FDA Approves Key Sanofi Diabetes Drug

Feb. 26, 2015

The U.S. FDA has approved Sanofi's diabetes drug Toujeo, a more potent follow-up to the drugmaker's top-selling insulin product Lantus.

The new drug is important to Sanofi, as they push to convert patients from Lantus to Toujeo as quickly as possible, with the older drug about to lose patent and face competition from biosimilars.

Last fall, research firm IMS compiled a rolling 12-month history of the top 100 drugs by total prescriptions and total sales in the United States, and named Lantus in the top ten. Lantus is the world's most prescribed insulin, with sales of $7.2 billion in 2014.

Toujeo has the same active ingredient as Lantus -- insulin glargine -- but at three times the concentration and with a design to release the insulin more gradually.

Read the Reuters article