Ipsen execs juggling 'too many' pipeline projects

Ipsen CEO Jean-Luc Belingard is plagued by the abundance of promising drugs in his pipeline.

"We have enough products in early development, we may even have too many," he tells Bloomberg in an interview. And, he adds with similar Gallic flair, his cancer therapies "are prompting regular approaches from others in the field but for now we have turned a deaf ear."

While big developers like Sanofi-Aventis have to reengineer their R&D arms to help kick-start more successful development programs, the French developer says that it has 10 early-stage therapies, five in Phase II trials and eight therapies in late-stage testing. At least one of those, the tumor drug BN 83495, is tapped by analysts as a likely blockbuster.

Its wealth of programs, though, hasn't convinced investors. The company's stock has slid 11 percent in value over the past turbulent year. Still, Ipsen executives have a habit of seeing the glass as at least half full.

"We don't have enough money to finance all the projects we would like to, but we prefer it to be this way, rather than the other way around," Stephane Thiroloix, head of corporate development, said recently.

- check out the full story at Bloomberg

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