MEDI-0618

On a call with members of the media Tuesday morning, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot focused heavily on the need for greater R&D innovation outside the U.S. \n AstraZeneca has axed three MedImmune legacy monoclonal antibody drugs from its neuroscience pipeline in a first-quarter clear-out.The Anglo-Swedish Big Pharma announced in its first-quarter presentation (PDF) Tuesday morning that it had stopped work on a phase 1 Alzheimer’s disease drug as well as two phase 2 therapies. One of the midstage candidates was being tested against migraines and the other was for osteoarthritis pain and painful diabetic neuropathy.The Alzheimer’s drug, MEDI1814, is an amyloid beta mAb that had been developed in collaboration with Eli Lilly in a pact dating back nearly a decade.Lilly, which markets its AD therapy Kisunla and teamed up with AZ on MEDI1814 back in 2016, has taken back the drug.AZ also axed two more clinically advanced prospects. The first, MEDI0618, works as a PAR2 antagonist mAb migraine drug. The market for migraine drugs, both as treatments and prophylactic options, has exploded over the past five years, with a host of meds from Pfizer/Biohaven, Eli Lilly, Amgen, Teva and more fighting for ground. The final midstage cull was for MEDI7352, a non-opioid NGF/TNF bispecific mAb targeting osteoarthritis pain and painful diabetic neuropathy.The decision for this neuro-focused clear-out was strategic, and AZ has formally terminated each of the projects. All three came from MedImmune, its $15.2 billion acquisition in 2007 that has seen multiple experimental drug clear-outs over the years.AZ generated $13.58 billion in revenue during the first quarter, a 10% increase at constant exchange rates from the first quarter in 2024. R&D spend, meanwhile, was up a hefty 16% at constant exchange rates to $3.08 billion and represented 23% of total sales.FDA layoffs, R&D boosts and a U.S. focus On a call with members of the media Tuesday morning, AZ’s chief Pascal Soriot said that despite the Trump administration-directed layoffs at the FDA, the Big Pharma has “so far not seen any delays in the processing of our applications [or] any delays to our meetings we regularly have with FDA staff.\" A big theme for Soriot was AZ\'s U.S. investment and focus, following a common trend for Big Pharmas working in the country amid pharmaceutical tariff threats from the U.S. government.He reiterated the multibillion-dollar investment AZ announced last November in manufacturing and R&D, saying that “we have even greater U.S. investment in manufacturing and R&D planned, leveraging our two large R&D sites\" in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.Details on exactly what that R&D investment would like and specific dollar values were not given. AZ’s chief financial officer Aradhana Sarin said on the call that investments “will be driven by our portfolio” and that AZ will spend money where trials and trial sites are producing positive outcomes worthy of further investment. A spokesperson for AZ confirmed there were no immediate specifics on the R&D investment front as the company plans to review what is working over time and thus what will require deeper investment. One area will, however, be cell therapy, a field Soriot spotlighted during the call and where AZ recently acquired a Belgium cell therapy specialist.AZ also currently has seven cell therapy programs in the clinic, led by a BCMA and CD19 dual-targeting CAR-T for multiple myeloma.In response to questions about U.S. drug research innovation in general, Soriot said the country is “funding innovation in pharmaceuticals for the world” but that this was not fair. He said that Europe must take greater steps to invest more.Likening Europe’s recent decision to spend more of its gross domestic product on defense, he said Europe should take the same tack with pharmaceuticals spending, upping its percentage of GDP and/or healthcare budgets to pay more for R&D innovation.“Innovation has mostly been funded by the United States,” Soriot said on the call. “Europe now has to invest more. Just like Europe has decided to allocate a greater share of GDP to defense, a greater share of GDP has to be allocated to pharmaceutical innovation.”Soriot, when asked, did not give a specific percentage on what he thought that figure of GDP should be, but he noted the percentage of healthcare budgets spent on medicines was 13% to 15% in the U.S., while it was 10% to 11% in Europe and just 7% in the U.K., which has the NICE health technology assessment body to help temper drug prices.