Sanofi SA is to acquire Blueprint Medicines Inc. in a $9.5 billion deal that will give the French pharma ownership of a marketed rare disease immunotherapy heading toward blockbuster status, a follow-on product in phase II/III, and a phase II clinical program relevant to a number of autoimmune diseases.

At the recent AAAAI/WAO meeting, Blueprint Medicines Corp. presented the in vitro and in vivo characterization of BLU-808, a selective inhibitor of wild-type KIT, a transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinase involved in mast cell activation, proliferation and chemotaxis.