CAMBRIDGE, UK — Pascal Soriot has set an ambitious $80 billion revenue target for AstraZeneca by 2030. But he’s not stopping there.
At the drugmaker’s Discovery Centre in Cambridge, UK, the CEO, self-assured as ever, underscored his vision for “long-term growth” by centering certain drug modalities that could be less vulnerable to generic and biosimilar competition.
As part of the company’s investor day, investors and media were invited on small-group tours of the site, which opened its doors in late 2021. Although the facility’s lab area was off-limits to guests, scientists could be seen staging R&D work through glass walls.
Speaking separately to media at a packed makeshift conference area, Soriot said that AstraZeneca is advancing cell therapies, gene therapies, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and radioconjugates — areas where the British pharma has announced significant partnerships or investments over the past 18 months. “There was a strategy” behind all those deals, according to Soriot.
“You had in the past products that [would last] 15 or 16 years for yourself and then you would lose it to generics and biosimilars,” he said of traditional small molecules and biologics. The new technologies, on the other hand, “will deliver products that will be very difficult to copy rapidly by some generic companies.”
Soriot, who took up the CEO post in late 2012, has previously succeeded in meeting big targets, recently hitting the $45 billion revenue goal he had set for 2023.
To keep the pipeline stocked, he added that the “rate of replacements of products” from newer technologies will also accelerate, in part thanks to “extreme innovation” coming from China. AstraZeneca has established a heavy presence in the country, with one of its five R&D centers based in Shanghai.
The investor day takes place a day after AstraZeneca announced it will pour $1.5 billion into a Singaporean plant dedicated to manufacturing ADCs. In recent months, it has acquired Chinese cell therapy outfit Gracell Biotechnologies (for $1 billion), radiopharma biotech Fusion Pharmaceuticals (for $2 billion), as well as a sizable stake in its gene editing partner Cellectis.
Road to 2030
By 2030, the company plans to launch 20 new molecular entities across oncology, cardiovascular disease, hematology and weight management, including multiple candidates with $5 billion in potential peak-year revenue. They feature small molecules, peptides, antibodies as well as ADCs, cell engagers and one CAR-T cell therapy.
AstraZeneca will have to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, Soriot said. It is among the drugmakers involved in the first round of drug price negotiations under the IRA. Nonetheless, he added the legislation’s impact on the company’s overall global sales going forward should be “completely manageable.”
New approvals in the near future could include Dato-Dxd, the company’s Phase 3 TROP2-directed ADC that has a December 20 PDUFA date for lung cancer.
On the weight loss side, its oral GLP-1 drug, ECC5004, was earlier in the clinic but is still pegged for approval by 2030. During the event, Soriot reiterated the combo strategy AstraZeneca has previously outlined for the asset, with an eye on tackling other diseases related to obesity, such as cardiovascular conditions.
GLP-1 approaches to date have focused on inducing weight loss in people with obesity but there remains a “huge unmet need” in overweight people who have comorbidities that are difficult to completely reverse even though they have lost some weight, Soriot said.