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Pfizer is able to move on from Covid.
Now, the corporate is betting on cancer drugs to assist it regain its footing after a rocky yr marked by the rapid decline of its Covid business. It just might take some time before that bet pays off.
Pfizer pitched its deeper push into oncology during a four-hour investor event last week. And it had a splashy 60-second Super Bowl ad that touted its initiative to “outdo cancer.”
The shift comes at a vital time for Pfizer. The pharmaceutical giant has been attempting to shore up investor sentiment after its shares fell greater than 40% in 2023. That share drop erased greater than $100 billion in Pfizer’s market value.
Together with plummeting demand for its Covid products, Pfizer disenchanted Wall Street last yr with the underwhelming launch of a latest RSV shot, a twice-daily weight reduction pill that fell short in clinical trials and a 2024 forecast that missed expectations. The corporate has launched a $4 billion cost-cutting program, shedding a whole lot of employees and shaving down its research and development spending.
Through the investor day, Pfizer laid out its priorities now that it has fully integrated with the targeted cancer drugmaker Seagen. That $43 billion Seagen acquisition doubled Pfizer’s oncology drug pipeline to 60 different experimental programs.
With Seagen under its belt, Pfizer says its drug pipeline could produce no less than eight blockbuster medicines by 2030, up from just five today. But the corporate didn’t disclose which drugs it believes could offer that potential.
Some analysts noted that it’d take a couple of years for a few of Pfizer’s cancer drugs in mid-stage development to indicate pivotal clinical trial data and grow to be less dangerous.
Pfizer’s existing oncology portfolio can be facing some competitive pressure. Revenue from the blockbuster breast cancer drug Ibrance and prostate cancer treatment Xtandi, which Pfizer shares with Astellas Pharma, has declined over the past yr. Each drugs are expected to lose market exclusivity in 2027.
Still, some analysts got here out of the investor day feeling encouraged.
“The corporate is facing various challenges, but we consider the event was a hit in laying out a path for the oncology business to assist offset upcoming patent losses, and drive growth in the longer term,” Guggenheim analysts wrote in a note Tuesday.
Long-term business strategy
Pfizer used the investor event to formally introduce its latest business division dedicated to cancer research and to put out a long-term strategy for it through the top of the last decade.
That oncology unit hosts a sprawling portfolio of experimental medicines that Pfizer and Seagen discovered or acquired through deals, in addition to the treatments each firms have long been selling.
The unit is led by Chris Boshoff, a longtime Pfizer executive who most recently served as the corporate’s head of cancer research and development.
“As a newly combined organization, our expertise and collective capabilities at the moment are amplified to deliver much more impact for patients than each company could do by itself,” Boshoff said last week to kick off the event.
Boshoff highlighted the size of Pfizer’s capabilities, noting it has 10 manufacturing sites producing cancer drugs on three continents, while Seagen had only one. He also pointed to Pfizer’s business presence in greater than 100 countries and a customer-facing business team that’s triple the dimensions of Seagen’s.
Pfizer didn’t provide a particular sales projection for its oncology franchise by 2030. But the corporate said it expects roughly two-thirds of risk-adjusted oncology revenue to return from latest drugs and latest indications — or treatment uses — for existing products by the top of the last decade.
Signage outside Seagen headquarters in Bothell, Washington, on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
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Pfizer reiterated its expectation that the Seagen acquisition will usher in $10 billion in sales by 2030.
But the corporate provided little guidance on what Seagen’s growth will appear like until the top of the last decade, UBS analyst Trung Huynh said in a note Thursday.
A latest focus
Pfizer also highlighted an enormous shift in its drug pipeline strategy.
Boshoff said the oncology division plans to shift to biologic drugs as its major income, increasing the proportion of those treatments in its pipeline from 6% to 65% by 2030.
Biologics are treatments derived from living sources corresponding to animals or humans, including vaccines, stem cell treatments and gene therapies. They’re amongst the most costly prescribed drugs within the U.S.
Before the Seagen deal, 94% of Pfizer’s cancer products were small-molecule drugs. Those medicines are made from chemicals and have low molecular weights.
Boshoff said biologics represent “a more durable revenue potential” based on several aspects. That features upcoming patent expirations and potential pressure from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
A provision of that law allows Medicare to begin negotiating the costs of biologics as early as 13 years after they receive Food and Drug Administration approval, compared with just nine years for small-molecule drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has argued that may deter drugmakers from investing in small molecules.
Pfizer’s decision to rely more on biologics may additionally offer “higher protection” against competition from cheaper copycats, Guggenheim analysts said of their note. Those copycats, or biosimilars, have historically had trouble gaining market share from biologic treatments. That is unlike with drugs called generics, that are exact copies of small-molecule treatments.
Small molecules will remain one in every of three core drug kinds of Pfizer’s oncology division. The opposite two are biologics, namely bispecific antibodies, and antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs.
Pfizer’s three core oncology drug types
- Small-molecule drugs: Treatments with a low molecular weight made up of chemicals created in a lab.
- Bispecific antibodies: Treatments that may bind to 2 different antigens — or any substance that causes the body to have an immune response — at the identical time. Those drugs are biologics because they’re developed from living sources that produce antibodies.
- Antibody-drug conjugates: Medications that deliver a cancer-killing therapy to specifically goal and kill cancer cells and minimize damage to healthy ones. The treatments represent a hybrid between biologics and small-molecule drugs, however the FDA classifies ADCs as biologics.
Notably, the corporate is developing a “next-generation” platform for ADCs that mixes Pfizer’s protein engineering and antibody design capabilities with Seagen’s ADC technology. Together, the businesses have 12 ADCs in development, six of that are in early clinical trials or studies on animals.
JPMorgan analyst Chris Schott wrote in a note last week that the firm walked away from the investor event encouraged by the breadth of Pfizer’s mid-stage oncology pipeline. But he noted that it’s going to take time before various the treatments show “pivotal data.”
4 core cancer types
Pfizer plans to give attention to 4 major kinds of cancer: breast cancer; genitourinary cancer, which impacts urinary and genital organs or functions; thoracic cancer, corresponding to lung, head and neck cancer; and hematology-oncology, or cancers of the blood, corresponding to multiple myeloma and lymphomas.
Pfizer expects breast cancer’s contribution to total oncology sales to drop to about 10% by 2030 from roughly 40% last yr, the corporate’s oncology business chief Suneet Varma said through the event.
That decline accounts for the upcoming lack of exclusivity of top-seller Ibrance, which raked in $4.75 billion in sales in 2023.
But the corporate said it has a handful of breast cancer drugs in development that would grow to be “potential growth drivers” as Ibrance sales fall. That features a certain sort of treatment called atirmociclib that would potentially be simpler and easier for patients to tolerate.
Pfizer is testing the drugs as a second-line treatment for a certain sort of breast cancer in a phase three trial. A second-line therapy is given when an initial treatment doesn’t work or stops working.
The corporate also plans to begin a separate late-stage trial on atirmociclib as a primary treatment for a similar condition within the second half of the yr.
Pfizer expects genitourinary cancer to make up an estimated 35% of oncology sales by 2030, which might make it the most important franchise of the cancer business. That is up from 20% in 2023.
Pfizer is testing an experimental ADC called disitamab vedotin — which Seagen licensed from Chinese firm RemeGe — as a treatment for certain bladder cancers, with data from mid-stage and late-stage trials expected in 2025 and 2026.
Notably, RemeGe already sells that drug in China. Pfizer can be examining the drugs’s potential to treat breast cancer and other tumor types.
Meanwhile, Padcev, an ADC Pfizer shares with Astellas Pharma, together with Merck‘s immunotherapy Keytruda is becoming a latest first-line standard of look after bladder cancer. Pfizer executives last week said Padcev had “mega-blockbuster” potential, which the corporate defines as raking in annual sales of greater than $3 billion.
Pfizer’s key cancer drugs on the U.S. market
- Ibrance: treatment for certain breast cancers.
- Xtandi: treatment for 4 kinds of advanced prostate cancer.
- Adcetris: treatment for certain lymphomas from Seagen.
- Padcev: treatment for some kinds of advanced bladder cancer, either alone or together with Keytruda.
- Elrexfio: treatment for certain adults with multiple myeloma.
- Talzenna: treatment for some breast cancers.
- Lorbrena: treatment for a sort of non-small cell lung cancer.
Pfizer executives expect thoracic cancer to double its revenue contributions by 2030.
Seagen brings an ADC called sigvotatug vedotin to this franchise. The drug recently entered a late-stage trial as a second-line treatment for a certain sort of lung cancer, with data expected around 2026 to 2027. Pfizer also plans to check the ADC as a first-line treatment.
Guggenheim analysts said they expect the treatment to be one in every of Pfizer’s blockbuster oncology drugs by the top of the last decade. Those analysts also expect a bispecific drug called Elrexfio, which falls under Pfizer’s hematology-oncology portfolio, to eventually grow to be a top seller.
The hematology-oncology franchise is predicted to account for 25% of the cancer unit’s sales by 2030, up from just 10% in 2023.
The FDA has approved Elrexfio for patients with multiple myeloma who’ve tried no less than 4 prior kinds of therapy. But Pfizer is conducting two late-stage clinical trials on Elrexfio as a second-line treatment, with data not expected until around 2025 and 2026.
Drugs outside of cancer
Pfizer is splitting the remainder of its business outside of oncology into two divisions: a U.S. business unit and a global business unit. Those divisions are specializing in vaccines, together with metabolic and inflammatory conditions.
This fall, Pfizer plans to roll out one other updated version of its Covid vaccine that may goal a latest strain of the virus.
The corporate previously outlined plans to develop “next-generation” versions of its Covid shot, which aim to broaden and extend the protection people get to a full yr.
But Pfizer hasn’t decided whether to maneuver forward with those plans because the corporate must be convinced that there remains to be an “eagerness to embrace Covid intervention,” Dr. Mikael Dolsten, the corporate’s chief scientific officer, told CNBC in an interview last week.
The brand new vaccine COMIRNATY® (Covid-19 vaccine, mRNA) by Pfizer, available at CVS Pharmacy in Eagle Rock, California.
Irfan Khan | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Dolsten pointed to 2 other “strong pillars” in the corporate’s vaccine portfolio: bacterial and viral shots. The corporate is testing a “fourth-generation” version of its vaccine to stop pneumococcal disease, which is brought on by a bacteria that may attack different parts of the body.
Pfizer can be working to expand using its shot against respiratory syncytial virus, commonly called RSV, to high-risk patients ages 18 to 59. It’s currently approved within the U.S. for expectant moms and adults age 60 and above.
The corporate can be testing combination vaccines targeting multiple respiratory viruses, including a shot for Covid and the flu in late-stage development.
Outside of vaccines, the corporate is developing an oral treatment for sickle cell disease called GBT601. Pfizer views that drug as a potentially simpler successor to its drug Oxbryta, which is already approved for the condition.
Pfizer also expects to release mid-stage trial data on its experimental treatment for cancer cachexia, or what Dolsten called “the alternative of obesity.” It refers back to the lack of body weight and muscle mass, together with weakness which will occur in patients with cancer, AIDS or other chronic diseases.
One other area that is top of mind for investors is obesity. Pfizer expects to release early-stage trial data on a once-daily version of its experimental weight reduction pill, danuglipron, in the primary half of the yr. The corporate can be working on a second drug for obesity, but has not disclosed how it’s going to work.
Dolsten touted the potential of a weight-loss drug pill, which could help meet the soaring demand for obesity treatments. Much of the prevailing injectable drugs for the condition are in shortage within the U.S. He also noted that a pill would likely be priced in a different way than injections, which cost around $1,000 per 30 days before insurance.
“A pill would allow you furthermore may to have more access,” Dolsten said. “If you might have 300 million patients per yr, it’s going to be one in every of the most important medications ever.”