Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla breaks down the company’s earnings on The Claman Countdown.
Pfizer said it expects annual sales of its cancer drug Lorbrena to exceed $1 billion by 2030, after data released Friday showed the majority of patients treated for a rare form of advanced lung cancer were still alive five years later with their disease unchanged.
Lorbrena, like Pfizer’s Xalkori, Treating Cancer It involves a mutation in a specific gene called anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK).
The exterior of Pfizer’s headquarters building on January 29, 2023 in New York City. (Kenna Betancourt/VIEWpress / Getty Images)
According to follow-up results from the company’s Phase 3 CROWN trial presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, 60 percent of patients with ALK-positive advanced lung cancer treated with Lorbrena had no disease progression after five years. Chicago.
In comparison, patients treated with Xalkori had a five-year progression-free survival rate of just 8%.
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The data also showed that about 53 percent of Lorbrena patients whose cancer had spread to the brain at the start of the trial were still alive and without their disease progressing after five years.
“We believe this is a tremendous opportunity for Pfizer,” Chief Oncology Officer Chris Boshoff said in an interview.
A worker places tubes in dry ice at Pfizer’s research and development facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday, October 26, 2015. (Scott Eisen/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Boshoff said that with the “increasing prevalence, greater market penetration, longer duration of treatment and more patients being tested” for ALK mutations, “we believe this is a very different opportunity than Xalkori, which never became a blockbuster product grossing over $1 billion a year.”
Boshoff said China will be a particularly important market for Lorbrena. Globally, 4 percent of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have ALK-positive tumors, but up to 7 percent of patients in China do. NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer.
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Boshoff also said that Pfizer Clinical Trials Patients taking Xalkori have a median progression-free survival of 10 to 11 months, compared with 10 to 11 months for patients taking Lorbrena for more than five years.
| Ticker | safety | last | change | change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal consumption tax | Pfizer Japan Inc | 28.68 | +0.48 | +1.70% |
Lorbrena, which was approved in the U.S. in March 2021, generated sales of $164 million in the first quarter of 2024, up 46% from a year ago, and the company expects double-digit growth to continue in the coming quarters, Boshoff said.
Investors fled from Pfizer as billions of dollars’ worth of sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatments evaporated as pandemic concerns faded.
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The company responded by acquiring cancer drug maker Siegen for $43 billion, cutting costs and restructuring the company to prioritize cancer drugs.
The New York-based drugmaker said in February that its oncology division plans to develop at least eight blockbuster drugs by 2030, up from five today.
