Sanofi SA said it plans to build a messenger RNA vaccine business, the latest big drugmaker to embrace the technology.
The French pharmaceutical company, one of the world’s biggest vaccine makers by sales, said Tuesday that it would invest €400 million, equivalent to $477 million, a year in mRNA vaccine research, starting immediately.
The drugmaker said it expects the investment to produce at least six new candidate vaccines in human testing by 2025.
The move is a sign of how mRNA technology, which hadn’t produced an approved product before the pandemic but is now a leading source of Covid-19 shots, is reshaping the vaccine industry.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, mRNA technologies demonstrated potential to deliver new vaccines faster than ever before,” Jean-François Toussaint, R&D chief at Sanofi Pasteur, the company’s vaccine division, said in a statement
