Cel­e­brat­ing sus­tained sales growth, As­traZeneca qui­et­ly ex­e­cutes some ag­ing mid-stage drug projects

While As­traZeneca ex­ecs clus­tered by the front door to dis­cuss their third straight quar­ter with ris­ing sales dri­ven by new can­cer drugs and an ex­pand­ing grasp of the Chi­nese mar­ket, the com­pa­ny’s R&D jan­i­tors were sweep­ing its fail­ures out the back door. And the set­backs in­clude some long­time can­cer drugs in the pipeline ob­tained through a slate of mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar al­liances.

This quar­ter’s re­jects are topped by a group of Phase II projects, in­clud­ing preza­lum­ab, a B7RP1 mAb for Sjo­gren’s syn­drome, as an­oth­er one of As­traZeneca’s au­toim­mune projects goes south on them. The IgG2k mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body was one of the few re­main­ing au­toim­mune projects at As­traZeneca, which has con­cen­trat­ed the pipeline heav­i­ly on on­col­o­gy. The R&D team there ex­pe­ri­enced a crush­ing set­back last sum­mer with the Phase III fail­ure of an­i­frol­um­ab for lu­pus.

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