The latest news from French healthcare and pharma, including an update on the hospital crisis; MaaT Pharma and Skyepharma’s new cGMP microbiome facility; Sanofi’s offloading of central nervous system drugs to Pharmanovia and Servier’s EUR 120 million investment in its largest global site located in France.
Hospital crisis: at the end of the summer, an assessment that is much debated (Le Monde Santé, in French)
Summer is barely over, but emergency workers are already, at the beginning of September, taking stock of a very complicated summer period, to call for strong political action. One in two emergency services operated under sub-optimal conditions in July-August, with at least one doctor less, according to the survey unveiled by the SAMU-Urgences de France union. This brought together responses from doctors from nearly 300 establishments, almost half of the emergency care supply. Another remarkable figure: 163 services closed “at least occasionally” between July 1 and August 31, due to lack of sufficient human resources.
Controlling health spending, Aurélien Rousseau’s challenge (Le Figaro, in French)
The Minister of Health will have to make choices to avoid worsening the hole in the Social Security budget. Surprise of the July government reshuffle, Aurélien Rousseau is preparing to experience his baptism of fire this automn, in Parliament, where he will have to defend his first Social Security budget in the face of opposition. After presenting it to the Council of Ministers on September 27.
Macron unveils plans to relocate production of key drugs to France (Reuters)
President Emmanuel Macron unveiled plans to relocate the production of key medicines to France to tackle shortages of imported products, ranging from antibiotics to paracetamol, that came into focus during the COVID epidemic. Macron, who was visiting pharmaceutical laboratories in the Ardeche region, said the government had drawn up a list of 450 molecules for which it was key to secure supply chains.
MaaT Pharma and CDMO Skyepharma unveil bespoke, and potentially largest, microbiome facility in Europe (Endpoints)
MaaT Pharma and CDMO Skyepharma have just completed building what might be the largest cGMP microbiome facility in Europe. Completed in 12 months, the 17,200-square-foot facility in France was designed from scratch to specifically house the manufacturing of MaaT’s microbiome cancer therapies.
Lyon, France-based MaaT harvests stool samples from healthy donors, which are mixed together to form a suspension and administered to patients. The biotech has three cancer assets under investigation based on its approach.
Sanofi Sells 11 CNS Assets to Pharmanovia including Frisium and Gardenal (BioSpace)
Sanofi on Monday offloaded 11 brands in its central nervous system portfolio to U.K-based company Pharmanovia, including epilepsy drugs Frisium and Gardenal. The companies did not disclose specific terms of the agreement, but revealed that the medicines span four therapeutic areas—all with ongoing unmet need: psycholeptics, anxiolytics, anti-epileptics and anti-psychotics.
Servier will invest more than 120 million euros and create 100 jobs at its Gidy complex in five years (L’Usine Nouvelle, in French)
The French laboratory Servier is considering investments of more than 120 million euros for a reconfiguration of industrial and pharmaceutical development activities at its flagship site in Gidy (Loiret), France, its largest global site, in the next five years. Servier therefore anticipates the net creation of around a hundred jobs.
In the pharmaceutical industry, the battle against bronchiolitis is on (Le Monde, in French)
In the Sanofi distribution center in Val-de-Reuil, near Rouen, the gun goes off at the beginning of September. The start of the school year promises to be busy for the Normandy factory: in addition to the traditional preparations of flu vaccine packages, this season we will be adding shipments of Beyfortus, the laboratory’s new preventive treatment against bronchiolitis, intended for infants.
