Camizestrant

With more than 100 ongoing phase 3 trials and over 20 late-stage readouts slated for 2026, AstraZeneca is entering an “unprecedented catalyst-rich period,” CEO Pascal Soriot said. After ending 2025 with a strong fourth quarter, AstraZeneca management has doubled down on its ambitious “$80 billion by 2030” revenue target, outlining a roadmap to have more than 25 blockbuster medicines by the end of the decade.During AZ’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Pascal Soriot highlighted an “unprecedented catalyst-rich period.” With more than 100 ongoing phase 3 trials and over 20 late-stage readouts slated for 2026, AZ’s exec team used a big chunk of their time on the call taking inventory of key clinical programs.That large portfolio shows the value of diversification, again highlighting what Soriot called “low concentration risk.”“It’s great to have one or two big products. [It] makes you very profitable and makes you look good,” Soriot said. “But if you lose one of those, as we’ve seen happen to some actors in the industry lately, it really becomes very painful, very quickly. So this diversification, both product-wise, but also geographically, is suddenly becoming more apparent as we drive growth through therapy areas but also through regions.”AZ capped 2025 with fourth-quarter revenues of $15.5 billion, which arrived slightly above analysts’ expectations, thanks mainly to the company's oncology portfolio.But rather than commercial performance, analysts on Tuesday’s call were heavily focused on AZ’s clinical programs, wondering whether the British pharma can repeat the level of phase 3 successes it enjoyed last year.Among key 2026 readouts at the top of AZ’s—and investors’—minds are: Avanzar evaluating Daiichi Sankyo-partnered Datroway in first-line non-small cell lung cancer; Serena-4 for the oral SERD camizestrant in first-line HR-positive breast cancer; CardioTTRansform testing Ionis-partnered Wainua in transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy; three phase 3 trials of efzimfotase alpha in the rare metabolic bone disease hypophosphatasia; and three phase 3 studies of the IL-33 agent tozorakimab in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Avanzar represents the epitome of AZ’s recent efforts to help improve the probability of success of its clinical studies. With the help of artificial intelligence, the company developed a new TROP2-based biomarker in the hopes of enriching for responders to Datroway. In April 2025, AZ signed a three-way deal with Tempus AI and Pathos AI to construct a patient data-based multimodal oncology model.“My reflection of the last decade in oncology, about the success rates we’ve had, has been predicated on being able to identify the right patient populations to treat,” AZ’s oncology R&D head, Susan Galbraith, Ph.D., said on Tuesday’s call.AZ has been using real-world evidence to help design its phase 3 trials and predict control-arm performance. The hope is that AI models can help in the same way when historical literature data are lacking in certain new biomarker areas or where the biology is more complicated, Galbraith said.As for camizestrant, industry watchers are eager to see results from AZ’s first-line Serena-4 trial and the phase 3 Cambria-1 and -2 studies in early breast cancer, after Roche reported positive data for its rival oral SERD, giredestrant, in two similar settings. The key focus is if oral SERDs can break into an earlier and larger population beyond patients whose tumors have ESR1 mutations.For the first-line trial, AZ has designed the study to enrich for endocrine-sensitive patients, who are expected to respond better to oral SERDs, Galbraith said. Those patients typically experienced recurrence from early-stage disease after at least two years of standard adjuvant therapy because those that are less endocrine-sensitive typically progress more rapidly, she explained.In the adjuvant setting, the two studies target different patient populations that could potentially give AZ access to the largest group of patients, Galbraith said. While Cambria-1 allows patients to have used a CDK4/6 inhibitor, Cambria-2 allows concurrent use of a CDK4/6 inhibitor, which Galbraith said is important now that these meds are becoming the new standard in the adjuvant setting.Outside of oncology, as one analyst noted on Tuesday’s call, AZ has billed efzimfotase alpha as having the opportunity to reach $3 billion to $5 billion in peak sales. The drug’s once-every-other-week dosing is considered an upgrade from the up to once-every-two-days frequency of AZ’s Strensiq.With three phase 3 trials, AZ’s goal is again for the newer enzyme therapy to reach a broad population, Marc Dunoyer, CEO of AZ’s rare disease unit, Alexion, said on the call. Two trials are in the pediatric population—one in which patients switch from Strensiq and the other in Strensiq-naïve patients—and the third trial combines adolescents and adults.In the biopharmaceutical department, AZ is targeting the very competitive ATTR-CM field. As the largest trial in this disease, CardioTTRansform is powered to run a key subgroup analysis among patients who are on baseline treatment with Pfizer’s Vyndamax. Information here is important because it may change treatment guidelines, Sharon Barr, Ph.D., AZ’s head of biopharmaceuticals R&D, said on the call. A big question for AZ’s biopharmaceutical business is whether the company can sustain the blow from the loss of exclusivity of its SGLT-2 inhibitor Farxiga, which generated $8.4 billion in sales in 2025. The drug was also one of the first drugs selected for price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act, with a discount for Medicare taking effect at the beginning of this year.AZ’s biopharmaceutical business will “have a blip” following the Farxiga patent cliff, but the company has enough other growth drivers, Ruud Dobber, who leads the unit, said on the call.He pointed to the potential 2026 launch of baxdrostat for hard-to-control hypertension, noting that AZ has set the drug’s overall peak sales potential above $5 billion. Respiratory and immunology drugs Breztri and Tezspire are also expected to continue their double-digit growth, he said.

LONDON — In 2024, AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot set a new goal : for the company to pull in $80 billion in annual sales by 2030. At that time, this target looked ambitious. But less than two years later, the drugmaker is very bullish. Soriot asserted during a media briefing in London on Tuesday that “we have a lot of reason to believe we’re very much on track to deliver our 2030 ambition, but also to grow past 2030.” If AstraZeneca can maintain its current form, he’s right. AstraZeneca’s 2025 revenues totaled $58.7 billion, up 9% from the year prior, and guided to “mid-to-high single-digit percentage” growth in the coming year. Assuming the company grows at a steady annual rate of 7%, which fits the mid-to-high-single-digit bill, its revenues in 2030 will be $85.5 billion. In fairness, Soriot has done something similar before. More than a decade ago, in 2014, he fended off a takeover bid by Pfizer, insisting that AstraZeneca, whose sales that year were just $26.1 billion, could reach $45 billion in revenue by 2023. It is fair to say this was met with general scorn from analysts and other industry watchers. Soriot tweaked this goal in 2016, citing exchange-rate fluctuations and giving the company a more modest target of 2023 revenues in excess of $40 billion. Nonetheless, the earlier goal was reached: AstraZeneca’s 2023 sales were $45.8 billion. (Not all of this was organic, of course — it got a major sales bump thanks to the rare disease drugs it obtained via its $39 billion acquisition of Alexion in 2020, for example.) So, can AstraZeneca do it again? AstraZeneca said Tuesday that it did not expect its increasingly large and advancing obesity franchise to start bringing in cash until after the 2030 deadline. And it is facing a handful of short-term headwinds, “including the loss of exclusivity for Brilinta, the impact of Soliris biosimilars and Farxiga generics,” as CFO Aradhana Sarin put it in the Tuesday briefing. The company also expects to take a hit from the so-called “most favored nation” deal it struck with the US government in October. To offset these drags on revenue, several of AstraZeneca’s as-yet-unapproved products will need to blossom into blockbusters, with Soriot saying that it currently has 16 blockbusters but hopes to have 25 by 2030. Chief among these is baxdrostat, a therapy for treatment-resistant hypertension that has posted impressive late-stage data . An approval decision is expected in the second quarter of this year, but data on a potential rival drug from Mineralys Therapeutics looked slightly better , and it will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out in the market — particularly as Mineralys is sometimes talked of as a takeover target. Another drug AstraZeneca needs to perform is its breast cancer pill camizestrant. This is a selective estrogen receptor degrader, or SERD, which has been detailed as a success in a first-line setting, and could reach market in the first half. But Roche also has a SERD, giredestrant, which it said last month could become its biggest-ever money-spinner. The two drugs are aiming to treat slightly different populations, but once approved, oncologists could use them off-label in the same settings. And of the two drugs, Roche’s is the buzzier. But these are just two potential billion-dollar sellers — AstraZeneca wants to find nine in the next five years. It’s a big ask. But it is, perhaps, not impossible.