Eleven years after buying Genzyme, Sanofi officially ditches subsidiary’s storied name

When the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi starts moving 2,500 employees from 10 sites in Massachusetts into a pair of new buildings in East Cambridge next month, visitors may notice something missing at the sprawling complex: any mention of Genzyme.

Eleven years after Sanofi bought Genzyme for about $20.1 billion, the parent company said Thursday it will no longer call its specialty care unit Sanofi Genzyme ― just Sanofi, as part of a company-wide rebranding. The move jettisons the name of a storied Massachusetts biotechnology company that helped transform the drug industry in the 1980s and anchored the life sciences cluster that made the region synonymous with innovation.