After AstraZeneca and National Resilience made recent inroads into the United Arab Emirates, Sanofi has emerged as the next pharmaceutical giant setting its sights on the Middle East.
The French pharma is linking up with Saudi drugmakers Arabio and Lifera—the latter of which is wholly owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund PIF—to bolster production of vaccines in Saudi Arabia. Under a newly minted memorandum of understanding, the companies will explore a range of potential prophylactic initiatives, including the enlistment of Lifera as a contract manufacturer to Sanofi, plus the build-out of a new manufacturing plant utilizing the latest vaccine tech.
Sanofi will further share biotechnological know-how to initially manufacture seven vaccines included in Saudi Arabia’s mandatory immunization schedule, the partners said in a press release Wednesday. Arabio, for its part, will leverage its local and regional distribution strength to help supply the shots and other biopharmaceutical products to the Saudi market.
The vaccine pact aligns with Lifera’s broader goal to boost the national healthcare system and grow the biopharma sector in Riyadh as part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.
"As one of the leading global vaccines manufacturers and as a strategic partner to Saudi Arabia and an enabler of Vision 2030, Sanofi is committed to increasing vaccine accessibility and supporting Saudi Arabia's goal to reduce its reliance on pharmaceutical imports,” Fokion Sinis, vaccines general manager for Sanofi Greater Gulf, said in a statement.
Sanofi already boasts a sizable presence in the region, where more than 10 million people receive the drugmaker’s shots each year. In 2022, Sanofi doled out more than 6 million doses of its quadrivalent flu vaccine in the region, making it the top pediatric, meningitis and influenza vaccine supplier across the Gulf.
Lifera, meanwhile, has positioned itself as a new pharma company on a mission to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s biopharmaceutical sector and boost national health resilience by developing local manufacturing capacity for vaccines, insulin, plasma therapeutics and other biologics. The company is also investing in genetic testing and precision medicine.
Sanofi is just the latest multinational drugmaker to make moves in the Middle East.
In December, British pharma major AstraZeneca joined forces with Abu Dhabi-based G42 healthcare in a bid to bolster pharmaceutical production in the capital of the UAE. That deal came on the heels of the country’s “Make it in the Emirates” initiative, which was launched by the UAE’s Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology to boost its profile as an “attractive destination” for global investors and position itself as a “global hub” for future industries.
And just a few weeks into 2023, manufacturing upstart National Resilience unveiled a separate plan to build a factory in the UAE to churn out vaccines and therapeutics for cancer, infectious diseases and other disorders. Formerly limited to 10 sites in the U.S. and Canada, the UAE play marked Resilience’s first excursion overseas since its genesis in November 2020.