The top 10 or­phan drugs in the late-stage pipeline

Or­phan drugs have come in­to the spot­light, scar­ing up head­lines in­volv­ing big prices and small pa­tient pop­u­la­tions. Some com­pa­nies have been ac­cused of prof­i­teer­ing by ma­nip­u­lat­ing the FDA’s rules on this — hel­lo, Marathon — but or­phan ther­a­pies re­main a very close­ly watched are­na with some ma­jor new prospects com­ing through the late-stage pipeline. And some of these drugs are of­fer­ing pa­tients re­al hope for the first time.

Every year, Eval­u­ate crunch­es the num­bers on the top prospects in the pipeline, and the com­pa­ny’s ed­i­to­r­i­al arm EP Van­tage in­cludes it in their an­nu­al re­port on or­phan drugs. I’ve picked up their list and re­arranged it by Eval­u­ate’s sales es­ti­mates for 2022.

A word of cau­tion. Sales es­ti­mates are easy to make and hard to de­liv­er on, so it’s al­ways im­por­tant to take these num­bers with a grain of salt. Al­so, some of these drugs still face big ques­tions as they come un­der FDA re­view. And the FDA re­view process it­self may well change rad­i­cal­ly, es­pe­cial­ly for or­phan drugs, as Pres­i­dent Trump de­mands faster re­sponse times on this front.

It’s still ear­ly to be count­ing chick­ens, but these eggs de­serve care­ful at­ten­tion.


Tesaro: ni­ra­parib, PARP/can­cer
2022 sales: $1.8B

Two years made a big dif­fer­ence for Tesaro $TSRO. In 2015, Eval­u­ate fore­cast­ed this drug would bring in $499 mil­lion in 2020. Now un­der re­view as the biotech ex­plores a broad la­bel, an­a­lysts have been hik­ing their pro­jec­tions, which keeps this com­pa­ny on most an­a­lysts’ lists of like­ly takeover tar­gets. Ovar­i­an can­cer qual­i­fied this drug for or­phan sta­tus.

Kite Phar­ma: ax­i­ab­ta­gene ciloleu­cel, CAR-T/can­cer
2022 sales: $1.7B

Kite’s new name for KTE-C19, its top CAR-T in the pipeline, is a tongue twister, but af­ter the biotech un­veiled 6-month da­ta on Tues­day, we should all learn how to pro­nounce it. The first clear ev­i­dence of dura­bil­i­ty leaves Kite $KITE in an im­pres­sive po­si­tion as it looks to beat out No­var­tis with the first gen­er­a­tion of CAR-Ts. It should be quite a ri­val­ry.

Roche: emi­cizum­ab (ACE910)/ he­mo­phil­ia
2022 sales: $1.5B

Maybe we shouldn’t get too far ahead of our­selves on this one. Yes, Roche $RHH­BY has very high ex­pec­ta­tions for this drug. But it’s al­so been plagued by safe­ty ques­tions, which have yet to be ful­ly aired by reg­u­la­tors. A top prospect? You bet. But don’t count on the mon­ey yet.

As­traZeneca: treme­li­mum­ab/CT­LA-4 check­point in­hibitor
2022 sales:  $1.3B

Usu­al­ly men­tioned right along­side dur­val­um­ab, As­traZeneca’s $AZN oth­er check­point, the treme­li­mum­ab com­bo emerges as an ab­solute­ly cen­tral fea­ture in dis­tin­guish­ing the phar­ma gi­ant as it tries to leapfrog some very ad­vanced play­ers like Mer­ck, Bris­tol-My­ers and Squibb. This one is do or die for As­traZeneca, which won or­phan sta­tus for ma­lig­nant mesothe­lioma.

Shire: lanadelum­ab (SHP643)/hered­i­tary an­gioede­ma 
2022 sales:  $1.1B

This was the jew­el in the crown for Shire {SH­PG} when it paid $5.9 bil­lion for Dyax back in late 2015. The drug blocks en­zyme plas­ma kallikrein to treat hered­i­tary an­gioede­ma, and Shire ex­ecs have al­ready in­di­cat­ed that they be­lieve it can reach $2 bil­lion in an­nu­al sales. And last sum­mer this drug fig­ured promi­nent­ly among the top three pro­grams fea­tured by CEO Flem­ming Orn­skov. It has a break­through drug des­ig­na­tion and a shot at glo­ry.

Te­va: SD-809/tar­dive dysk­i­ne­sia
2022 sales:  $1B

Te­va $TE­VA al­ready has had to deal with a se­ri­ous set­back on this drug when the FDA re­ject­ed its ap­pli­ca­tion for Hunt­ing­ton’s chorea last year. But it’s still shoot­ing for a block­buster with a new dri­ve on to get this ap­proved this year for tar­dive dysk­i­ne­sia. A seem­ing­ly per­ma­nent­ly trou­bled com­pa­ny, Te­va needs this win bad­ly. Te­va’s big pro­gram for this drug puts it in a head-to-head show­down with Neu­ro­crine $NBIX, which not­ed re­cent­ly that it filed for an ap­proval on the ri­val drug val­be­nazine. And some an­a­lysts would put Neu­ro­crine’s drug well ahead of Te­va’s on this one.

blue­bird bio: Lenti­Glo­bin/gene ther­a­py
2022 sales:  $969M

Blue­bird $BLUE helped make gene ther­a­py a hot field again, and its strug­gles with vary­ing de­grees of im­pact on pa­tients has helped raise fresh ques­tions about where it’s head­ed on be­ta tha­lassemia, where in­ves­ti­ga­tors are now pur­su­ing a Phase III tri­al. Po­ten­tial? You bet. But there are still plen­ty of unan­swered ques­tions.

As­traZeneca: acal­abru­ti­nib (ACP-196) /BTK in­hibitor 
2022 sales:  $968M

As­traZeneca won’t mind be­ing the on­ly com­pa­ny to make two ap­pear­ances on this top 10 list. This drug came its way when it ac­quired a ma­jor­i­ty in­ter­est in Ac­er­ta in 2015, as Pas­cal So­ri­ot sought to ex­e­cute a ma­jor turn­around in the phar­ma gi­ant’s prospects. With gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion eat­ing away at rev­enue, As­traZeneca needs all the help it can get from its on­col­o­gy pipeline. This drug is in late-stage stud­ies for B-cell blood can­cers.

No­var­tis: CTL019/CAR-T
2022 sales: $917M

This is the “oth­er” CAR-T you prob­a­bly heard about. Af­ter No­var­tis ripped up its cell ther­a­py unit last year, the phar­ma gi­ant went to some trou­ble to try and re­as­sure ob­servers that it was still on track to file for an ap­proval in ear­ly 2017. But an­a­lysts are dis­count­ing its im­pact com­pared to Kite, which re­mains the leader in the field, re­gard­less of who gets to the FDA first.

Ab­b­Vie: veli­parib/PARP in­hibitor
2022 sales: $854M

PARPs are all the rage these days, es­pe­cial­ly since Pfiz­er picked up ta­la­zoparib in its $14 bil­lion Medi­va­tion buy­out. Ab­b­Vie, though, re­mains well be­hind what is be­com­ing a fair­ly crowd­ed field. That leaves them on the list for now, but just bare­ly, as all eyes re­main on Tesaro.

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Douglas Love, Annexon CEO

An­nex­on’s GA drug miss­es on pri­ma­ry goal but win on vi­su­al acu­ity will be fo­cus of planned late-stage tri­al

Annexon’s complement inhibitor didn’t prove better than sham at reducing lesion growth in a leading cause of blindness, but the biotech still plans to move forward on the back of secondary endpoints showing visual acuity preservation, which will “certainly” be the primary goal in a late-stage trial to be discussed shortly with the FDA, CEO Douglas Love told Endpoints News. 

The California biotech’s ANX007 was not statistically significant compared to pooled sham, the comparator, at 12 months in patients with geographic atrophy, per a Wednesday presentation. In every-month dosing, the GA lesion area changed about 6.2% from baseline (p=0.526) and 1.3% (p=0.896) in the every-other-month group. In a March note, Jefferies analyst Suji Jeong said a reduction of 20% to 30% would be “encouraging.”

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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Teresa Bitetti, Takeda's president of the global oncology business unit

Take­da wins pri­or­i­ty re­view for $400M col­orec­tal can­cer drug, li­censed from Hutchmed in Jan­u­ary

Takeda and Hutchmed scored a priority review Thursday afternoon for a colorectal cancer drug, the companies announced.

The experimental drug in question is fruquintinib, previously approved in China in 2018 to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. Takeda and Hutchmed are aiming to bring fruquintinib to the US and other countries outside China in the same indication, and the FDA set its decision date for Nov. 30 of this year.

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EMA rec­om­mends re­vok­ing au­tho­riza­tion of No­var­tis' sick­le cell drug

The European Medicines Agency’s committee for medicinal products for human use (CHMP) on Friday recommended revoking the marketing authorization for Novartis’ treatment for a painful complication related to sickle cell, after a recent study did not confirm its clinical benefit.

CHMP’s review looked at results of the STAND study, finding that Adakveo (crizanlizumab) did not reduce the number of painful crises leading to a healthcare visit, and patients treated with Adakveo had slightly more painful crises on average, with a subsequent healthcare visit, over the first year of treatment, compared with those on placebo.

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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