French/American artificial intelligence biotech Owkin has pulled off a major signing from big pharma, poaching Sanofi's global head of partnering Alban de La Sablière to scale up the firm's commercial operations and turn it into the leading player in the pharma AI space.
De La Sablière has been appointed as Owkin's first chief business officer after a six-year spell at Sanofi where he led the big pharma’s partnering, business development, licensing and M&A efforts. During his time at the Paris-headquartered group, he led $30bn of acquisitions of companies at various development stages, including the purchases of Principia Biopharma, Synthorx, Inc., Translate Bio, Kadmon Holdings, Inc. and Kymab Ltd., plus numerous portfolio-reshaping divestments, including the sale of the European generics business Zentiva Group a.s. to Advent International in 2018
