Eight months after Sanofi’s former Chief Medical Officer, Dietmar Berger, M.D., departed, the French drugmaker has selected Marcia Kayath, M.D., Ph.D., to fill the role.
Industry vet Kayath will start in her new role at Sanofi on Sept. 2 and joins the organization from BioMarin, according to an internal memo obtained by Fierce Biotech. Once arrived, Kayath will report to Sanofi’s R&D head, Houman Ashrafian, Ph.D.
Most recently, Kayath served as senior vice president and global head of medical affairs at BioMarin. Before that, she clocked in eight years at Novartis across various leadership positions, including CMO. She’s also logged clinical research time at both Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
In her new position, the CMO will oversee medical and patient safety organizations in efforts to maximize the group’s impact on Sanofi’s pipeline, according to the internal announcement sent to staffers.
Kayath succeeds former CMO Berger, who left Sanofi for Gilead at the very end of last year.
Berger spent five years at Sanofi, originally serving as the pharma’s global head of development, but soon added CMO to his title. Berger temporarily took on extra responsibilities when John Reed, M.D., Ph.D., left Sanofi in 2023, leading the R&D team until the drugmaker hired Ashrafian to fill the vacancy.
Sanofi’s C-suite has experienced numerous shake-ups over the last year or so, with the drugmaker pulling in GSK's Chris Corsico, M.D., this spring to serve as global head of development.
A few months later, GSK got back at Sanofi by plucking Sanjay Gurunathan, M.D., to helm the British pharma’s vaccine and infectious disease R&D.
Kayath joins Sanofi after an up to $9.5 billion buyout of Blueprint Medicines. The acquisition includes the biopharma’s portfolio of rare immunological disease treatments, plus a next-gen systemic mastocytosis candidate called candidate elenestinib. The buy is Sanofi’s largest acquisition since 2018, when the pharma snapped up hemophilia specialist Bioverativ for $11.8 billion.
The latest acquisition is designed to help revitalize Sanofi’s portfolio, which has taken a few hits recently. In late May, Sanofi and partner Regeneron reported the failure of a late-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder candidate. Before that, Sanofi revealed a phase 3 trial of an invasive E. coli vaccine had missed the mark.
That being said, Sanofi has been an active M&A player this year beyond just the Blueprint buy, inking several biotech deals to fill out its pipeline.