Appeals court revives suit against Sanofi’s Genzyme over access to Fabry disease drug

An ap­peals court rul­ing from late last week will re­vive a law­suit over a Sanofi sub­sidiary’s con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is­sues and a sub­se­quent short­age of a key rare dis­ease drug.

At is­sue in the case is a se­ries of al­leged blun­ders re­lat­ed to the sup­ply of Gen­zyme’s drug for treat­ing Fab­ry dis­ease, a rare neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der that can lead to kid­ney fail­ure, heart fail­ure or stroke.

The re­vived law­suit, filed in 2020 in a Mass­a­chu­setts fed­er­al court, seeks mon­e­tary dam­ages for more than two dozen Fab­ry pa­tients who al­lege they were in­jured by the com­pa­ny’s han­dling of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and sub­se­quent short­age of the drug, mar­ket­ed as Fab­razyme, that oc­curred be­tween 2009 and 2012. Sanofi ac­quired Gen­zyme for about $20 bil­lion in 2011.

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