Celgene needed to sell psoriasis blockbuster Otezla to win an OK to merge with Bristol Myers Squibb, which had a potential rival in the pipeline, and Amgen stepped up with $13 billion. Now, that BMS candidate has topped Otezla in a head-to-head study—and Amgen’s quick success with the med could be in jeopardy.
In a phase 3 trial, Bristol’s deucravacitinib, an oral TYK2 inhibitor, bested Otezla at improving psoriasis symptoms, the company said Tuesday. Full details aren’t available, but analysts quickly said the new med could knock Otezla off its growth trajectory.
“Given the limited oral options for this indication, we think Bristol’s TYK2 inhibitor could look very competitive to Otezla, and take its share or cap its growth,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Alethia Young wrote in a note to clients. Further, “the superiority claim could threaten Otezla’s market leader position for oral agents,” she wrote.
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Importantly, BMS’ oral drug achieved scores on a measure of symptom severity, the Psoriasis Area Severity Index, “in line” with injectables such as Humira, Mizuho analyst Salim Syed wrote to clients. The med posted PASI scores about twice as high as Otezla, he pointed out.
Currently, analysts project Otezla will generate $3.4 billion in 2024 at consensus, Syed wrote, but his team is “more cautious” and projects $2 billion that year.
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Amgen closed its Otezla buy last November, and the med quickly became an important growth driver as other medicines in its lineup face generic and biosimilar competition. The ex-Celgene drug generated $1.6 billion during the first nine months of 2020, and execs have said it’s beating their original expectations despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bristol’s new data “could lead to competition for Otezla starting sometime in 2022,” Young wrote. Still, Amgen is expecting Otezla to reap sales from new indications and launches in other countries and “has a lot of commercial footprint in the immunology area,” she wrote.
For his part, JPMorgan analyst Cory Kasimov wrote to clients that Bristol’s drug was “largely expected” to beat Otezla based on the phase 2 results it posted last year. Safety data could make a difference, though, and the full numbers on efficacy haven’t been released, either, he stressed.
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For now, it’s “difficult to assess” how the new BMS data will affect Otezla, Kasimov wrote. Still, deucravacitinib presents a potential risk for Amgen, and Kasimov expects Otezla sales growth to come in “slightly below” the company’s projections, which call for low double-digit percentage growth over five years.
