France, like other countries around the world, must choose if it will use its stimulus package to prop up ailing industrial giants or make bets on young innovative companies. The government announced June 3 that it will team with France Biotech to aid life science companies, but it is still unclear how much of the state’s  six billion euro Strategic Investment Fund will be invested in the sector.
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In the last 10 years the world’s 14 largest pharmaceutical companies spent $480 billion dollars to get just 85 new products approved.  The model is unsustainable and , say analysts, nowhere is that more apparent than at Paris-based global drug company Sanofi-Aventis, which stubbornly stuck to a classical approach to research and development while other European drug companies, such as Swiss drug maker Roche, relied on outside help from biotech companies to augment their pipelines of new drugs. But the French drugmaker is set to change its strategy.
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