DUBLIN – Sanofi SA is paying $1.1 billion up front and up to $350 million more in potential clinical development and regulatory milestones to acquire antibody developer Kymab Ltd. The deal adds to Sanofi’s pipeline first-in-class OX40-ligand blocker KY-1005, which recently hit the primary endpoints of a phase IIa trial in atopic dermatitis, as well as a second clinical-stage asset, KY-1044, an ICOS agonist in development for solid tumors. It also brings Sanofi a new antibody discovery platform, comprising several transgenic mouse strains, which collectively encode all the building blocks required to produce fully human antibodies.