13.08.2009

Software versus Swine Flu

By: Petra Nikolic

Sanofi Pasteur leads the European market for vaccines. To stay successful in a complex and strictly regulated business, the company – a joint venture between the sanofi-aventis and Merck –manages its core processes with solutions from SAP.

Two men slowly open a heavy steel door to reveal a bank of mysterious-looking compartments. Their faces obscured by protective masks, their bodies swathed in white plastic suits and gloves, they sign to each other to pull out a steel drawer packed with fluid-filled containers.

What looks like the opening sequence of a science fiction film is actually a scene from everyday life – played out in a laboratory in France. The two lab workers handle the precious material behind the steel doors very gently and carefully. These are substances that are used to make vaccines for Sanofi Pasteur. With its range of 45 vaccines, the company provides protection for babies, children, teenagers, and adults against 20 infectious diseases. It is the market leader in Europe and one of the top four vaccine suppliers worldwide.

The company’s history dates back more than 100 years, beginning in 1880, when Louis Pasteur developed the principle of using a weakened form of a disease to produce immunity to it. “Vaccines imitate pathogens without endangering the human body,” explains Eric Neyret, managing director of Sanofi Pasteur in Germany. “They resemble viruses and bacteria, but they no longer have the capacity to cause disease. You could say that we use vaccines to trick our immune system into thinking that we have an infection so that it can familiarize itself with the foreign agents attacking it, ‘remember’ them, and defend itself against them in the future.”

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