPTEMBER 11, 2017
Eli Lilly & Co. is making deep cuts to its research engine as its new CEO tries to right the course of what some industry experts see as a wayward ship. The firm will shed roughly 3,500 jobs, more than 8% of its workforce, and shut down two research sites. More than half of the job cuts will come from the U.S., many through a voluntary early retirement program, Lilly says. Research sites in Bridgewater, N.J., and Shanghai will be shuttered. An animal health drug plant in Larchwood, Iowa, will close. Overall, the cuts will save the company about $500 million annually. Lilly says it will pocket half the savings and put the rest into new product launches and expanding the market for existing products. The move follows a shake-up to
Lilly’s oncology portfolio. In July, CEO David Ricks said 10 cancer treatments in Phase I and Phase II studies will be licensed out or partnered. Going forward, the company will focus more on finding cancer drugs outside its own labs. Among big pharma companies, Lilly has an outsize reliance on older products, according to an analysis by the market intelligence group EvaluatePharma. And although it did manage to launch a handful of products in recent years, they haven’t been lucrative enough to offset the loss of patent protection on top-selling drugs. Moreover, the company has been plagued by problems in its late-stage pipeline. Among the recent setbacks was a delay in filing a new drug application for baricitinib, a JAK inhibitor for rheumatoid arthritis.—LISA JARVIS
C R E D I T: P UB LI C H EA LTH I MAG E L IB RA RY ( MO S Q U I TO ) ; N OVA RTI S ( MUGS)
Lilly plans deep R&D cuts
