Sanofi SA is to acquire Provention Bio Inc of the US giving it a marketed product, Tzield (teplizumab), that has been shown to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes, as well as a pipeline of prospective therapies for other auto-immune diseases. The France-based multinational will pay $25 per share in cash for the Nasdaq-listed company, representing an equity value of about $2.9 billion. A traditional supplier of insulin, Sanofi stepped back from investment in diabetes products in 2019 after seeing an erosion of its market share in the US.