2015 Blockbusters: What Drugs Will Show Pharma The Money?

By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA

Last February, there were four drugs pegged by The Motley Fool as potential blockbusters for 2014. These treatments included Gilead’s Sovaldi for hepatitis C and Johnson & Johnson’s/Pharmacyclics’ Imbruvica for mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. There were also two asthma and COPD drugs, Breo Ellipta and Anoro Ellipta, both of which were from GSK.

Sovaldi, a name with which we’re all very familiar, went on to achieve blockbuster status quite quickly, raking in $5.8 billion a mere six months after its launch. Gilead released a new version of Sovaldi combined with ledispasvir called Harvoni in fall 2014, and since then, the company has made headlines primarily because of its controversial pricing strategies and its battle for popularity against AbbVie’s recently-released Viekira Pak.

Imbruvica didn’t quite make it to blockbuster status last year, coming in at $492 million in 2014, but analysts are hopeful that 2015 will be the year it hits the coveted $1 billion mark. (A side note: Imbruvica didn’t just catch The Motley Fool’s eye; the Cleveland Clinic also pegged it as one of the most promising late-stage therapies that would have one of the biggest impacts on health back in October 2013, FierceBiotech reported at the time.)

Unfortunately for GSK, faced with a patent expiration for its $8.7 billion blockbuster, Seretide/Advair, the company did not see its hopes for Breo Ellipta and Anoro Ellipta come to fruition in 2014. These two brought in $106 million and $27 million respectively, well below the company’s estimates, GlobalData reported recently. 

Now, The Motley Fool has released two new lists: its contenders for 2015 blockbusters, and a list of those blockbusters that are on their way out as quickly as the video store packed up and left town.

Which drugs are expected to be the winners this year?

• Imbruvica: A returning player to this year’s list, the drug recently received a nod from the FDA to treat Waldenstrӧm’s macroglobulinemia — the drug’s fourth indication. But there is increasing concern about the drug’s ability to cause tumor lysis syndrome (TLS), says Reuters. While Imbruvica is only catered to about 55,000 people today, the company is optimistic it will be able to serve upwards of 400,000 people in the future, especially seeing as the drug is a player in 58 clinical trials, 13 of which are in Phase 3. The drug could have competition in the future however, seeing as AbbVie's and Roche’s ABT-199 has resulted in fewer TLS cases in recent trials.
• Pomalyst: Celgene’s third-line drug for multiple myeloma is coming up fast against the company’s own Revlimid, a multiple myeloma drug that has garnered $5 billion in sales each year on the market. Pomalyst brought in $680 million in 2014 following approval to include patients whose disease has progressed beyond two prior treatments. The company has it pegged to bring in $1.5 billion from 2017 to 2020.   
• Eliquis: Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMS) blood-thinner earned $774 million in 2014 following trial results that proved the drug kicked blockbuster-warfarin to the curb by boosting patient survival rates. The FDA also played a role in this surge in sales when it opened up the label to make the drug available to those who had had a hip or knee replacement and when it deemed the drug a treatment for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. 
• Though it has yet to be approved by the FDA and didn’t make The Motley Fool’s list, analysts are also looking at Genmab’s bone marrow cancer drug, daratumumab, which could be a key competitor against Celgene’s Pomalyst, Newsmax Health reports. Daratumumab demonstrated a 29.2 percent response rate in patients who had had three different and unsuccessful treatments. Deutsche Bank analysts expect to see an approval mid-2015 and to see peak sales of $3.5 billion.

In addition, Eisai’s thyroid and cancer drug, lenvatinib, and Novartis’ heart failure drug, LCZ696, have made recent headlines speculating about their blockbuster potential once on the market.

But along with these potential moneymakers, a few drugs that might be seeing their days in the spotlight come to an end. Included on this list are BMS’ Coumadin, GSK’s Advair, and Teva’s Copaxone, all of which are facing generic rivals or are being threatened by new players to market that boast better data, says The Motley Fool.    

Patent expirations are also a real threat for a number of companies in the years ahead, the Wall Street Journal blog recently reported. Bristol-Myers and AstraZeneca are looking at some big losses in sales following the expiration of their respective drugs, Abilify and Crestor. However, according to the WSJ blog, Moody’s Investor Services investigated the pipelines of 16 large drug makers and found that both BMS and AstraZeneca have strong pipelines overall.

Likewise, Moody’s identifies Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Pfizer, Merck, and Eli Lilly as companies that will have “higher overall exposure” to expiring patents. Of all of these companies however, Moody’s singles out Novo Nordisk and Pfizer as having “comparably weaker” pipelines, even though Pfizer’s acquisition of Hospira gives the company access to some promising biosimilar projects currently underway.  

It should be interesting to see if these blockbuster predictions hold up as the year unfolds. While they might not all be bringing blockbusters to market, it’s reassuring that the companies highlighted by Moody’s in the WSJ blog are, for the most part, remaining productive in the face of changes to their established portfolios — for the sake of both business and patients.