Sanofi will focus less on diabetes monitoring devices, Chief Executive Officer Olivier Brandicourt said at the end of October (2015) after projecting disappointing sales for the company’s treatments for the disease, including two new products. Sanofi projects that diabetes sales will probably decline 4-8% annually through 2018. The company said that demand for its product Lantus, the world’s best-selling insulin, was slumping. Its two new drugs — Afrezza, an inhalable insulin, and Lyxumia, an injectable drug — are struggling as well.
Brandicourt told analysts on a conference call that half of the sales forecast revision is related to “lower-than-expected penetration of both Afrezza and Lyxumia, as well as a deprioritization of blood-glucose monitoring systems,” The other half is linked to dimmer prospects for Lantus, which faces generic competition, the CEO said. Sanofi can still count on Toujeo, a successor to Lantus, and on LixiLan, a combination of Lantus and Lyxumia, to help sustain sales in the years to come, Brandicourt said. Sanofi is expected to file LixiLan for approval by U.S. regulators this quarter.
Sanofi had entered the blood test meter market by buying the MyStar brand which included MyStar Extra and IBGStar.
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