Source: Finance Association
① The launch of Winrevair will help MSD diversify its much-needed products; ② MSD believes Winrevair has the potential to become a cornerstone treatment for pulmonary hypertension.
On Tuesday EST, US pharmaceutical giants$Merck & Co (MRK.US)$It was announced that its new drug to treat a potentially fatal lung disease has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Before the US stock market on Wednesday, MSD's stock price surged by about 5%.
According to reports, the trade name of this drug is Winrevair, and it is used to treat pulmonary hypertension (PAH), which affects nearly 40,000 people in the US. Pulmonary hypertension causes blood vessels in the pulmonary artery wall to thicken due to imbalance in promoting and inhibiting proliferative signals, limiting blood flow, increasing the burden on the right side of the heart, and eventually leading to heart failure. Clinical symptoms include shortness of breath, chest tightness, dizziness, and fatigue.
The launch of Winrevair will help MSD diversify its much-needed products, and the company is betting heavily that Winrevair can help it avoid a sharp decline in revenue later this decade.
Jannie Oosthuizen, head of human health at MSD, said: “We look forward to Winrevair making a significant difference for those patients with a 5-year mortality rate of 43%.” MSD believes Winrevair has the potential to become a cornerstone treatment for pulmonary hypertension.
In 2021, MSD spent 11.5 billion dollars to acquire Acceleron Pharma, the company that developed the drug, and obtained the key drug under development sotatercept (chemical name of Winrevair). Some analysts estimate that Winrevair's annual sales may be as high as 7.5 billion US dollars.
The company previously stated that sotatercept reached a major clinical endpoint in a phase 3 clinical trial to treat pulmonary hypertension. After 24 weeks of treatment, sotatercept brought statistically significant and clinically significant improvements in the patient's 6-minute walking distance compared to placebo.
Eliav Barr, MSD's chief medical officer, stated: “Pulmonary hypertension is still a disease with a high morbidity rate and mortality rate, and Winrevair's approval is an important milestone, and we are proud to bring this new drug to patients.”
As part of its development strategy, MSD has been strengthening its cardiovascular pipeline to deal with the impact of generic drugs after its patent expires.
Last year, more than 40% of MSD's revenue (about $25 billion) came from the cancer treatment drug Keytruda, the best-selling immunotherapy in the world, but its main US patent expires in 2028.
Winrevair is priced at $14,000 per bottle, and for about two-thirds of patients, each bottle of medicine will last for three weeks. The cost for the whole year is about US$242,000, but MSD said that since the dosage is calculated based on body weight, the cost will vary from patient to patient.
“We expect Winrevair sales to perform strongly and quickly become part of the standard of care for eligible patients with pulmonary hypertension,” J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott wrote in a report. Schott expects Winrevair's annual sales to reach $5 billion by 2030.
editor/tolk