Sanofi exec tells biotechs not to scrimp on clinical trial design

Abigail Beaney

Thu, May 8, 2025, 10:25 AM 2 min read

At a clip erstwhile the biotech assemblage has been struggling with a deficiency of investment, immoderate companies person had to marque decisions to alteration proceedings designs, whether that beryllium reducing the fig of patients oregon changing the reflection times.

Speaking during a fireside chat astatine Swiss Biotech Day 2025, which took spot 5–6 May successful Basel, Houman Ashrafian, enforcement vice president and caput of Research and Development (R&D) astatine Sanofi, said that portion it whitethorn look a bully thought to “squeeze a objective trial” to support a institution moving for longer, this could extremity up shutting the institution down adjacent quicker.

“Don't messiness up the objective trial. It's critically important…Doing the incorrect proceedings with your plus volition termination it precise quickly.” In the lawsuit of immoderate proceedings failures, an further $3–$4m concern to powerfulness the proceedings correctly and tally it efficiently, could person led to transformative results, helium said. “There are companies that are connected the nationalist markets who precocious announced trials that came wrong a p-value of 0.07, and it tanked their stock price. If they had tally the proceedings for 2 much months and enrolled five, possibly 10 much patients, it could person been precise different.”

While immoderate companies person been struggling to equilibrium their finances, Ashrafian believes that it is not a wholly antagonistic happening that biotech has had to tighten its belts since the 2021 boom, arsenic immoderate companies made precise astonishing fiscal decisions astatine that time.

“We went done years wherever biotech got amended and amended funding. Preclinical companies received immense amounts of gross and immoderate adjacent went public. For me, that is the explanation of madness wherever you exposure yourself similar that, but I was besides 1 of those. The lure of liquidity meant that we wanted to unreserved [to] the nationalist market. Those companies were the archetypal ones to acquisition existent symptom erstwhile determination was scrutiny,” Ashrafian said.

Sanofi has a venture superior (VC) arm, which provides backing to biotechs to tally objective trials. Ashrafian invited biotech companies to look into specified options to guarantee they tally the astir effectual proceedings to get their plus done aboriginal stages of development, aft which a pharmaceutical institution could prime it up to implicit the last development.

“Biotech produces molecules astatine a important discount to pharma. Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC) whitethorn not beryllium arsenic good, but biotech [companies] get the molecule done Phase I, and they bash that beautifully. But actually, the proceedings that determines the exit financing circular is often not done arsenic well. That’s wherever we travel successful with concern and expertise,” concluded Ashrafian.