Roivant Sciences Aktienkurs
Vergleich mit Peer Group
📊 Peer Group
📈 Was ist das?
Die Peer Group sind die Unternehmen mit dem ähnlichsten Geschäftsmodell. Sie dienen als Vergleichsmaßstab, um eine Aktie einzuordnen.
🧮 Wie wird sie ausgewählt?
Nach Ähnlichkeit des Geschäftsmodells, also Unternehmen aus derselben Branche, mit vergleichbaren Produkten und einer ähnlichen Kundengruppe. Nur so vergleichst du Äpfel mit Äpfeln.
🏛️ Wofür ist sie wichtig?
Ob eine Aktie günstig oder teuer ist, lässt sich am ehesten im Vergleich beurteilen. Ein KGV von 18 oder ein EV/FCF von 20 wirkt je nach Maßstab günstig oder teuer. Die Peer Group liefert dabei den treffsichersten Maßstab: Unternehmen mit ähnlichem Geschäftsmodell, die denselben Bedingungen unterliegen.
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
Liegt eine Kennzahl unter dem Peer-Durchschnitt, ist die Aktie relativ günstiger bewertet, über dem Durchschnitt entsprechend teurer. Ein Abschlag zur Peer Group kann eine Chance sein, aber auch einen Grund haben (zum Beispiel geringeres Wachstum). Der Vergleich ist ein Startpunkt, kein Urteil.
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📘 Marktkapitalisierung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Marktkapitalisierung zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen laut Börse aktuell wert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft Unternehmen in Größenklassen (Large, Mid, Small Cap) einzuordnen und gibt Hinweise auf Marktmacht und Stabilität.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Große Unternehmen gelten als stabiler, zahlen oft Dividenden, wachsen aber langsamer.
- Kleine Firmen können stärker wachsen, sind aber schwankungsanfälliger.
- Die Marktkapitalisierung ist ein guter Indikator für Unternehmensgröße, aber kein Maß für Unter- oder Überbewertung.
📘 Enterprise Value (Unternehmenswert)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Enterprise Value (EV) zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich kostet, wenn man es komplett übernehmen würde – inklusive Schulden und abzüglich Cash.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
(= Marktkapitalisierung + Nettoverschuldung)
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der EV ist eine realistischere Bewertungsbasis als die Marktkapitalisierung, da er die Kapitalstruktur berücksichtigt. Er ist Grundlage für Kennzahlen wie EV/FCF oder EV/Sales.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Der Enterprise Value zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich wert ist – unabhängig davon, wie es finanziert ist.
- Er ist besonders wichtig für professionelle Investoren, da er eine objektivere Grundlage für Bewertungsvergleiche bietet als die Marktkapitalisierung allein.
- Ein Unternehmen mit hoher Verschuldung erscheint im EV teurer, eines mit viel Cash günstiger – auch wenn sie an der Börse gleich viel wert sind.
📘 Nettoverschuldung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettoverschuldung zeigt, wie viele Schulden nach Abzug des verfügbaren Cashs tatsächlich verbleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen von Fremdkapital abhängig ist – und wie gut es in der Lage ist, seine Schulden kurzfristig zu bedienen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine niedrige oder negative Nettoverschuldung bedeutet hohe finanzielle Stabilität.
- Unternehmen mit viel Cash und geringer Verschuldung sind besser gerüstet für Krisen.
- Eine hohe Nettoverschuldung erhöht das Risiko – besonders bei steigenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
📘 Cash
📈 Was ist das?
Der Cashbestand zeigt, wie viele liquide Mittel einem Unternehmen sofort zur Verfügung stehen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Er gibt Auskunft über die finanzielle Flexibilität: Ein hoher Cashbestand ermöglicht Investitionen, Rückkäufe oder Krisenresistenz.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Cashbestand zeigt finanzielle Stärke und Handlungsspielraum.
- Cash kann für Investitionen, Schuldentilgung oder Aktienrückkäufe genutzt werden.
- Allerdings: Zu viel ungenutztes Kapital kann auch auf mangelnde Investitionsideen hinweisen.
📘 Anzahl ausstehender Aktien
📈 Was ist das?
Die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien gibt an, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell im Umlauf sind und von Investoren gehalten werden.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie ist die Grundlage für viele Kennzahlen wie Gewinn je Aktie (EPS), Marktkapitalisierung oder KGV.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Je weniger Aktien im Umlauf sind, desto höher fällt z. B. der Gewinn je Aktie aus – wichtig für Bewertung und Dividendenrendite.
- Aktienrückkäufe verringern die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien – und steigern den Wert je Aktie.
- Kapitalerhöhungen haben den gegenteiligen Effekt: mehr Aktien → Verwässerung der bestehenden Anteile.
📘 Kurs-Gewinn-Verhältnis (KGV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KGV zeigt, wie oft der Gewinn pro Aktie im aktuellen Aktienkurs enthalten ist – also wie „teuer“ eine Aktie im Verhältnis zum Gewinn ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KGV gehört zu den bekanntesten Bewertungskennzahlen. Es hilft Anlegern einzuschätzen, ob eine Aktie im Vergleich zu ihrem Gewinn eher günstig oder teuer erscheint.
🧮 Berechnung
📊 KGV (TTM) = bezogen auf den Gewinn der letzten 12 Monate (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KGV kann auf eine günstige Bewertung hindeuten – oder auf Probleme im Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein hohes KGV kann Wachstumserwartungen widerspiegeln – oder eine überbewertete Aktie.
📘 Kurs-Umsatz-Verhältnis (KUV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KUV zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen – unabhängig vom Gewinn.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KUV ist besonders bei wachstumsstarken oder noch nicht profitablen Unternehmen hilfreich. Es zeigt, wie hoch der Umsatz an der Börse bewertet wird.
🧮 Berechnung
Marktkapitalisierung = 25,86 Mrd. $ | Umsatz (TTM) = 7,53 Mio. $
Marktkapitalisierung = 25,86 Mrd. $ | Umsatz erwartet = 52,30 Mio. $
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KUV kann auf Unterbewertung hindeuten – oder auf schwache Margen.
- Ein hohes KUV kann hohe Erwartungen widerspiegeln – oder übermäßigen Optimismus.
- Besonders sinnvoll bei Wachstumsunternehmen, bei denen der Gewinn oder Free Cashflow (noch) keine Aussagekraft hat.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Umsatz (EV/Sales)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/Sales zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen, wenn man auch Schulden und Cash berücksichtigt – es ist eine kapitalstrukturbereinigte Version des KUV.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl eignet sich besonders für den Vergleich von Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Verschuldung – sie zeigt, wie teuer ein Unternehmen tatsächlich im Verhältnis zum Umsatz ist.
🧮 Berechnung
Enterprise Value = 22,02 Mrd. $ | Umsatz (TTM) = 7,53 Mio. $
Enterprise Value = 22,02 Mrd. $ | Umsatz erwartet = 52,30 Mio. $
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EV/Sales ist neutral gegenüber der Kapitalstruktur und eignet sich gut für Unternehmensvergleiche.
- Ein niedriges Verhältnis kann auf eine günstig bewertete Aktie hindeuten – ein hohes Verhältnis auf hohe Erwartungen oder Überbewertung.
- Besonders nützlich bei wachstumsstarken, noch nicht profitablen Firmen.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Free Cashflow (EV/FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/FCF zeigt, wie viele Jahre es dauern würde, bis ein Unternehmen seinen Unternehmenswert durch freien Cashflow „zurückverdient”.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Unternehmen auf Basis ihrer tatsächlichen Cash-Erträge zu bewerten – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder buchhalterischem Gewinn.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges EV/FCF deutet auf eine günstige Bewertung bei starker Cashgenerierung hin.
- Ein hohes EV/FCF kann entweder auf Optimismus oder auf temporär schwachen Cashflow hindeuten.
- Besonders hilfreich bei reifen, profitablen Unternehmen mit stabilen Cashflows.
📘 Kurs-Buchwert-Verhältnis (KBV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KBV zeigt, wie hoch der Marktwert eines Unternehmens im Verhältnis zu seinem bilanziellen Eigenkapital ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KBV ist besonders bei Substanzwerten (z. B. Banken, Industrie) relevant. Es hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob ein Unternehmen unter oder über seinem buchhalterischen Vermögen bewertet ist.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein KBV unter 1 kann auf Unterbewertung oder schwache Rentabilität hindeuten.
- Ein KBV über 1 zeigt, dass der Markt dem Unternehmen Mehrwert über den Buchwert hinaus zuschreibt (z. B. Marken, Patente, Wachstum).
- Das KBV eignet sich besonders gut für Unternehmen mit stabilen, materiellen Vermögenswerten.
📘 Eigenkapitalquote
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalquote zeigt, wie hoch der Anteil des Eigenkapitals an der Bilanzsumme eines Unternehmens ist – also wie stark es sich aus eigenen Mitteln finanziert.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote steht für finanzielle Stabilität, Krisenfestigkeit und gute Bonität. Sie ist besonders relevant bei der Beurteilung der Verschuldung.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote signalisiert finanzielle Stabilität – besonders in Krisenzeiten.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf ein höheres Risiko oder eine aggressive Verschuldung hinweisen.
- Wichtig: Die Eigenkapitalquote sollte immer gemeinsam mit der Eigenkapitalrendite betrachtet werden. Nur so lässt sich beurteilen, ob ein Unternehmen nicht nur solide, sondern auch effizient wirtschaftet.
📘 Eigenkapitalrendite (ROE)
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen mit dem Kapital seiner Aktionäre arbeitet – also wie viel Gewinn es pro Euro Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite ist eine zentrale Rentabilitätskennzahl. Sie hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob das Unternehmen eine attraktive Verzinsung auf das eingesetzte Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalrendite spricht für ein starkes, effizientes Geschäftsmodell.
- Besonders interessant ist sie bei kapitalintensiven Firmen oder solchen mit hoher Eigenkapitalquote.
- Wichtig: Ein sehr hoher ROE kann auch auf hohe Schulden hinweisen – daher sollte sie immer im Kontext mit der Eigenkapitalquote betrachtet werden.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 Was ist das?
ROCE misst die Gesamtrentabilität eines Unternehmens – also wie effizient es das eingesetzte Kapital (Eigen- und Fremdkapital) zur Gewinnerzielung nutzt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Das eingesetzte Kapital ist das gesamte betriebsnotwendige Kapital, unabhängig von der Finanzierungsquelle.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROCE eignet sich besonders gut für den Vergleich unterschiedlich finanzierter Unternehmen. Es zeigt, wie effektiv ein Unternehmen Kapital investiert – unabhängig von der Kapitalstruktur.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROCE zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen sein Kapital effizient einsetzt – unabhängig davon, ob es durch Eigen- oder Fremdkapital finanziert ist.
- Je höher der ROCE im Vergleich zu ähnlichen Unternehmen, desto mehr Wert schafft das Unternehmen mit seinem investierten Kapital.
- Besonders wichtig ist der ROCE bei Firmen mit hohen Investitionen – z. B. in Industrie, Energie oder Infrastruktur.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 Was ist das?
ROIC zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen das Kapital investiert, das langfristig im operativen Geschäft gebunden ist – unabhängig davon, ob es aus Eigen- oder Fremdkapital stammt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
- NOPAT = „Net Operating Profit After Taxes“
- Investiertes Kapital = operatives Vermögen abzüglich nicht-verzinster Schulden
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROIC ist eine der präzisesten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung der Kapitalrendite – besonders im Vergleich zur Eigenkapitalrendite, weil es Verzerrungen durch Schulden vermeidet. Er zeigt, ob ein Unternehmen Mehrwert für alle Kapitalgeber schafft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROIC zeigt, wie gut ein Unternehmen mit dem tatsächlich investierten (betriebsnotwendigen) Kapital wirtschaftet.
- Im Unterschied zu ROCE wird nur Kapital betrachtet, das wirklich zur Finanzierung operativer Aktivitäten dient – und verzinst werden muss.
- Besonders hilfreich, um die Kapitalrendite von Unternehmen mit viel „überschüssigem“ Kapital oder zinsfreien Verbindlichkeiten realistisch zu vergleichen.
📘 Verschuldungsgrad (Leverage Ratio)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Verschuldungsgrad zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen durch verzinsliche Schulden (z. B. Kredite und Anleihen) im Verhältnis zum Eigenkapital finanziert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Kennzahl hilft, das finanzielle Risiko und die Abhängigkeit von Fremdkapital zu beurteilen. Ein hoher Verschuldungsgrad kann die Eigenkapitalrendite steigern – birgt aber auch erhöhte Risiken bei Zinsanstiegen oder Liquiditätsengpässen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Verschuldungsgrad steht für finanzielle Stabilität und Unabhängigkeit.
- Ein hoher Wert kann auf erhöhte Risiken hinweisen – insbesondere bei schwankenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
- Wichtig: Immer im Kontext zur Branche und Kapitalintensität bewerten.
📘 Umsatz
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen insgesamt mit seinen Produkten und Dienstleistungen verdient – also den Bruttoerlös vor Abzug von Kosten.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Umsatz ist eine der zentralen Kennzahlen zur Einschätzung der Unternehmensgröße, Marktstellung und Wachstumskraft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein wachsender Umsatz zeigt eine steigende Nachfrage und kann ein guter Frühindikator für Gewinnsteigerungen sein.
- Vergleiche von aktuellem und erwartetem Umsatz geben Hinweise auf das Marktumfeld und Analystenerwartungen.
- Wichtig: Starker Umsatz allein genügt nicht – auch Margen und Profitabilität zählen.
📘 EBITDA
📈 Was ist das?
EBITDA steht für „Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens, bereinigt um bilanztechnische und finanzierungsbedingte Effekte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBITDA ist eine verbreitete Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der operativen Leistungsfähigkeit – insbesondere bei kapitalintensiven Unternehmen oder im internationalen Vergleich.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes oder wachsendes EBITDA spricht für starke operative Erträge – unabhängig von Bilanzierung oder Steuerlast.
- EBITDA ist besonders nützlich, um Unternehmen branchenübergreifend zu vergleichen.
- Wichtig: EBITDA ist keine offizielle Gewinnkennzahl – Abschreibungen und Finanzierungskosten werden ausgeklammert.
📘 EBIT
📈 Was ist das?
EBIT steht für „Earnings Before Interest and Taxes“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen und Steuern. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Finanzierungs- und Steueraufwand.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBIT ist eine zentrale Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der Profitabilität aus dem Kerngeschäft – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder Steuersystem.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes EBIT deutet auf ein profitables Kerngeschäft hin – vor Zinslasten oder steuerlichen Effekten.
- Es erlaubt objektivere Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Finanzierung.
- Im Vergleich mit EBITDA zeigt EBIT bereits den Einfluss von Abschreibungen auf das operative Ergebnis.
📘 Nettogewinn
📈 Was ist das?
Der Nettogewinn ist der verbleibende Jahresüberschuss (oder -fehlbetrag) eines Unternehmens – nach Abzug aller Kosten, Steuern, Zinsen und Abschreibungen
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Nettogewinn ist die zentrale Erfolgskennzahl – er zeigt, wie profitabel ein Unternehmen nach allen Kosten tatsächlich arbeitet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein steigender Nettogewinn zeigt, dass das Unternehmen effizient wirtschaftet – trotz aller Kosten.
- Die Entwicklung des Gewinns beeinflusst z. B. direkt das KGV und weitere Kennzahlen.
- Im Zeitverlauf lässt sich ablesen, wie stabil und profitabel ein Geschäftsmodell wirklich ist.
📘 Free Cashflow (FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow gibt Aufschluss über die echte finanzielle Stärke eines Unternehmens – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln. Er zeigt, wie viel Spielraum für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldenabbau besteht.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow bedeutet, dass ein Unternehmen echte Finanzkraft besitzt – unabhängig vom bilanzierten Gewinn.
- Er ist oft die solideste Grundlage für nachhaltige Dividenden und Aktienrückkäufe.
- Sinkender FCF kann ein Warnsignal sein – auch wenn der Gewinn stabil aussieht.
📘 Umsatzwachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Umsatzwachstum zeigt, wie stark sich die Erlöse eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert haben – tatsächlich (TTM) und auf Prognosebasis (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (Umsatz erwartet ÷ Umsatz Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein wachsender Umsatz ist ein zentrales Signal für steigende Nachfrage, Geschäftsausweitung und Marktanteilsgewinne – besonders bei Wachstumsunternehmen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachstum ist der Motor langfristiger Wertsteigerung – besonders bei Technologie- und Wachstumsaktien.
- Wichtig ist nicht nur das aktuelle Wachstum, sondern auch dessen Nachhaltigkeit.
- Prognosen zeigen, ob Analysten weiteres Potenzial erwarten – oder eine Verlangsamung.
📘 EBITDA-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBITDA-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBITDA ÷ EBITDA Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein steigendes EBITDA ist ein Zeichen für verbesserte operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Finanzierungsstruktur oder Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Starkes EBITDA-Wachstum signalisiert operative Effizienz und Skalierung – besonders relevant in Wachstumsphasen.
- EBITDA-Wachstum ist ein Frühindikator für Margen- und Gewinnentwicklung – sollte aber stets im Zusammenhang mit Umsatz und EBIT betrachtet werden.
📘 EBIT Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBIT-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens (nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern) im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gewachsen ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBIT ÷ EBIT Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein direkter Indikator für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des operativen Geschäfts – unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (Abschreibungen).
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Steigendes EBIT signalisiert wachsende operative Rentabilität – auch unter Berücksichtigung von Abschreibungen.
- Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein wichtiges Maß zur Beurteilung von Geschäftsmodellen mit hohen Investitionskosten.
- Im Zusammenspiel mit Umsatz- und EBITDA-Wachstum ergibt sich ein umfassendes Bild zur operativen Entwicklung.
📘 Nettogewinn-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Nettogewinn-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark der Jahresüberschuss eines Unternehmens gegenüber dem Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist – sowohl tatsächlich (TTM) als auch auf Basis von Prognosen (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwarteter Nettogewinn ÷ Nettogewinn Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Der erwartete Wert basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Gewinn ist die entscheidende Ergebnisgröße für ein Unternehmen. Ein wachsender Nettogewinn deutet auf steigende Effizienz, stabile Kostenkontrolle und nachhaltige Ertragskraft hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachsender Nettogewinn stärkt die Bewertung, Dividendenfähigkeit und Kursfantasie.
- Stagnierender oder rückläufiger Gewinn trotz Umsatzwachstum kann auf Margendruck hinweisen.
📘 Free Cashflow-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Free-Cashflow-Wachstum zeigt, wie sich der freie Mittelzufluss eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert hat – also der Betrag, der nach allen operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Free Cashflow ist der echte, verfügbare Geldzufluss. Wachstum in diesem Bereich ist ein Zeichen für finanzielle Stärke und steigende Flexibilität bei Dividenden, Rückkäufen oder Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Sinkender Free Cashflow kann auf steigende Investitionen, höhere Kosten oder stagnierende operative Erträge hindeuten.
- Besonders bei Dividendenwerten ist das FCF-Wachstum wichtig – denn Dividenden werden letztlich aus dem verfügbaren Cash gezahlt.
- Ein negativer Trend sollte genauer analysiert werden – er ist nicht zwangsläufig schlecht, aber potenziell ein Warnsignal.
📘 Bruttomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Bruttomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug der direkten Herstellungskosten (Material, Produktion) als Bruttogewinn übrig bleibt – also der „Rohgewinn“ eines Unternehmens.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Auch: Bruttomarge = Bruttogewinn ÷ Umsatz × 100
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Bruttomarge gibt Aufschluss über die Profitabilität eines Produkts oder Geschäftsmodells vor Fixkosten, Steuern und Zinsen. Sie zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen produzieren oder einkaufen kann.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Bruttomarge deutet auf starke Preissetzungsmacht und effiziente Herstellung hin.
- Sinkende Bruttomargen können auf Kostensteigerungen oder Preisdruck hindeuten.
- Besonders im Vergleich zu Wettbewerbern liefert die Bruttomarge wertvolle Einblicke in die Geschäftsqualität.
📘 EBITDA-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBITDA-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz als operativer Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen (EBITDA) übrig bleibt. Sie misst die operative Effizienz – ohne Verzerrungen durch Finanzierung oder Buchwerte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBITDA-Marge hilft zu verstehen, wie viel operativer Gewinn ein Unternehmen aus jedem Euro Umsatz erzielt – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder steuerlichem Umfeld.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBITDA-Marge zeigt starke operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Bilanzierungseffekten.
- Die Marge ermöglicht gute Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen und Branchen.
- Ein stabiler oder wachsender Wert kann auf effiziente Kostenkontrolle und Skalierbarkeit hindeuten.
📘 EBIT-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBIT-Marge zeigt, wie viel Prozent des Umsatzes als operativer Gewinn nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern übrig bleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBIT-Marge misst die operative Ertragskraft eines Unternehmens unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (z. B. Maschinen, Anlagen). Sie eignet sich gut zum Vergleich von Geschäftsmodellen mit unterschiedlich hohen Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBIT-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen auch nach Abschreibungen effizient arbeitet.
- Sie ist besonders relevant in kapitalintensiven Branchen.
- Langfristig stabile oder steigende Margen sind ein Zeichen wirtschaftlicher Stärke und Preissetzungsmacht.
📘 Nettomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz am Ende als „Reingewinn“ übrig bleibt – also nach Abzug aller Kosten, Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Nettomarge gibt an, wie effizient ein Unternehmen über alle Stufen hinweg wirtschaftet. Sie zeigt, wie viel Gewinn tatsächlich je Euro Umsatz übrig bleibt.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Nettomarge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nicht nur operativ stark ist, sondern auch seine Finanzierung und Steuerbelastung im Griff hat.
- Vergleiche mit Wettbewerbern geben Einblicke in die wirtschaftliche Qualität.
- Sinkende Nettomargen trotz Umsatzwachstum können ein Warnsignal sein – etwa für steigende Kosten oder sinkende Effizienz.
📘 Free Cashflow Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug aller operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen tatsächlich als freier Mittelzufluss übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Marge misst die echte Liquidität, die ein Unternehmen erwirtschaftet – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder Abschreibungen. Sie ist besonders relevant für Dividenden, Rückkäufe und Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nachhaltig liquide Mittel erwirtschaftet.
- Sie ist ein starkes Signal für finanzielle Stabilität und Ausschüttungspotenzial.
- Wichtig ist der langfristige Trend – sinkende Werte können auf steigende Investitionen oder rückläufige operative Effizienz hindeuten.
📘 Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS)
📈 Was ist das?
Das Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS) zeigt, wie viel Gewinn auf eine einzelne Aktie entfällt – und ist eine der wichtigsten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung von Unternehmen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die verwässerte Aktienanzahl berücksichtigt auch potenzielle neue Aktien, etwa durch Optionen, Wandelanleihen oder andere Umtauschrechte.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EPS bildet die Basis für viele Bewertungskennzahlen wie KGV, PEG oder Payout Ratio. Es macht den Gewinn für Aktionäre vergleichbar – unabhängig von der Unternehmensgröße.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EPS hilft, die Profitabilität pro Aktie zu erfassen – und ist besonders wichtig im Zeitvergleich oder im Vergleich mit Analystenschätzungen.
- Steigendes EPS kann ein Zeichen für stabiles Wachstum oder Aktienrückkäufe sein.
- Wichtig: Verwende verwässertes EPS für realistische Bewertungen – besonders bei stark aktienbasierten Vergütungssystemen.
📘 Free Cashflow je Aktie (FCF je Aktie)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow je Aktie zeigt, wie viel freier Mittelzufluss einem Unternehmen pro Aktie zur Verfügung steht – nach Investitionen, aber vor Dividenden oder Schuldentilgung.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der FCF je Aktie zeigt, wie viel liquide Mittel pro Aktie tatsächlich im Unternehmen verbleiben – wichtig für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldentilgung. Im Gegensatz zum Gewinn ist er schwerer manipulierbar und daher besonders aussagekräftig.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow je Aktie ist ein Zeichen für hohe finanzielle Flexibilität.
- Er zeigt, wie viel Kapital ein Unternehmen effektiv einsetzen oder ausschütten kann.
- Besonders relevant für dividendenstarke Unternehmen oder solche mit starker Kapitalrendite.
📘 Short Interest
📈 Was ist das?
Short Interest zeigt, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell leerverkauft wurden – also von Investoren geliehen und verkauft, in der Erwartung fallender Kurse.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Der Wert zeigt den Anteil der Aktien, der aktuell auf fallende Kurse spekuliert wird.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Short Interest dient als Stimmungsindikator: Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Skepsis oder negative Erwartungen gegenüber dem Unternehmen hin – kann aber auch zu einem „Short Squeeze“ führen, wenn der Kurs plötzlich steigt.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Short Interest deutet auf Vertrauen in das Unternehmen hin.
- Ein hoher Wert kann ein Warnsignal sein – oder eine Chance, wenn sich die Stimmung dreht.
- Besonders spannend in volatilen Märkten oder vor wichtigen Quartalszahlen.
📘 Employees
📈 Was ist das?
Die Mitarbeiteranzahl zeigt, wie viele Personen ein Unternehmen weltweit beschäftigt – ein Indikator für Größe, Struktur und Geschäftsmodell.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft bei der Einschätzung von Skaleneffekten, Effizienz und Personalkosten. Zusammen mit Umsatz und Gewinn lassen sich Kennzahlen wie Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ableiten.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Viele Mitarbeiter bedeuten große operative Komplexität – aber auch hohes Umsatzpotenzial.
- Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ist ein wichtiger Indikator für Effizienz.
- Besonders spannend bei stark wachsenden Tech- oder Industrieunternehmen.
📘 Umsatz je Mitarbeiter
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz je Mitarbeiter zeigt, wie viel Erlös ein Unternehmen durchschnittlich pro Beschäftigtem erwirtschaftet – eine Kennzahl für Effizienz und Produktivität.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die Mitarbeiterzahl stammt in der Regel aus dem letzten verfügbaren Jahresbericht.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Geschäftsmodelle zu vergleichen – insbesondere zwischen arbeitsintensiven und technologiegetriebenen Unternehmen. Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Automatisierung, Effizienz oder hohen Wertschöpfungsanteil hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Umsatz je Mitarbeiter spricht für ein skalierbares und margenstarkes Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf arbeitsintensive Prozesse oder geringere Wertschöpfung hinweisen.
- Besonders hilfreich beim Vergleich von Tech- vs. Industrieunternehmen.
Roivant Sciences Aktie Analyse
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Analystenmeinungen
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Roivant Sciences Events
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Roivant Sciences — Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Good afternoon. Welcome back from lunch. To introduce myself, my name is Richard Wagner. I work with Jason Gerberry on the U.S. large-cap pharma names. I'm based in London. On behalf of my colleagues, Chi Fong and Dina Ramadane, covering analysts for Roivant and Immunovant, respectively, I'm pleased to welcome Matthew Gline, CEO of Roivant for a 40-minute fireside chat.
Thank you, Richard.
Roivant has achieved several key milestones this year, including positive Phase II readout of your once-daily inhaled sGC mosliciguat in PH-ILD and approval of your TYK2 JAK inhibitor, brepocitinib in dermatomyositis. We still have multiple readouts coming up before year-end. To help level set the discussions, what would be the company's top priorities in the next 12 months?
Yes, perfect. So look, it's been a period of a lot of progress for us. It's been a great 12 months behind. We just, as you mentioned, got brepocitinib, now LISRAYA approved, and we're making some real progress on the SGC front on the pulmonary hypertension franchise. Look, coming up the next 12 months, very busy 12 months ahead. Obviously, one of the most important things for us is with brepocitinib now in the market, we're in the early innings of that launch, but we want to go as well as we possibly can have it. And so there's a lot of work going into making that successful.
We have some major clinical data coming in brepocitinib, including between now and the end of the year in non-infectious uveitis, where we haven't given specific guidance on when, but relatively soon, we'll have data from that Phase III program. If that's successful, we'll then file registration there, and that would be a second potential registered indication for LISRAYA for brepocitinib.
And then after that or in addition to that, we have a bunch of data sort of going on as it work for our FcRn programs at Immunovant, including later this year, updates on both the CLE program as well as probably more importantly, the D2T RA, the late-line rheumatoid arthritis program, where we'll talk about our development plan there and our path forward after putting out some good early data earlier this year. And then next year for Roivant is a huge year with registrational data, less importantly in myasthenia gravis and much more importantly in Graves' disease, major indication for. So those are sort of upcoming data. And then other than that, I'd say major priorities are getting everything else up and running to sort of start new studies for the pulmonary hypertension program and to initiate new indications for all of the other drugs as well.
Thank you. That's a great introduction. So I'd like to start with brepocitinib or brepo, you mentioned 1 month into the launch in dermatomyositis. What can you say about the launch experience? How is it tracking with your internal expectations so far?
Well, our both internal and externally disclosed path there is slow and steady. That's what we said over and over and over again. The truth is we're 3 weeks in. So there's really very little to say that's productive. I'll say what I think most investors know, which is if you talk to treating physicians, at least the KOL community, there's a tonne of enthusiasm and that has certainly translated into our early experience. But what that means in terms of scripts and coverage and everything else, it's just too early to know, but we feel great about what we're doing and optimistic that we're going to have a good outcome there. But slow and steady remains the guidance. Look, first time there has been a novel therapy launched in dermatomyositis in a very long time or ever. And so it's just hard to know the unknown.
You mentioned scripts. So what type of launch metrics can investors expect on the earnings call? Will you present the patient numbers, enrollment forms?
Yes. What we've mostly said about this is that we're focused on the launch itself and focused on net sales is the ultimate judgment. I don't -- we have not given specific guidance on what metrics we're going to provide. I'm sure we won't be able to help ourselves from providing some subset of that stuff. But the honest answer is it feels like companies have mostly not been rewarded for providing a lot of detail and guidance on this. So I think mostly, we're focused on having the launch itself go well, having the patient experience be positive, having the reimbursement piece be positive and letting the sales speak for itself over the medium term.
Good. Do you see any read-through from the evolving competitive landscape for the commercial opportunity for brepo and [indiscernible]?
Mostly no. I guess the sort of most sort of obvious version of that question is argenx put out their myositis data whatever it was late in the summer. I think prior to their receiving that data set, my sense is that their expectations for DM were relatively muted, and they had more hope in IMNM. Indeed, they hit a p-value in the IMNM subset of patients as well as for the study overall and did not get a p-value in the dermatomyositis subset. That said, I think their data in DM probably exceeded their own internal expectations. And it's clear from their body language and their voice would like to see the product approved in DM ultimately.
I think they've been a little bit equivocal on whether -- what that's going to take from a clinical development perspective. But I think a reasonable expectation is they'll have to run a study in dermatomyositis, potentially some sort of small bridging study similar to what they did seronegative MG, but we'll have to see. Our view commercially all along has been, look, this is an orphan indication with very high morbidity, reasonable mortality, a lot of unmet need. I think a rising tide is going to lift all boats here in the sense of like my hope is that they get approved. I think their approval will be good for us. I think brepo remains in DM specifically, the drug in position. But I think it would be good if they got approved as well over time. And I think their data was reasonably impressive for what they clearly view as the secondary indication of myositis.
Okay. Good. So turning to non-infectious uveitis. What outcome would you define as a good outcome for brepocitinib?
Yes. So this is another indication where there hasn't been a lot of medical innovation. And so there's a lot of unmet need. This is the third leading cause of blindness in the U.S. It's a pretty devastating disease and tolerance among the ophthalmology community for occular inflammation is very low because it can lead to blindness and permanent damage. The only sort of approved "novel" next-generation therapy is HUMIRA. And there's about 50,000 -- a little bit less than 50,000 NIU patients currently on TNFs.
Our Phase II data was very, very good on cross-trial comparison. The primary endpoint in these studies is time to treatment failure, which is what it sounds like. And in the HUMIRA studies, placebo was 3 months and change and HUMIRA itself had like, I think, 5.6 months time to treatment failure. In our Phase II study, we didn't have a placebo arm, but our high dose was greater than 12 months on average treatment failure. That was as far as we measured. So a pretty significant difference from HUMIRA experience.
I think that leaves a lot of room. I think even if we do not wind up being in the Phase III program sort of "better than" HUMIRA cross-trial comparisons, it may not matter that much in the sense that HUMIRA has a pretty high treatment failure rate and these patients are generally looking for new options relatively early into treatment. So I think we're going to have -- as long as we're statistically significant, we should have a drug and a good commercial opportunity. And then within that envelope, the better the data, the better we look comparatively, I think the better our chances are of earlier adoption, earlier in the treatment cascade.
Yes, that was my next question. Where would you see it positioned commercially given that the TNF biosimilars are available?
Yes. Look, I think you got to assume that the default expectation here is that we live in a HUMIRA refractory or TNF refractory population, both from an access perspective and frankly, the FDA's general stance on JAK inhibitor and JAK inhibitor-related mechanisms in TNF-approved indications is that a TNF is the right first bet.
I think there's 2 important caveats to that. One is until we've seen the data, it's just impossible to know. And I think because this indication can lead to blindness, because tolerance for inflammation is very low, I think it's possible if our data is good enough that will push aggressively for earlier line use, and that may help both with the FDA ultimately and with payers. And I as a reminder, biosimilar TNFs available, et cetera, in a world where docs feel like they need to get patients through a TNF in order to get them on to an efficacious therapy where data is very good.
I think you could just see TNF use increase as docs are trying to cycle patients on to brepocitinib over time. So I think we'll have to sort of see how that plays out. But I think a reasonable base case expectation is that we live in a sort of TNF refractory world. And again, there's 50,000 NIU patients on TNFs. Many of them have inflammatory comorbidities like an RA or an IBD or something like that. But anyway, if you're on a TNF for any of those indications and you develop by definition, a TNF failure, you switch patients on to something else.
Okay. You mentioned soon having the Phase III soon. Can you narrow it?
We have not given guidance beyond second half is the official guidance on it. We announced that the 52-week study fully enrolled sometime prior to November of last year. So that puts us squarely in the second half -- hope we are in the second half now. I have not seen any data yet.
Okay. No data in-house. So turning to 1402, the FcRn you mentioned, and you set up the different readouts very nicely. So starting with difficult-to-treat RA, expecting the randomized period 2 data in the second half of '26, you've guided to sharing a comprehensive update. Also caution that period 2 may not look as great as the open-label period 1 data. So can you speak about the potential data scenarios if you hit or not in period 2? And what would be the implications for?
So as a reminder, this is sort of an interesting study. So this is a study of our anti-FcRn antibody IMVT-1402 in late-line treatment refractory RA. So these are patients who have failed at least 2 sort of biologics classes in RA, I think IL-6s, TNFs, JAK inhibitors, et cetera. Many of them, I think 60% have failed a JAK inhibitor, for example. So these patients have few other pharmacotherapeutic options and are quite sick. And the study we ran was an open -- was a randomized withdrawal trial, open-label run-in period followed by -- for those who had achieved an ACR20 response in period 1, they were then rerandomized either a lower dose or they either stayed on drug, went to a lower dose or dropped off altogether on placebo. That was sort of a blinded randomized withdrawal period.
Now the period 1 data that we generated, the open-label data was very striking. So of the patients in period 1, about 70% of them achieved an ACR20, about 50% of them achieved an ACR50 and about 35% of them achieved an ACR70. Now if you think about the period 2 population as denominated in that 70% of the ACR20 responders, that means like almost 2/3 of the period 2 patients had an ACR50 or greater response and almost half or about half had an ACR70 response. The primary endpoint in period 2 was loss of ACR20. So you've got all these patients who have achieved an ACR70 or an ACR50 who in order to be primary endpoint responders have to drop down below ACR20. It just feels like a pretty high bar to imagine hitting statistical significance in period 2, given the depth of response in period 1.
So what that means is what we said at the time we put the period 1 data, I think period 2 from like a data perspective is probably less informative than it could be because the period 1 data was so good. Now the good thing is the likelihood that we're even an open-label study, ACR70 spontaneous ACR70 responses don't occur in this RA population very often. So when we look at period 1 and we're like, okay, we have a drug. Like this is very likely some signal here. I think we'd like to see some amount of separation in the period 2 data that the patients who went into placebo lose response ideally faster than the patients who are still on drug.
There is some tail pharmacodynamic effect with the drug in the first few weeks of that period is still working. The randomized withdrawal is only 12 weeks long. So it's hard to know exactly. We'd like to see some separation in order just like make us confident about Phase III. Other than that, I'm not sure we're going to learn that much from the clinical data here given what we saw in period 1. So I think like success here looks like no red flags that would stop us from running a Phase III study. And then the real question mark isn't so much what is the period 2 data. The real question mark is what is the development path forward for the drug in this subset of RA patients?
It's a subset of RA patients which there have been vanishingly few clinical trials run. There's 1 or 2 ongoing now, mostly in like T-cell engager or CAR-T kind of therapies where there's -- or B-cell depleting therapies where the risk profile looks pretty different. I think the question for us, for the agency is, what are you going to try and make us do? What are we going to be comfortable with? And there's a pretty wide envelope from relatively small hundreds of patients, like a few hundred patient studies to the typical thing in RA development will be multiple 1,500-plus patient RA studies.
It would be surprising to me if FDA in this late-line population want us to run something more like that program, but we won't know until we talk to them. And I think the big update later this year is going to be like what have we aligned on with FDA. I think there -- it is imaginable that FDA could dig their heels in, in a way that would make us question the program overall, but the most likely outcome is we get comfortable with some kind of middle ground and we go forward.
Do you think you could file on a single Phase III?
I think that is a question we will have to discuss with FDA. The rheum division is historically relatively conservative on that point. But again, this is a patient population with few options. And the data from the open-label period at least here was impressive enough that it's certainly a conversation worth having. But I'm not sure is the answer.
I do think -- we will see other drugs in this patient population approved with comparatively small and comparatively few studies because some of those drugs will be CAR-Ts and T-cell engagers where there will just be a preference to expose as few patients as possible in the clinical setting without an obvious risk-benefit discussion to that kind of risk. And so I think we have that going for us as we go in front of the agency. We're like they're clearly going to be focused on streamlined studies in this patient population, which I hope we can take advantage of.
There's also the cutaneous lupus or CLE POC headline data at the end of the year. You've described CLE as a commercial hurdle as well as a scientific one. What would 1402 need to demonstrate for the company to commit capital behind the Phase III program?
That's a good question. And we've always described -- and frankly, we described D2T RA the same way as well before we had the data. CLE really is an option bet that is like it was never intended to be a heart of the thesis kind of a thing. It was about the upside skew. And to your point, that's in part because, look, CLE is not just about the state of the field. There's a lot coming. There's the BDCA2 from Biogen, there's TLR7/8, including from [indiscernible], like a bunch of other mechanisms. A lot of those mechanisms have the advantage of being less frequently dosed than an FcRn.
And so I think we have to not just think about what a successful study looks like, but like how do we convince ourselves that we'll be commercially viable and over all those programs are coming. There's a little bit of like we'll know it when we see it on the answer to that question, but I think it's got to be like pretty good data. And bluntly, I think it's not very likely we're going to clear that bar, but that was the point all along. If we clear the bar, we've opened up a new swim lane for FcRn, and that would be really exciting. If we don't clear the bar, we spend very little money on a small study, and it didn't work out, and that's sort of fine. That's part of the portfolio that we're taking forward with FcRn is to have to do those bets.
Yes. You mentioned, I think, clearing a lane was your analogy. So would you see this then as a broader validation of FcRn inhibition across lupus spectrum?
Bluntly, no in the following senses. One is specifically within lupus, look, we know that FcRns can deliver some benefit in lupus now. Nipocalimab, for example, has generated positive data in a properly powered much larger study in SLE. And so I think like there isn't really a need to "validate" the idea in lupus spectrum diseases. And so I think it's more of a specific referendum on CLE. And again, this study is fundamentally underpowered at some level in a way that makes it like hard to treat it as validation in either direction, either affirmatively or negatively. So I think the answer to that question is like it's not that relevant.
The other thing that I'll say is insofar as an important question about FcRns is how do they work more broadly in sort of multifactorial immune complex kind of diseases that involve -- like for example, RA fits in this bucket, Sjögren's fits in this bucket, CLE fits in this bucket, SLE fits in this bucket. I think the amount of data that has now been generated across these diseases is supportive of the idea that FcRns can play a role in their treatment in a way where, again, I think whether this trial has failed or successful, it's not going to like radically alter at least our view of what FcRns can do with those kinds of diseases.
And look, we pick CLE over SLE because SLE is tough and CLE should be slightly less tough, but it's tough. And I think it's like hard to overread from a single small CLE study. Again, I think the main question is just do we see enough signal in this study to want to run what will be itself a relatively risky registrational program just given the nature of lupus.
In 2027, you have the Phase III Graves' disease readout. So what keeps you up at night operationally about the Phase III Graves study?
Biotech is an industry that everything keeps me up at night all the time. I guess where I'm going with that comment. It's just biotech is a wood chipper designed to shred souls. So there's a lot of things that keep me up. With Graves' specifically, if you want to feel comfort about our Graves' study, you would stand back and you'd say, okay, of every indication in which FcRn has ever been studied, none has clearer biology than Graves' disease or more straightforward endpoints than Graves' disease, at least in terms of thyroid hormone levels, right?
Graves' disease is a disease where antithyroid antibodies affect the TSH receptor and lead to an overactive thyroid. It's like a relatively straightforward thing. And the disease is clinically managed on T3/T4 and to some degree, TSH. And so that's sort of the focus of the study. So we want to feel good. The biology is very clear, and our Phase II data was unequivocal. If you want to feel less good, our Phase II data was a single site, roughly open-label study run by one investigator in Germany. And that is plus or minus some TED studies, which aren't really the same patient population, the only modern study of Graves' disease ever conducted.
So we have very little information going into this study about the variability of patients, et cetera. And among the things in the endpoint is an antithyroid drug titration criteria, which rhymes with all of the challenges people have always had in immunology trial, trying to taper people down on steroids and other things. So look, I think there are real and meaningful risks associated with that study. Biologically, the rationale for the Phase II data was quite good. So I'm pretty optimistic, and I think it's a less risky study than something like CLE or the D2T RA was before we got into it. But I think of the major studies we're running, Graves' was definitely the riskiest.
Okay. And where would you see 1402 positioned in the current treatment landscape, assuming success in the Phase III?
Yes. This is the crazy thing about Graves' disease, which I think we have struggled with a little bit, to be honest, is if you sit down and you model Graves' disease as a commercial indication, I mean, there truly are, call it, 350,000 uncontrolled Graves' patients in the U.S. who have exhausted every treatment option available to them. And the truth is for an FcRn, if you can get 5% or 10% share of that kind of market, you have a huge, huge, huge drug. And so I think against that backdrop, these numbers just get like unimaginably large very quickly.
What do I think in terms of where we could be used? I think some of this is like what we're trying to learn in the clinical setting, but I think there are first of all, there's about 20,000 patients here who have their thyroid surgically removed to a lifetime of synthetic thyroid hormones. I think like those are pretty good candidates for therapy. And at least before they have that surgical procedure, they might consider trying something like an FcRn.
But then there's still a lot of patients who are either uncontrolled, meaning even at quite high doses of methimazole or other antithyroid drugs, they can't get thyroid hormone levels controlled or who can get control on methimazole, but who deal with -- but can't get off methimazole and deal with a lot of negative side effects associated with methimazole. I think both of those populations are like reasonable places for us to think about, and we're studying versions of both in Phase III.
When we talk with KOLs, they speak about the threshold of patients focusing on patients who achieved thyroid hormone normalization. And you had mentioned tapering that may not go off of the antithyroid drug. What threshold do you think would be needed to displace methimazole in first line?
I don't think we will displace methimazole in first-line treatment of Graves' disease. First of all, there are millions of patients with Graves' disease, and many of them can get adequately controlled pretty quickly on a low or reasonable dose methimazole. We're not even tracking those patients, not enrolling in the study. We're not focused on them, et cetera. I think the real question is in the 350,000 patients for whom methimazole is just like descriptively not sufficient in one way or another.
And I think the answer is like at that point, the threshold is not "displacing" methimazole, the threshold is just like clinical meaningfulness. The threshold is just like what level of normalization of thyroid hormones is going to be sufficient to get people on drug? And how successfully do we need to get patients off ATDs for them to want to be on another agent. In our Phase II study, I think close to 60% of patients were able to get off ATDs or to reduce their ATD dose meaningfully while getting normalized from thyroid hormone perspective. I think anything like our Phase II data would be a grand slam like that outcome for us.
Are you looking at drug-free remission as a value driver?
We studied in the Phase II, and we're studying it again in the Phase III. There's reasons to believe in Graves' disease, taking a step back that -- well, biologically, part of what happened in Graves is you get these negative feedback loops for the antithyroid hormones. The antithyroid antibodies attack the thyroid. The thyroid becomes enlarged and inflamed. And then that seems to beget a negative cycle of more autoantibodies. And methimazole in many patients can lead to remission because these patients are like not that -- some of them, not all patients, but like some Graves' patients wind up being not that sick with Graves' disease in a way where like you use methimazole, the thyroid reregulates, it shrinks down in size and the body stops producing enough of these autoantibodies have a problem.
It stands to reason then that for sicker patients, okay, you can't treat them successfully with methimazole and get them into remission now. But if you could add on a layer of treatment on top of that, you might be able to actually reregulate. And so I think that's encouraging. In our Phase II study, we were able to get a pretty significant portion of patients under control in an off-drug remission. Remember all of the patients in the Phase II came in uncontrolled and like 17 out of 25 of them, I think, were still controlled months after the end, maybe more than that maybe, were still controlled.
17 of 21.
17 of 21 were still controlled 6 months after discontinuation of therapy. And so it's -- I think we do have a possibility of some durable off-drug remission.
And I assume that there's an open-label extension for you to be able to...
In fact, one of our 2 Phase III trials has a -- it's a 12-month study with a 6-month primary where there is a proper like responder rerandomization to measure remission built into the study. So it's not just an open label. We will generate placebo-adjusted remission data in.
So just a general question about FcRn. As they move into increasingly heterogeneous diseases, what have you learned about which diseases for which deeper IgG lowering actually matters versus where you may be constrained by a ceiling...
We have studied this question ourselves in many indications. And I appreciate that it is convenient for our competitors to talk about the existence of possible ceiling effects because they have limitations as to how deeply [indiscernible]. But to be honest, first of all, FcRn biology is not actually that complicated. You're reducing the level of pathogenic autoantibodies in diseases where pathogenic autoantibodies are some level of disease driver.
I think the burden is on the poser as far as arguing that there should be a threshold effect, and we have not found one anywhere. That is, in every indication we have ever studied, we have found at least at the individual patient level, the patients with deeper IgG suppression had better responses than patients with lesser IgG suppression, which I think is what you would biologically expect. And so my honest view is there will not be a threshold effect. In any disease, deeper IgG suppression will matter. The curve of how much it matters versus other things may vary from indication to indication.
And bluntly, there's a commercial question, which is like, what, take myasthenia gravis. I think our -- I think if you ran a head-to-head study versus VYVGART, we have a reasonable chance of winning just given the depth of IgG suppression. Does that mean we would then win commercially? I'm not sure. Argenx is very well established and VYVGART is a well-loved drug, and it helps control these patients. And if our data is only marginally better, which who knows what our data will be these studies coming out next year, it's just not obvious whether we can sort of take a majority share commercially get some share take majority is hard to know.
But in general, the answer is, I think deeper IgG supression appears to be a little better benefit. You started out this question when talking about the complexity of some of these diseases in terms of being multifactorial like rheumatoid arthritis, for example, is not cleanly an autoantibody-driven disease. I think, a, learning -- one learning of ours that is deeper expression seems to be better all around.
I think a learning specifically from our RA study is that patients who fail anti-inflammatory drugs and have high levels of autoantibodies may be specifically good treatment populations for us and that you've sort of really narrowed it down to patients who are still sick, who cannot be treated with anti-inflammatories, which I think is sort of suggestive that a driver of disease for them is autoantibodies. They're obviously also assessing the antibody level itself. I think that playbook, if it continues to look good in RA, could also apply in some other settings as well.
Any questions from the audience on brepo or 1402? Then transitioning to mosliciguat...
Just on 350,000 patients with Graves' disease which are poorly controlled. Is there any further way that you segment that market as far as where this drug makes more sense, where patients maybe have come up to the trial quicker easier?
So I think the problem with this indication for a lot of people is you start with 350,000 patient number and then you try and build a commercial model and it looks sort of silly, any way you cut it, if you assume the drug is going to be successful. And I think it's just true, right? I think like if you assume whatever, 10% share of 350,000 patient market is 35,000 patients at an FcRn price point is a $12 billion indication. So like you could get big numbers very quickly.
I think in practice, there's a bunch of different ways that cat will wind up getting skinned to be a little worried about it. I think one is I mentioned patients who are having thyroidectomies. I think obviously, for that subset of patients, it was a relatively smaller group, I think about 20,000 a year, you can imagine people wanting to try a final pharmacotherapeutic option before they move to a surgical procedure in a lifetime of Synthroid. But also, I think patients who are intolerant of methimazole or who need to be on such high doses is to be limited by the side effect profile.
I think patients who are living with meaningfully out of whack thyroid hormone levels in a way that leads to real sequelae, I think those are probably like the most obvious first patients versus the patients who are sort of subclinically hyperthyroid or whatever or they are whack on relatively low dose methimazole they're making it. That said, there are absolutely patients who are on chronic 5-milligram dose of methimazole who have been for years and who are incredibly eager to like put that chapter behind them. And I think those patients are absolutely eligible to try something like an FcRn and see where it takes them.
Just a simple question. Looking back, right, historically, you've had a history of finding attractive buyers for your assets. And now you have a fully developed commercial infrastructure in place. So how do you then decide which assets to keep and which to probably sell to others?
Maybe you could repeat the question. There was a problem with the microphone.
The question was, in the past, on a couple of occasions, we have sold drugs that we have developed to third parties. probably most notably, we sold a portfolio of drugs to Sumitomo Pharma back in 2019, and we sold an anti-TL1A antibody to Roche in, I want to say, 2023, 2024. I'll start by saying we are in an incredibly privileged position right now. I would hope most companies feel this way, but I would not trade our pipeline for basically any other pipeline in biotech.
And I think if you drew like a chart of valuation on one axis and I don't know, probability of exceeding $20 billion of sales on another axis, we are at a pretty unique corner there, right? There are other drugs that have some probability of getting there where the companies are less highly valued, but they're just like a tonne of whatever, they're like an obesity company with a tonne of complicated compounded commercial and clinical risks. You have companies like argenx or whatever that have obviously, at some level, a higher probability of those kinds of sales because they're commercial and already doing many billions of dollars of sales, but they're valued much more richly than we are.
I think we're like at a pretty unique opportunity. I think that is a pretty unique spot on that chart. I think it's like a function of the programs that we have. And I can't name any other biotech company where I feel like there's 3 drugs that are as credibly potentially as large as the 3 that we are focused on right now. So I think parting with any of them would be a painful proposition relative to the unique opportunity in front of them. And I think our default case here is let's try and build something big and durable around this pretty unique moment for us.
For those who followed the company, I think you know that Roivant is ruthlessly economic in our decision-making and that everything has a price. And that if someone offered us tens of billions of dollars [indiscernible] tomorrow, we would take the call because it's what we're supposed to do. So I think never say never, but I think our default here is to build something big and durable and not to sell these programs.
Okay. Next topic I wanted to touch on was mosliciguat. And you had mentioned that your culture is ruthlessly economic. You're not capital constrained. How do you balance those dynamics as you build out the development plan for mosliciguat?
One of the things about how we're structured is, in general, once you get to executing a trial, at least each program's resources don't cannibalize the other programs. That is what we can do in pulmonary hypertension is fully distinct from what we can do in orphan inflammatory disease and brepocitinib is fully distinct from what we can do in the FcRn market. So we have -- to the extent that we have resource constraints, and we do -- we can't start 10 studies all in the same day. Those resource constraints are sort of by program. And I think the impetus at this point for all of these programs, including mosli, is to get a new study set up as quickly as we possibly can.
I think the value for us of indication expansion is extraordinary right now, 0 upfront, relatively modest capital out of the door. I think we're pretty good at choosing indications, pretty good at running studies. I think that combination is really potent for what we think we can deliver. So look, with mosli, we made a decision to start the Phase III study at risk about 6 months ago because we wanted to not be sitting around waiting if the data looked good. That decision would have looked dumb if the study failed and now it looks prescient because the study succeeded, and we're all judged in hindsight.
But that means we probably have the capacity to turn our attention relatively quickly here to like the second indication at mosli. And I think we're finalizing our work on that now. I think our view of what is optimal from a path perspective is probably changed given the high quality of the data we saw in the PH-ILD study. And so I think we're just like reassessing that ordering and prioritization.
I think we've definitely -- next year, Graves' and MG will roll off in Immunovant. This year, NIU is rolling off at Priovant. I think as those indications complete, there is absolutely capacity to ramp up new ones and then we continue to hire and grow and build out the clinical team the more we have data that reinforce our view. So I think between those things, we should have the capacity to stand up new indications across all these programs in the coming months.
When would you communicate to investors what the next development phase would be?
We, in general, tend to wait until we've started the study before we communicate the next indication. That's true for a variety of reasons. FcRn is competitive. It would not be surprising to me if argenx wind up running an RA study now we put out the data, we've got in RA, they are running a Graves' study. So I think maintaining the lead is helpful. And then also just there hasn't been much reason to like get out ahead of our skis on this stuff, so we haven't done it.
With the remaining time, just to conclude, what excites you in the early pipeline?
We haven't talked much about anything other than those 3 programs, and I'm probably not going to start doing that now. there's BD stuff that we're excited about that we're close to. And then there's other tricks up our sleeves that we haven't discussed very broadly. And then there's just like I'm personally incredibly focused on and excited about standing up additional indications, starting with brepocitinib but across the whole portfolio because as I said before, if you look at argenx had like $12 billion of market cap on their myositis data. The market is rewarding new indications. I think we're pretty good at choosing indications running clinical trials. And we have 3 programs from which to choose from, all of which have broad enough biological activity to open a bunch of doors. So I think there's just a lot of value to that exercise.
Any last questions? Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
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Roivant Sciences — Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2026
Roivant konzentriert sich auf kommerziellen Aufbau und mehrere klinische Wegscheiden: früher Brepo‑Launch, FcRn‑Daten, mosliciguat‑Phase‑III läuft bereits.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Strategie: Übergang von Asset‑Entwicklung zu kommerziellem Betrieb mit aktivem Launch von brepocitinib (LISRAYA) und Ausbau eigener Vertriebs‑/Commercial‑Kapazitäten.
- Pipelinefokus: Drei Kernprogramme treiben Wert: brepocitinib (TYK2/TYK2‑JAK‑Inhibitor), FcRn‑Plattform (IMVT‑1402) und mosliciguat (inhalierter sGC‑Agonist) plus indikationsexpansionen.
- Kapital: Management beschreibt sich als "ruthlessly economic" – bereit zu investieren, will aber langfristig Programme halten statt routinemäßig zu verkaufen.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Brepocitinib: Launch in Dermatomyositis läuft erst drei Wochen, Management erwartet "slow and steady" und misst Erfolg über Net Sales; detaillierte Launch‑KPIs voraussichtlich auf Earnings Call.
- FcRn‑Programme: IMVT‑1402 liefert multiple Daten: difficult‑to‑treat (D2T) RA Period‑2 Readout H2 2026, CLE Proof‑of‑Concept Ende Jahr; Graves' Disease Phase‑III 2027 als großer Werttreiber.
- Mosliciguat: Positive Phase‑II in PH‑ILD; Phase‑III opportunistisch "at risk" bereits initiiert, Company prüft Repriorisierung weiterer Indikationen.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Zeitplan: NIU (non‑infectious uveitis) Phase‑III Readout erwartet H2 (kein genaues Datum); RA Period‑2 und CLE‑POC ebenfalls H2/Ende Jahr; Graves' pivotal 2027.
- Regulatorisch: Für D2T RA bleibt ungeklärt, ob FDA eine oder mehrere Phase‑III verlangt; Management plant Gespräche zur Entwicklungs‑Pfad‑Abstimmung.
- Kommerz: Mosliciguat‑Phase‑III wurde vorlaufend gestartet; brepocitinib‑Launchdaten (Scripts/Coverage) werden begrenzt kommuniziert, Fokus auf Umsatz.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Launch‑KPIs: Analysten drängen auf konkrete Script‑/Patientenzahlen; Management will primär Net Sales berichten und gibt aktuell nur begrenzte Detailguidance.
- Wettbewerb: Lesart der argenx‑Myositis‑Daten: Roivant sieht eher einen "Rising tide"‑Effekt, kein negatives kommerzielles Read‑through.
- D2T RA‑Risiko: Period‑2 könnte statistisch schwer zu interpretieren sein wegen starker Open‑Label‑Responses; zentrale Frage ist, welchen Zulassungsweg FDA verlangt (single vs. multiple Phase‑III).
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Mehrere daten‑getriebene Katalysatoren in kurzer Reihenfolge de‑risiken oder re‑risiken Wert; erfolgreicher brepocitinib‑Launch und positive FcRn/Graves‑Ergebnisse wären erheblicher Werttreiber, aber Execution‑ und Regulatorrisiken bleiben hoch.
Roivant Sciences — Citigroup’s Biopharma Back to School Summit 2026
1. Question Answer
Sam Semenkow, one of the senior biotech analysts here at Citi. And it is my pleasure to be hosting Roivant at Citi's 2026 Biopharma Back to School Summit. I'm joined by Richard Pulik, CFO of Roivant. Richard, welcome, and thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much. And it's officially, I think, also the first day of school in New York School. So perfect timing with the conference.
Yes, it is. It is, and we will go to school today on Roivant. So why don't we just start off high level, Richard. Obviously, you've made a lot of progress on the pipeline, lots of great data that you shared with us this year. And you've had your first FDA approval for brepocitinib. Maybe just level set all of that and what we can expect throughout the rest of the year, where Roivant stands and where Roivant aims to be in the next several years?
Look, we've had an incredible year so far. As we think about Roivant, look, we're approaching $30 billion market cap here. We have $3.9 billion in cash, which doesn't include the $700 million plus that we received in July on the Moderna settlement. And we have now, I would say, with the [ mosli ] data that read out a couple of days ago, really affirmed the third leg of the stool into a place where that can be another big pillar for the company, adding to brepocitinib, where you mentioned, just had our first approval for LISRAYA is the drug name in dermatomyositis, which, look, I think if you look at the label, it's pretty incredible in terms of the indication statement, no restrictions in concomitant use. And then also covering the skin and muscle manifestations and breadth of the disease of the study that we had in the Phase III data, which was a disease that's been largely ignored and it was the largest DM study that's ever run.
And so to kick off and going into this patient population is ignored for a long time, I think, is a very Roivant move, right? We -- as we formed the company and thought about areas where to go, it was really to think about disease areas where there's high unmet need that have been ignored for a long time that are severe in scope and also where we had a bit of validation, right, where certainly, there was either data that was driven by investigators or that we had seen from other JAKs that worked here. So look, it's a very exciting time for brepo. We certainly have 3 other indications that are late stage there with NIU reading out this year in a Phase III study and then CS and LPP ongoing.
And then the third leg of the stool is really Immunovant-1402, where we also had some exciting data, and I think data that surprised a lot of the investment community, especially in difficult to treat RA. Certainly, [ nipo ] paved the way a little bit with in RA, certainly -- but in a much earlier population, but we saw that FcRns had activity there. And then we, again, thought in the Roivant way, where do we go here? Where is the underserved population. And that was in patients who are very late line where JAKs and TNFs have failed and where we can deliver strong efficacy. So we saw very strong efficacy rates there with ACR70, 50 and 20, and that was period 1 and period 2 is reading out later this year.
And then along with -- we have CLE data, right, which is, again, another Roivant type indication where we could potentially be first. Certainly, I think that's a flyer, right? We're really trying to see if this is an area where we hit a bar that makes sense from a commercial perspective. And I think there's a little bit more competition there. But we had seen a little bit of data in some patients in you see that sort of help validate this, and we'll see what that looks like. And then we have 4 other indications with MG and Graves potential approvable data sets next year and other indications that we can go into, but that's really the third leg of the stool here. Certainly, we're very active as well on BD given our cash balance and the breadth of resources we have.
It's a great overview. Lots to dig into. So maybe we do start with the [ mosli ] data that you shared earlier this week. Excellent data, clear proof of concept. I think it exceeded the expectations you've set for the Street by far and even the expectations I had in like a bull case scenario. So maybe just talk a little bit about that data set, what the reaction has been from KOLs in the few days since you presented it at ERS and just frame the market opportunity for us for PH-ILD.
So maybe to back up a little bit. So we -- [ mosli ] is an sGC activator that we got -- we did this deal with Bayer. We paid, I think, roughly $15 million or so is the upfront. And then there's milestone payments under $300 million and then high single-digit royalties. This is an area where, look, sGC activators have been looked at systemically for quite some time in pulmonary hypertension. And then we showed data about a couple of years ago at ERS that showed the highest PVR reductions we've seen in PAH. PAH was a market that had, what, 6 or 7 therapies, I think, at the time when we showed the data. So lots of breadth of available therapies, mosli was a once-a-day inhaled DPI. And then -- so it doesn't -- and then with a differentiated mechanism with a long half-life and we delivered in PAH.
Then as we were thinking about where do you want to go, going back to what I said before, to a place that doesn't have a lot of addressable and really a lot of scientific development, right? Obviously, we have Tyvaso and we saw the great data, and I would say, innovation there for PH-ILD patients. And so we ran the study. And then what happened and happened a couple of days ago, we saw the highest PVR reductions we've seen in PH-ILD. We surprised people because we -- look, we didn't power for the 6-minute walk test, but we delivered with 35 and then we saw -- this is at week 16, and we saw continued improvement at over 50 placebo adjusted.
So -- and then if you look at across all of the key measures we had, we saw that they continue to improve. So these are very smooth curves where you actually continue to improve after week 16 and as you're dose escalating and then on the safety, right, we had very good safety data, no -- I would say the [ treprostinil ], obviously, of cough is an on-target effect. So again, an easy to use once-a-day molecule that has delivered really the best efficacy markers we've seen so far and even on 6-minute walk, which we were powered for. So I think that's really opened up a lot of excitement for these patients. And then that data was presented at ERS a couple of days ago on short notice, I think the room, as I was told, was very full.
There was a lot of excitement from KOLs. And this is a really severe disease where people really have trouble just walking across the small room. The morbidity is very high with a lot of people dying within a couple of years and have a terrible quality of life. So this is to deliver this kind of data is very exciting for the field.
Yes, absolutely. And you maybe anticipated some of this in some sense because you started the Phase III at risk already. So that is well underway. The only major difference might be just -- and correct me if this is wrong, but background treprostinil is permitted here. And -- but you have a Phase II combo study ongoing. So you're going to learn a little bit more about that in the coming -- going forward. So could you speak to how that data will inform how you're thinking about how much background treprostinil to enroll? And just overall, if you replicate the Phase II data that you have today, would that be more than sufficient for you to take this to FDA and then be quite competitive? I think the answer is probably yes.
So in the Phase III study, that's ongoing. Yes. So look, I think we did take a flyer here, right, moving directly into Phase III. And I think that's another place where we surprised people. Certainly, we obviously didn't really know the breadth of this data and took a little bit of risk on there. But look, I think the other thing that's been at the core of the company is to really to get -- look, we knew the PAH data. We knew how powerful and how unique this drug was and to be able to get this out to patients quickly. That seemed like a risk that we should be taking.
And then in terms of the study, look, I think the titration is a little bit faster. It also allows treprostinil as we're -- we have another study that's ongoing that you mentioned, which is pretty small. That was really driven for safety. So that will kind of help us inform the cap we want to have there on treprostinil use. I think one consideration there's obviously given Tyvaso not approved ex U.S., that certainly is something we need to think through as well as we're thinking about that. But it will help us as we go to the FDA here to help validate the Phase III thinking and then also, look, as you see the data, you see this data on top of other therapies, right? So this was -- this is an indication, just like we've seen in PAH that could be used on top of other therapies. It can be potentially additive. We'll see what that looks like on the combo. And then this could be one of those diseases that's treated multifactorially.
And then we think beyond PH-ILD into expansion opportunities, you mentioned a few of the obvious ones that are on the table for you. But maybe just talk about those and how you're thinking about prioritizing what the next indications for mosli are? How many can you maybe go forward with at once to maximize this opportunity? Or is it more one at a time as you triage through them?
Look, I think certainly, what I said is in our initial thinking, we thought PAH was potentially too competitive. But we now really have proven with this data set that we have really delivered the best PVR reductions we've seen across pulmonary hypertension. And maybe that gets us back to thinking around whether we go there. I also think as we look at these data a little bit more fully, there's certain subtypes of patients here that can help us inform where we want to go. And -- but look, I think it's -- with the data came out a couple of days ago, I think this is really, like I said, created and firmed up the leg of the stool here, and it's really all hands on deck now to think very broadly about developing this just like we did with brepo and with 1402.
And I would say the beauty of our setup is that we really think given demand structure, we can really move quickly here and do this in multiple ways. Of course, right now, the -- we're going to go to FDA. We're going to talk about the PH-ILD data and really push that forward. And I think simultaneously, the team will be doing quite a lot of work to think through where does it make most sense and where can be the biggest impact on patients across some of these other disease areas across pulmonary hypertension.
The great data has created a lot more work for you. So looking forward to hearing more about that in the future. Maybe just switching over to DM then and talking about the approval of LISRAYA. Maybe can you speak to any of the early engagement that you're seeing from physicians since the approval?
So look, I think -- so first of all, this is the biggest DM study that we've seen. These patients are treated on very high dose steroids and then also IVIg. And this is a disease where -- that has muscle and skin involvement. If I think about -- and so we delivered data across all of these different areas, I think that got physicians excited. And then we have, like I said, captured a lot of that data on label. Certainly, we anticipated a black box given it's a JAK. And I think that's -- that was always in our hypothesis here, and it hasn't really stopped much of the broader indications that JAKs are going after either. And so given the area of the disease, I think that's all again very manageable.
But I think the physicians are very excited here. We -- the reality, check, is that we're going into a disease here that's been ignored for a long time. And so to change behavior, look, there's the sort of Ivory tower that we all sit in and then there's the reality of the physicians and changing behavior. And so I think that's the work we have to do now. I think we're well set up with MyCompass. We thought through the dynamics here. And then we have the real -- there's a lot of breadth here for brepo. So it's sort of a long haul to make sure that we're maximizing the value across these other indications as well. But look, I think there's a lot of excitement from patients and also physicians. But certainly, we think this will be a slow and steady launch as we really develop this molecule broadly.
Maybe we can dive a little deeper on the breadth of where brepo can be used. We've heard physicians say they're excited to switch their patients off IVIg if they're not fully controlled. Some physicians are heavily using off-label JAKs, others don't have any. So perhaps there's an off-label JAK switching market or physicians have even said first line to us. So when you think about what that initial addressable population is in DM, like how should we be thinking about that?
I would think all of the -- I mean, you can use it with IVIg. I mean -- so look, I think the reality is these are kind of younger patients who -- if you're on IVIg, you have to go in an infusion center 4, 5 days a week, obviously, in a month. That's a pretty big burden for someone of working age. And -- but look, if they're doing well on that, they can obviously also go on brepo. So I think there is a -- I would not think about this as exclusively across these different segments. I think the data that we certainly delivered was also -- you can think about it as first line in some of the KOL discussions, also some of these patients are on off-label JAKs. So to have actually real data in hand for -- with the breadth we have, I think we're very well positioned, and you can think through it across all of those different segments of the market.
And I think slow and steady has been your guidance for some time now. You reiterated on the approval call. And revenue is really the metric -- main metric you're going to provide to the Street. This is perhaps maybe a little unfair, but as we go to 3Q earnings, you've already had some -- I think you mentioned like some engagement on even day 1 post approval. What is -- how should we be thinking about that? Like is that something that's like a couple of single-digit million? Like any guidance you can really like -- not guidance, any framework you could share?
Look, I just think it's so early that -- and I'm not -- this is not to sort of -- it's what, August 27, if I recall, was when we had the approval. So look, it's super early days. I think like ultimately, you can think about various different -- because of specialty pharmacy, it's going to be hard to sort of see script data, et cetera, right? I mean this is like a typical rare disease launch. And so as a CFO, what matters is net revenue ultimately. And I think that just takes quite a bit of time to build and do well, especially as we focus on making sure we get the medicine to patients. We have the bridge program in place, and we have a good patient and physician experience here.
And then given the breadth of data that we have, the revenues will come, and I'm confident that since given the data set and then even as potential competition comes, that really helps with new approved therapies and awareness for the disease to get these patients on much better drugs.
Got it. And on the side of competition, I think it's picking up in DM. I think people have looked at your success, looked at the market. a lot more interest that we're seeing from a range of companies and a range of mechanisms. How should we think about the longer-term opportunity for LISRAYA as the DM market matures with multiple novel therapeutic options, particularly given this is a polypharmacy market currently?
So I'd just like to remind people, there were many failures in this disease area, 6 or 7 of them with very smart, very large different trials. And we are very uniquely positioned here because it's the TYK2/JAK1. When we looked at the data when we did this deal, we had roughly 1,500 patients of data across and we compared that to different JAKs alone or TYK2s alone and outperformed across all of those different data sets. I mean this is for a much broader disease, right? But that -- there is a unique mechanism here where we're first. And then we also have the data in hand. Look, I think when -- as you're thinking about where you go and as you're thinking about mechanisms, I mean, sGC activator, sGC stimulator, there's sort of stories we say to try to think through, but the data that really matters is the patient data.
And given that this is the largest DM study we've had and the breadth of data and endpoints, I think we're very firmly positioned here and also given our mechanism, and it's a once-a-day oral. So being able to really replace -- most of these patients are really on high steroids. I mean that sort of 70%, I think, of the market. And so switching those patients and getting them off of a pretty bad being on these high steroids is pretty bad, not just from a lifestyle perspective, but also from a side effect profile perspective as we had seen in the DM data. So I think we're very firmly positioned, and it will be great to have other mechanisms come here to help these patients.
Absolutely. Maybe we switch gears a bit and talk about NIU as well because this is the next major data set for you before the end of the year, in terms of like Phase III, although we have some 1402 data to talk about as well. But I mean, the unmet need is clear in NIU, but can you just talk overall how you're thinking about that market opportunity?
So noninfectious uveitis, that's one of the leading causes of mice in the U.S. There is -- again, you have steroids and then you have HUMIRA. We had a Phase II data set fairly small that was not placebo-controlled, where we saw compelling data, not just on sort of this multifactorial time to failure endpoint, but also on edema, resolution of edema and also keeping patients from getting edema and resolving it that was -- we haven't seen really across any of the available therapies. These are also -- if you think about the HUMIRA patient pool, that's probably 50,000 at this point. So delivering a once-a-day oral with such strong data, I think, is very compelling.
The reality is the Phase III placebo controlled. We know in these studies that placebo is always difficult. But as we design the study and thought about the mandatory steroid taper, which, again, we had in the Phase II study, right, where it was much faster than HUMIRA. And then we also think about the endpoint, which is essentially time to treatment failure over quite a long time, that should also ultimately show up on the placebo versus the brepo arms. But look, this is a commercial opportunity that's, I would say, even larger than DM. So it's very exciting for us, and we'll see the data in short order this year.
Looking forward to it. I have a pricing question for you. You set the price for LISRAYA. And as we think about the upcoming Phase III NIU data potentially being positive and pricing in that setting, particularly because the brepocitinib dose that you're testing is higher for NIU. It's about 45 milligrams versus 30, which is on label for LISRAYA. So how should we think about pricing? Is it going to be higher from a WACC perspective? Or how should we think about net pricing to the extent that you can provide some framework there?
Look, I think the first thing is what do you deliver to these patients, right? And so once we see the data and if we can deliver what we saw, then that will help command price. And then certainly, because the DM indication is 30, there's some flexibility there potentially, right, since that would be a 45 mg dose. But we'll -- look, we have -- once the data reads out and if it's positive, we'll have a lot of feedback on the current price, and we can think through those dynamics, but there's certainly flexibility then to do what's right given the data set and where we land. And then, of course, we have the CS and LPP indications as well as we're thinking through that, which are also at 45-milligram dose.
Which is a good segue. Maybe let's talk about those. You're running pivotal trials in both. And I think these get less airtime perhaps because there's not any more data from either of them this year. But maybe just like walk through both diseases, how they fit into your broader dermatology franchise that you're building for brepocitinib and just a little bit on the opportunity for both there.
So look, we delivered very compelling data with CS that I think got a lot of excitement where we quickly were able to enroll and start this Phase III study. That patient population is sort of similar size to roughly 50,000. And then LPP is maybe twice that size. There's really no approved therapies. It can be very disfiguring, particularly drives hair loss and pretty terrible disfiguration on the scalp. So this is a disease area where there really isn't much. And so we have another Phase III there. But look, I think both very exciting in terms of the potential and then the unmet need.
And then, of course, given the data we delivered in CS. I think a lot of excitement there. With LPP, we did have a little bit of data as well that we showed for -- I think it was less than 40 patients roughly that also help validate the Phase III study and that I think has gotten investigators excited. So there's certainly some meat there to go off of as well. But these are -- when we're set and done and assuming all these indications come through, I mean, brepo could be addressing roughly over 250,000 patients in the U.S. for -- in areas where there's really no real treatment options, and there hasn't been a lot innovative treatment options, and there really is an availability of this type of once-a-day oral therapy.
And when you think about your strategy for indication selection for brepocitinib going forward, I mean, should we expect that the dermatology franchise continues to be something that you're considering expanding? Or could we see you branch out into other therapeutic spaces kind of like you've done for NIU? I mean you have a plethora of options here, I imagine.
Yes. Look, I think number one is scientific, right? Where does -- given the uniqueness of the molecule, where can the science go that differentiates? And I think these are multifactor diseases where -- you have cutaneous sarcoidosis, pulmonary sarcoidosis like that you have overlap with a lot of different diseases. So you have skin and muscle manifestations. And so I think you really have to think about this as where is the science and where does that make sense? Where is the patient need? And then where can we make a big difference? And I think there are -- I think given the data we have, I think there's a lot of interesting areas where we can go. So stay tuned. But I wouldn't necessarily think about, oh, well, because we have derm data, we need to stick to derm. I think it's where is the need and where the patients need us to go.
Yes. Fair enough. Maybe we spend a little bit of time on 1402 as well. We're expecting that rheumatoid arthritis period 2 data. And I think you've guided to ideally wanting to share a bit of a more update, which includes the period 2 data and perhaps some regulatory feedback, if possible. What are the potential scenarios we should be considering on the path forward for RA towards the end of the year when we see that data?
So look, I think the data that we had in Period 1 was surprising to people, right, given the ACR70, 50 and 20 response rates we had. In the period 2 portion of the study, the real question is, can you get patients down to -- in a 12-week period, really make a meaningful impact on ACR20 when you've had such success, right? And so I think that will be answered soon. We said that's coming out this year. We'll go to the agency with that. I think what we have answered is that we have found a niche here in rheumatoid arthritis for patients where nothing worked, right, that were on JAKs, TNFs, and we delivered incredible data that really, as you looked at [ nipo ] and some of the other things that are out there, like the reality is IMVT-1402 degrades IgG to the 80% range, right?
All of the other late-stage anti-FcRns in development are in the 60% range. And so we -- this, I think -- this is the first data set, large data set we've had for IMVT-1402 that's really proven out that IgG hypothesis that's carved out a -- these are very sick patients that are pretty desperate. And so we'll see what that looks like on period 2 is I think do we hit it or not? I think it's really -- how do we then incorporate that into a Phase III study and talk to the agency about it and where do we go with it and D to TRA, I think, is the real question.
Yes. Absolutely. So I mean, it's likely then Phase III, you'll need another study. Is that...
Yes. I think that should be the base case assumption here.
And then just quickly on CLE. You alluded to this in your opening remarks that it's a competitive space. You want to make sure that this will be a competitive product. Can you help us frame what that bar looks like for what would be competitive versus just 1402 works from a proof-of-concept perspective?
So look, I think we got -- when the nipo lupus data came out, I think we got quite a few questions, well, does this have a read on CLE. Look, I think that, again, frames that potentially this could work. I think the reality is this is a small -- fairly small study. We need to really look at the data closely and then understand is it making an impact? Like who are these patients? What kind of efficacy are we seeing? And is the impact meaningful enough to invest behind it and also to get investigators and patients excited. So I'm going to disappoint you not throw out a percent number for you. But look, I think there's also other CLE trials reading out, right, around this time or in the next few months. So we'll kind of look at that closely and see what makes most patients for patients.
Fair enough. Okay. Well, we are nearly out of time. So Richard, I just want to turn it back to you for any closing remarks you have to share and just maybe recap -- we've gone through 2026 and the expectations, maybe recap what we can expect next year from you as well.
So look, I think such a fun time for Roivant for our patients. I think it's really validated a lot of key areas of our strategy. I think mostly now has been -- is now a solid pillar of the stool. And then we're really looking forward to the MG and the Graves data. I mean we didn't even cover Graves really. I mean this is an area that, again, there hasn't been innovation for a long time. These patients are very sick. These -- they're not responding to existing therapies. And that will be a very exciting launch for IMVT-1402. And then hopefully, on MG as well, we can deliver better efficacy data as we had seen earlier with bato. So look, we'll see what that looks like. That will give us our first launches, hopefully for 1402. And then we have the other launches behind as we expand on brepo and I think exciting pieces to announce for mosliciguat as we expand the breadth given the incredible data we had and then stay tuned as we look through other business development opportunities.
But I think that it's -- we're in a really unique situation in place. And -- and then from a cash perspective, it's well funded, and we still have the ongoing litigation on the other LNP trial that goes. And so we'll see how that plays out. But we're just in a pretty incredible place here, and we returned a lot of capital to shareholders, right? We had, I think, at this point, returned over $1.7 billion. A lot of that was returned at $10 a share. And so really created a lot of value. And I think we're going to continue to be very disciplined and very thoughtful about capital allocation and making sure we're making the right choices across the portfolio.
Absolutely. You're in a privileged place where you have more going on than we can fit into 35 minutes. So well, thank you, Richard. This has been wonderful. I really appreciate all your insights and the time today. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam.
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Roivant Sciences — Citigroup’s Biopharma Back to School Summit 2026
Roivant bestätigte auf der Citi‑Konferenz starke klinische Erfolge (mosliciguat, IMVT‑1402) und eine frische Zulassung (LISRAYA) bei gutem Kassenbestand.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kern: Roivant verfolgt eine Multi‑Säulen‑Strategie: LISRAYA (brepocitinib) ist für Dermatomyositis zugelassen und wird schrittweise eingeführt; mosliciguat (inhalierter sGC‑Aktivator) lieferte unerwartet starke PH‑ILD‑Daten und läuft Phase‑III at‑risk; IMVT‑1402 zeigt in schwer behandelbarer rheumatoider Arthritis vielversprechende Effekte, Period‑2‑Ergebnisse folgen.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Finanzierung: $3,9 Mrd Cash (ohne ~ $700 Mio Moderna‑Zahlung); Kapitalbasis erlaubt Entwicklung, M&A und Rückflüsse an Aktionäre.
- Onklen‑Pipeline: Brepocitinib adressiert mehrere Indikationen (DM zugelassen; NIU, CS, LPP, MG, Graves in Studien/registrativ) mit unterschiedlicher Dosierung (30 vs. 45 mg).
- Mosliciguat‑Play: Einmal täglich inhalierbares sGC‑Aktivat mit besten bislang gesehenen PVR‑Reduktionen in PH‑ILD; Phase‑III läuft, Kombinationsstudien mit Treprostinil geplant.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Mosliciguat‑Daten: ERS‑Präsentation zeigte starke, anhaltende PVR‑Verbesserungen und Platzhalter‑bereinigte 6‑Minuten‑Gehstreckensteigerungen; Sicherheitsprofil günstig.
- Regulatorisch & Kommerziell: LISRAYA ist frisch zugelassen – frühe ärztliche Resonanz positiv, aber Umsatz‑Rampen sind noch zu früh für verlässliche Zahlen; Preisflexibilität je Indikation (30 vs. 45 mg) angedeutet.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Mosliciguat‑Kombination: Wie viel Background‑Treprostinil wird Phase‑III erlauben; kleinere Combo‑Studie soll Titrierungs‑/Sicherheitsgrenzen liefern.
- Kommerzstart LISRAYA: Timing und Größenordnung der ersten Umsätze unklar; Management nennt „slow and steady“ Launch, keine konkrete Guidance bis Q3.
- IMVT‑1402‑Pfad: Period‑2‑Daten entscheiden über regulatorischen Weg; Basisannahme ist weiterer Phase‑III‑Aufwand trotz starker Period‑1‑Effekte.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Conference bestätigt validierte Portfolio‑Pfeiler: mosliciguat ist ein potenziell wertvoller Upside‑Katalysator, LISRAYA liefert einen operativen Launch‑Start und IMVT‑1402 bleibt ein binärer Catalyst‑Wert; starke Bilanz reduziert Finanzrisiko, Hauptrisiken bleiben kommerzielle Ramp‑Unsicherheit, regulatorische Anforderungen und Wettbewerb in einigen Indikationen.
Roivant Sciences — 12th Annual Cantor Fitzgerald Global Healthcare Conference
1. Question Answer
All right. Good day, everyone. Welcome to Day 1 of Cantor's Global Healthcare Conference. For the next session, we are very excited to host the Roivant team. And representing Roivant, we have CEO, Matt Gline. Matt, coming off the back of a very strong data set. Happy to host you here.
Yes. Great. Thanks for having me. It's always easier to do these after putting out good data. So...
Great. So why don't we start there? Well, first of all, congrats to your clinical operations team. As well as your BD team, who got this asset from Bayer for, what, $15 million?
About that. Yes, a little less.
What's the secret sauce?
I don't know the answer. And if I did, I couldn't tell you.
Anyways, maybe focusing on mosli first, given it's hard off the press. What were some of the more surprising aspects of the data set now that you have had some time to digest?
I had like 36 whole hours. Yes. So look, this -- for those that don't know, so mosli -- mosliciguat is a drug that we had in development. It is an inhaled sGC activator that we are developing in pulmonary hypertension. And it's a drug we got, as you mentioned, from Bayer, a few years ago. And I think what I said about this data set all along was if it worked, it was going to be obvious in hindsight that it was a good idea. And if it failed, it was going to be obvious in hindsight that it was a bad idea. Because the truth is like, we know that inhaled vasodilators are generally effective in pulmonary hypertension and also the only other sGC targeted therapy ever tested in PH-ILD, [ riociguat ] had a death imbalance against the drug and was harmful to patients. And so that was obviously like not a great setup.
But our hope was that by delivering the drug in inhaled format, we were going to have good efficacy. I think what I -- so we put out data yesterday morning, and the data was phenomenal. We had the deepest ever PVR reduction shown in any pulmonary hypertension study. The study was very much not powered to show a placebo-adjusted benefit in 6-minute walk and very much did get a p-value on that endpoint. So -- there's a lot to love in this data set.
And overall, just like the consistency of it, the hemodynamics working so nicely in accordance with the clinical endpoints. Just look at this like this drug was effective in this study. And by the way, I don't know how familiar people are with PH-ILD is an indication. These patients are really, really sick. And so to be able to deliver this kind of benefit, I mean, I think it's going to change the field in many ways. Overall, the data was phenomenal. I'd say like the depth of hemodynamic responses in particular, are probably the thing that has changed the most for me in that they open my mind to a much broader set of indications across pulmonary hypertension, whereas I think if we have seen a narrower benefit PH-ILD is still a phenomenal indication. We were thinking about IPF even before. But I think with data this good, you want to go broad.
Got it. Now the conversation has shifted from the clinical data to what's the size of the market and how big this product be in PH-ILD and maybe other indications as well. But maybe focusing on PH-ILD, like -- what's the current market right now? And how many patients could be addressable with a drug like this?
Yes. So there's a range of estimates for the PH-ILD market. Our competitors have numbers out there that range from probably 30,000 patients in the U.S. on the low end to 100,000 patients on the high end. We probably think the market is on the higher end of that range. And we haven't put out our own research yet. It could even be bigger if you really push me on it. PH-ILD has a lot of patients, they're really sick. And the thing that you see in PAH, which is the much more developed pulmonary hypertension market, people have been treating PAH patients with novel therapeutics for decades, is the more drugs enter the market, the better every drug does. The patients are living longer, they're healthier for longer. They use drugs stacked on top of each other. And so I think the idea that we can be a new class in the PH-ILD market, it should further expand upon the really good work now done by United Therapeutics and Liquidia and others who have got products on the market in PH-ILD.
Okay. And you talked about the indication expansion. Given the strong efficacy here, clean safety. How are you thinking about the indication expansions, PAH, PH-COPD, IPF. How do you prioritize the opportunities where you maximize the value for this asset, aggressively?
Yes. The first -- I'm sure earlier -- I'm sure, later in this conversation, we'll talk about brepocitinib, and we'll talk about our FcRn. I think like a month ago, I would have said, okay, Roivant is a 3-legged stool or 2 legs are bigger than the third. And mosli was kind of coming up from behind. And I think this data catapults mosli into approximately equal standing with the other two programs in terms of what I think it could be long term. And so it makes you want to think broadly, as I said.
IPF was certainly something that we would have been thinking about even prior to this data set, just given what Tyvaso has shown and the nature of that market. I think what we would have said about PAH prior to seeing this data is PAH is competitive, and it's hard to know exactly where we would play. Now that we have seen this data, I think the answer is clear. I think we should be an early line therapy for PAH patients, if we decide to go there. And so I think we're evaluating that. We're evaluating other forms of pulmonary hypertension, PH-COPD, based on our subgroup data, is a little less scary although many drugs have failed in PH-COPD. And then there's Group 2, Group 4 and Group 5 of pulmonary hypertension, which are more or less completely white space therapeutic areas that are now -- we're rapidly working to come up to speed on those areas this week as we try and figure out where else we can go because it's all -- I mean, it's phenomenal to be in this situation, but it's not like we anticipated the data would be this good.
Okay. So what's the constraint? Is it capital? Or is it just resources or...
We're very blessed that it's never really been capital for us. We've just always run with a strong balance sheet, thanks to the deals we've done and so on. At the moment, I think in terms of like getting these trials started, I mean, I don't mean to be -- It takes a lot of manpower to figure out what you want to do and we run a Phase III study. And we have a lot of manpower, but we don't have enough manpower to start 8 studies all at once tomorrow. And so I think that we've got a scale up. We've got to prioritize a little bit just to get things up and running, and we've got to figure out how to get the right people in fast so that we can grow the opportunity quickly. Now the other good thing about mosli is we have IP into the mid-2040s. And so this is the long game, not a short game. But you really want to -- whatever. Once you know you've got something you want to work on, the right day to start is yesterday.
In fact, one of the things that we did, which was going to look stupid in hindsight in a bad data scenario and looks good in hindsight in a good scenario, we started the Phase III study like 6 months ago. And so we're now enrolling patients. That's all up and running. We've got the protocol in place. So like the fact that we are underway there is a huge benefit in part because it means we can probably be faster to start the next study because we're not starting from a standing start already.
Got it. Phase III, 6 months back is...
Well, yes. I'm sorry -- I started with the planning process and getting the protocol -- running. We're really just starting to enroll patients now.
Okay. Got it. Got it. Well, maybe we can move to the next leg of the stool, brepocitinib -- I realize it's...
Lisraya.
Sorry?
Lisraya. I don't know. I'm trying to get you calling by the brand name.
Yes. I'm still getting used to it.
Yes, me too.
So let's stick with brepo. I realize it's only been a few weeks, but any early feedback on the launch from the physician community? And...
We called all our physicians and we asked them what they thought of the launch, and they all said the same thing. They said they thought the launch was going to be slow and steady. That's right. Look, I think it's 2 weeks in. It's much too early to have anything useful to say other than even before the drug was approved, the receptivity from the DM community was extraordinary because of the high level of unmet need here. And so it's just exciting to be able to get out there with the drug after all of this time getting ready. And I do think the DM doc and patient community are prime.
Frankly, one of the reasons we've been so consistent with our slow and steady messaging is the docs are doing a great job of getting everybody else onto a more aggressive message. And we've had to talk to people back to the realities of like, okay, they say that, but they're going to take time to get their patients in the office and they're going to take time to get their patients through the process. And so we just got to -- we've got to work with what we've got, but the doc community is very enthusiastic.
What about access? Like how quickly would you expect access to come in? Because it's a rare disease, high unmet need, nothing is approved.
Yes. Look, at least initially, this is a patient-by-patient process, right? Each patient is sick, each patient has a need, and we have a patient support hub and a co-pay assistance program that are designed together to get patients on drug seamlessly. And initially, I think I don't -- it's too early for me to know like what the normal time line is, but what I know is that we have a team that is committed to helping each patient that wants to be on this drug, get on it in an economical and efficient way. And I think as long as we're working together, we're going to be able to get them on drug quickly, and we're going to be able to get them covered, I hope, quickly as well.
Okay. And are there specific segments of the DM market that may need some more work to get on brepo. For example, some of the feedback that we have got is like some severe phenotypes that have just polypharmacy may be a little bit slower to adopt because it's a JAK, you have to make sure that the safety profile is fine. Like based on your work, any specific subsegments of the DM market that you feel will need some work?
The first thing, and I appreciate this has been a consistently unsatisfying answer is -- in terms of like how different docs tell us they intend to use brepo, there is actually, in a pleasing way, a fair amount of heterogeneity. There are docs who are big users of off-label JAK inhibitors and want to move all of their off-label JAK inhibitor patients over. There are docs who are big IVIG users and their patients don't like the infusion burden of IVIG. There are docs that use neither of those things and have a lot of patients running around on very high dose prednisone and are trying to get their patients to lower doses of steroids, and they really like the steroid-sparing aspect of our data. So I do think it like varies a little bit practice by practice, patient by patient in terms of like who's going to get on drug early.
Look, I think one of the slightly complex dynamics here is some of the sickest patients are also the ones who are like on things already, right? They're on IVIG. They're on an off-label rituximab or something like that. And on the one hand, there are a lot of really good reasons that the docs and the patients have available to them as to why they might want to make a change. But on the other hand, if you're this sick, there's also if ain't broke, don't fix it kind of thing going on. And so you're sort of balancing those two considerations. That's said, I don't think there's like any one patient or group of patients that are going to be particularly hard to get on. Look, obviously, it will be easier to get more severe patients covered versus like a patient who's reasonably well controlled on low-dose prednisone or just methotrexate or whatever, may wish to switch to brepo for better disease control but it may be like a little bit harder to push those patients through from an access perspective. But in general, these patients are sick, and I think we won't have a lot of trouble.
Okay. And one lingering, I think, investor debate in the DM market and maybe some -- relevant for some of the other markets where you are testing brepo is, these docs are already using off-label JAKs. So why wouldn't they continue using off-label JAKs? Some of those are generics right now or will go generic in the future. Why would they prescribe a $400,000 drug?
I think you've got to do two things. First of all, as a reminder, and I think it's like a really important point. Brepocitinib is not a JAK inhibitor. It's a dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2. These are largely interferon-driven diseases, certainly dermatomyositis is. And while TYK2 -- while JAK1 is relevant in signaling interferons, we do think there is likely a meaningful effect that comes from hitting both of these targets. And I think the doc community, by and large, believes that as well. They believe that this drug is as effective as it is in part because of that dual mechanism. And so I think against the backdrop of any JAK inhibitor, off-label tofacitinib that is basically generic or off-label Rinvoq that is definitely not generic. I think there's a general belief that we have a reasonable likelihood of being more effective. And by the way, there is an enormous amount of clinical data now generated by us around the use of brepocitinib, whereas all of those other drugs are just speculating on how well it's going to work. So I think that is a driver of people moving over.
As far as like the practical realities of the world, look, putting a patient on off-label generic tofacitinib isn't very hard in the sense that you can write the script and get it filled. It's not that expensive for the patient to fill it, although there's no co-pay assistance and no sort of support program generally for those patients. Tofacitinib among JAK inhibitors is not like even if you think of brepocitinib is like in the same pantheon, tofacitinib is a very minor deity by comparison. And so I think like you just have to understand that docs are not like, "Oh, I'm so excited to get patient off-label tofa. I'm not looking to consider new options." I think they want to put their patient on the most effective thing.
I think in general, there's a belief that Rinvoq is, again, probably not as good as brepocitinib because of the fact that it's a single inhibitor versus the dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2, but like maybe an effective drug. Getting a patient on off-label Rinvoq is extremely difficult. Payers are not there to like help. In fact, they're like -- it's basically medically challenging for payers to get patients on off-label drugs. And certainly, like they can never like push an off-label drug over an on-label one. And docs and patients want the on-label therapy. They want the therapy that's been properly studied. They want the therapy that's been characterized.
So I think that's why when you talk to some of these physicians and they have patients on off-label drug is they want to switch them over. It's because they like the mechanism writ large, and now they want to help getting their patients on to the most effective version of that mechanism that has been shown to work in this disease, and that's brepocitinib at the moment.
Right. And there's also the medical liabilities of prescribing...
For sure. Yes.
Got it. And so I guess, how big do you think brepo could be in DM? I know you're not going to put out guidance or anything or peak sales numbers, but Street estimates are anywhere from like $2 billion to $4 billion. Do you think they're at a reasonable ballpark compared to how are you thinking about it internally?
Yes. Look, my first comment on this is -- in terms of what I think needs to happen for brepo as a drug to be a big and important franchise, I think there are plenty of numbers even below the lower end of that range, which if you think about the size of the wall and the number of bricks we're trying to put in it, even just like already underway pivotal programs, we have DM, we have the NIU program that's going to read out shortly. We have CS, we have LPP, I want to add a bunch of indications beyond that. And whatever, if we wind up in 7 or 8 indications, and all of them are only $1.5 billion, that's a really big drug. So I think like it's not like -- and it's much more important to my mind that we set up the drug well for the long run that we get all these other indications up and running, that we get the patient support piece [ right ] so that we don't mess up access, that we get the pricing dynamics right, so that we can build the bigger thing as opposed to like over-indexing on DM.
I think DM has the potential to be a very large indication. I think people's enthusiasm is well founded. There are at least tens of thousands and potentially many tens of thousands of DM patients. The unmet need is high. There's been a graveyard of therapeutic development. And even sort of on the come, we're a little ways away from the next entrant at all. So I think there's like a lot of reasons to believe that DM rhymes with some of the other great opportunities that have come to biotech where you can make a big difference for patients and generate a lot of value doing it. I think the upper end of the range that you described, above the upper end of the range you described, all like plausible outcomes. The truth sitting where we are right now is the error bars are wide because you're talking like 2 weeks into the launch, not a single -- whatever, you're like really early. And so it's hard to know. And you could tell me brepo is going to be a $2 billion drug and you're going to be -- in DM and you're going to be thrilled, you could tell me it's going to be a $6 billion drug, and you're going be thrilled, you could tell me it's going to be $1.5 billion drug, but it's going to be a giant drug in LPP, and I'm going to be thrilled. So I think there's like a lot of different good ways for it to go. But I think the upper end of the range and beyond are certainly on the table given the quality of the data and the quality of the opportunity, and the unmet need.
Great. That's a good segue to the other indication for brepo, NIU. you have data coming hopefully soon. That's a big catalyst for Roivant as well. So -- what are you hoping to see there in terms of is just stat sig enough in NIU? And -- yes, maybe we can start there.
I'm knocking on a metal table, which is the wrong thing to knock on. But the truth is that -- that's probably wood, there we go. The data is that -- is coming. Hopefully, it will be good. NIU is another indication. First of all, today has been fun in part because we put out this great PH-ILD data yesterday. And yesterday, it was a different investor conference and most of the questions were about PH-ILD. And then I walked in today and I sat down and like in my first meeting, there were like 12 people in the room and all of them were just grilling me about NIU because it turns out like that's just the way this works, what have you done for me lately. And so that was interesting. I think NIU is a market where, first of all, the commercial potential is likely underappreciated at this point. There are a lot of NIU patients. They are at a high risk of blindness and long-term complications. And the stuff that's out there by and large, doesn't work very well.
HUMIRA is the only really sort of approved modern agent, and it has very high treatment failure rates. In fact, like the time to treatment failure on HUMIRA in the study on average was like 5.6 months, I think, like less than 6 months and these patients are failing off therapy. So there's a huge amount of need. And bluntly, in order for us to succeed in a post HUMIRA setting, I think all we need is simply to be successful. If we get a label for NIU in the post HUMIRA setting, where your choices are like risk blindness or try brepocitinib, even pretty middling data would result in a commercial success.
The better the data is, the faster patients will want to get off other drugs and onto our agent. And if our data is blow it out of the water good, I have no doubt that docs will try and push for earlier line use. So there's like a range of goodness in the outcome. But I think in order to be a commercially interesting drug, we just need to hit a p-value.
Okay. Got it. The third leg of this stool in the interest of time, Immunovant and the FcRn IMVT-1402. Two catalysts that are very important. I'll touch on the first one, the difficult to treat RA part 2. I feel like this readout has been talked about and debated a lot, maybe because in hindsight, part 1 was so good. So most scenarios, in my view, tend to be a positive outcome in part 2. Like what would be a disappointing result in your view in the part 2 of this difficult-to-treat RA?
I'll say what I've said before, which is bluntly, I don't think we're going to learn very much from part 2 of this study at this point. Because the part 1 data was quite good in a way that, to me, suggests we have an effective medicine that's doing something in these patients. And we're going to run another study, and that study is probably going to have a more conventional placebo-controlled design. And we're going to see what it does in that setting and try to get it approved. And we would do that almost regardless of what we see in period 2 of this data. So I'm not exactly sure how we will change the design of our next study, anything about the future of the program based on what happens in the randomized withdrawal period, given the quality of the data in period 1 of the study.
The only thing I can think of that would be like a truly disappointing outcome is if placebo and drug patient degradation of response looked identical in period 2, and you're like, okay, how do I know the drug is actually working, and this wasn't all some weird placebo fever dream. I think that's extremely unlikely because the truth is ACR70s just don't like spontaneously happen. So the depth of responses we saw in period 1, which is what makes it potentially harder to hit stat significance in period 2 is also the kind of thing that makes you feel like, okay, this is like a "real data set."
But I think if we saw just like parallel degradation with no separation of those curves, I would be like, okay, that's like a little bit nerve-racking for the next study. Other than that, if you see some separation, if the inflammatory markers confirm it, if the drug is clearly doing something relative to placebo, then I think like you're going to run the next study. And actually, the major interesting question isn't what happens in period 2 of the study. It's what can we agree on with FDA in terms of the right treatment paradigm in a population for which a registrational study has never been conducted before, which is to say a population specifically restricted to multi-mechanism failure, where you'd want to run a smaller study potentially with a more stringent endpoint, and where the unmet need is high. And so FDA might be comfortable with those sort of things -- we have to have that conversation. There's a pretty wide range of regulatory outcomes. That, to me, in some ways, is like the more "interesting question" than what happens mechanically in period 2 of the study.
Right. And on that regulatory pathway forward, 1 study versus 2 study, does that make a lot of difference, except maybe some capital and some...
Yes. I mean, look, I think the short answer is, all else equal. We'd rather run 1 study than 2 probably, and we'd rather run a medium to small study than a very large study. And there's -- look, there's some if we had like blow it out of the water stats on every endpoint in the randomized withdrawal trial, we'd probably think for 15 minutes about whether to ask FDA, if we could just run another randomized withdrawal trial, given the first one the FDA dislikes randomized withdrawal trial. So I think they probably just say, no. Anyway, that's like a question that someone could ask.
But other than that, I think 1 study versus 2, big study versus small is mostly a question of time and cost. And I think barring something truly extraordinary in those interactions, we'll probably choose to run a study of some kind, regardless with more or less sponsor risk depending on what FDA thinks we should be doing. So we'll see. But I think multi-mechanism failure RA has the potential to be among the largest FcRn indications. I don't know, I'm not going to -- I'm not going to sit here and choose between that and Graves or whatever. But look, I think it's certainly one of the most exciting things we are working on. And I think the opportunity to be there first in a big way for a population, that's probably 75,000 to 100,000 patients with high need and high willingness to try pharmacotherapy is great.
Yes. Yes, I mean we agree it's a big market as well. And you talked about Graves. The readout is coming next year, probably one of the bigger catalysts in the biotech world next year. You're creating a new category with this indication. Maybe one -- first question on the competition. Lilly bought Merida recently for their TSHR. It seems like there's pharma interest in Graves as well. I think the one thing that we have talked about TSHR as a mechanism as we think about FcRn as well, it's more selective, but probably makes you hyperthyroid. But the argument that the TSHR companies would make is, all right, you can take Synthroid. And it's not -- it's probably one of the most widely prescribed medications out there. It's not a big deal. We are way more selective. So what's your take on that?
So first of all, I don't want to pitch for a competitor too hard. Merida is not a TSHR-directed therapy. Merida is a TSHR autoantibody directed therapy. So it's effectively an antibody degrader for TSHR mAbs. And I say that because I think the anti-TSHR, the ones you're referring to, like the kinetics small molecule or I forgot, there's a couple of other companies that have like TSHR-directed mAbs. Look, I think those are going to work, obviously. And to your point, I think the way -- my prediction is the way most of those drugs will be developed is they will be dosed to saturation. They will send people hypo on purpose and then they will replenish with Synthroid. And I think the answer is like, does that have a role to play? Look, if there is a patient who comes into an FcRn study with 100x the upper limit of normal on TRAbs and then we degrade their TRAbs by 80%, they will have 20x the upper limit of normal on TRAbs. They will still be sick with Graves' disease, and we will not be able to cure them.
It is possible that a TSHR mAb could shut down their thyroid, allow it to reregulate and actually like with Synthroid enough dosing, they could potentially get reregulated and maybe even off drug. So I think like for certain patients, the ability to go after it with the TSHR mAb could be helpful. I think right now, we know, most patients would prefer not to be -- they would prefer to be hypothyroid and on Synthroid relative to having the worst forms of hyperthyroidism in Graves' disease. But mostly, they would prefer not to be hyperthyroid and on Synthroid, which is why they choose to suffer through the side effects methimazole and all these other things to avoid having a thyroidectomy and stuff like that.
So I think in general, the TSHR mAbs will find a place, but it's just like the direct targeting of TSH receptor is like a less elegant mechanism than targeting the autoantibodies because it can send the patient hypo. On the autoantibody directed like degraders, like Merida or some of the other approaches, that is also an elegant mechanism. And in theory, if you could selectively degrade 100% of the anti-TSHR autoantibodies, you would be better than us. But I think there's a whole bunch of scientific questions that nobody has answered yet around the heterogeneity of those antibodies, the side effect profile of these drugs. And so look, I think it's like an interesting potential competitor. It's in the pretty distant future. Lilly must have seen something constructive in the data they were allowed to look at to do it. But it's like just hard to know until we've actually seen what these drugs can do.
Right. And maybe coming to the Phase III for Graves. I mean the mechanism makes a ton of sense. Ultimately, you're doing what reducing the autoantibodies that are causing the disease, so should work. But maybe some of the pushbacks on the prior data from investors could be that small sample, a few sites, some of the sustained reduction in the thyroid receptor antibodies, even after bato was discontinued, but your IgG levels comes up. So what's your take on some of these pushbacks?
Yes. Look -- first of all, I'm trying to think if the following statement is true. In Roivant's history, I think we have never run a study that is less biologically complicated than what we're trying to do in Graves' disease. Mechanistically, this is like -- it's like down the fairway. We're reducing autoantibodies and -- disease that is like every disease is more complicated -- than like pretty well understood to be caused by anti-TSHR autoantibody. So great. So I think like the biology is actually pretty straightforward. I think there are reasons to be nervous about Graves, in the same way, there's reasons to be nervous about anything. And I think idiosyncratically in Graves' disease, or whatever, as is so often the case, our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness.
Simply the fact that we are first in this indication, which as an indication that's managed heterogeneously with sort of varying levels of background methimazole other things. And like we just like don't have a lot of data with which to characterize these endpoints, I think like that sort of dearth of information makes Graves scary. And in fact, like if we fail in Graves disease, I suspect the reason will be -- I mean, I hate to say this, but like it's going to be a study design point. It's going to be just like there was something we missed in the characterization and study of these patients that the many people behind us as well as maybe we in a subsequent study would then get right again. We just had to take some bets based on our Phase II data.
I think our studies are going to work for the reason that the biology is very clear, and I think we're running good studies, but that's the scary thing about Graves. I think the fact that we are the first to run a late-stage placebo-controlled study ever in Graves creates a measure of irreducible risk, no matter how well we think we've designed the study.
But you're running 2 studies. So will there be ways to modify one if something goes...
Sure. Yes. Look, we'll get to watch both, and we can make changes potentially, and we can always run more studies. And the first one, the short study will almost certainly read out meaningfully before the second one. So yes, absolutely, we've got choices. I think this is a real risk. I've got myself in trouble previously for pointing out that the biotech is a risky business. But like I think mostly, I feel pretty good about these studies. We have a good track record of successful clinical development. And I think that track record is mostly that we're not cowboys, and we don't take a lot of risk. It's not that -- so I think like for us, the Graves study is a risky study, but I think it's like against the backdrop of most of our studies are in relatively well characterized territory.
Got it. Got it. And the time line is till 2027, should investors expect that you'll narrow down the time line at some point in the future?
Once these studies are fully enrolled, and we're ready to announce that, we'll announce that they're fully enrolled. And I think at that point, the time lines will become clearer.
Okay. Got it. And -- go ahead.
[indiscernible]
Maybe I can repeat the question for the audience. So as Immunovant continues to mature, how do you think about stand-alone versus maybe consolidating some of that?
Do you ask Sanofi that question about Regeneron? Regeneron is a big company. They're successful. They have a partnership with Sanofi. They've made it work. They've built a big business. I think the answer is like if the drug works and it's commercially successful, lots of strange arrangements have persisted in biopharma for a long time on the basis of good medicine. So I think like one answer to your question is like, if this stuff works and it produces a successful outcome, then I think like a lot will be forgiven and it is what it is.
If I had a time machine and could go back and tell 2018 Matt to not take Immunovant public and instead to own the whole thing, I'd also tell him them about the complicated roller-coaster journey we have along the way, but I'd probably make that decision. And if there were a way for us to own all of Immunovant efficiently tomorrow in a way that made sense, look, we'd love the story, so that's something we would always be thinking about at some level. But practically, the status quo is working well for us right now. And most importantly, I think it's working well for the drug right now. That is like 1402 is being well developed. It is properly capitalized. We have the ability to capitalize it together with outside market participants. And I think the most important thing right now is to maximize the value of 1402 by running the right studies, running them well and generating the best possible data.
Maybe if I can ask a follow-up on that. What would be the, I guess, obvious attributes to consolidate? I mean there are synergies in terms of the markets that you both are competing in with even like DM and IM, where FcRns have values?
I think those are all mechanically solvable problems if we need to solve them mechanically. And the truth is like from Roivant's perspective, you talk about myositis. We own 75% of Priovant, Pfizer owns the other 25%. We own like 60% of Immunovant, the public markets own the other 40%. These things are different, but they're not so different that from Roivant, like the trading as between them is like a big economic delta that drives our incentives. Our incentive is to make the pie bigger, to make both of these programs as important as we can. And that is, I think, how we will act in every instance.
Look, I -- Hindsight's 2020, we should have bought Immunovant when it was a $5 stock. And if Immunovant were ever a $5 stock while Roivant was a $42 stock, I think it was like a pretty easy decision from a concentration perspective. The gosh darn problem is that Immunovant is now also a $40 stock, and so the values are sort of moving up in parallel, and that means that every time we just have to keep making that decision in a value-oriented way.
It's a good problem to have...
It is a good problem to have. And by the way, they're both cheap. So...
All right. That's all the time we have today.
Subject to all of the appropriate securities disclaimers that I'm supposed to make when I say that.
Thanks, Matt, as always. Really appreciate the time. We couldn't get through all of these, all of the different pipeline indications as well, but there's a lot going on at Roivant right now. So maybe in the future. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. That was fun.
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Roivant Sciences — 12th Annual Cantor Fitzgerald Global Healthcare Conference
Roivant präsentierte auf der Cantor-Konferenz starke mosliciguat-Daten, frühe kommerzielle Impulse für brepocitinib und laufende FcRn-/Graves‑Programme mit klaren klinischen und regulatorischen Fahrplänen.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kurz: Mosliciguat (inhalierte sGC‑Aktivierung) lieferte außergewöhnliche hämodynamische und klinische Daten in PH‑ILD (pulmonale Hypertonie bei interstitiellen Lungenerkrankungen) und öffnet Wege für Indikationserweiterungen; Brepocitinib (Lisraya) startet langsam, aber mit hoher Arztnachfrage; FcRn‑Programm und Graves/RA‑Programme bleiben zentrale Catalysts.
📌 Strategische Highlights
- Mosliciguat: Tiefste je gezeigte Senkung des pulmonalen Gefäßwiderstands (Pulmonary Vascular Resistance, PVR) in einer Studie, signifikante 6‑Minuten‑Gehtest‑Differenz; Phase‑III‑Protokoll steht, Patienten werden rekrutiert.
- Indikationserweiterung: Management prüft rasche Expansion nach PAH (pulmonale arterielle Hypertonie), IPF (idiopathische Lungenfibrose) und PH‑COPD; Marktpotenzial PH‑ILD in den USA geschätzt bei eher 30–100k Patienten, Roivant tendiert zum oberen Bereich.
- Brepocitinib: Differenzierung gegenüber Off‑label‑JAKs durch duale JAK1/TYK2‑Wirkung; Launch „slow and steady“, starke Arzt‑Resonanz und Patient‑Support‑Infrastruktur.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Phase‑III‑Status: Für mosliciguat ist die Phase‑III‑Planung längst in Arbeit; Enrollment läuft, was einen Zeitvorteil für Folgeindikationen bringt.
- IP‑Laufzeit: Schutz bis Mitte der 2040er Jahre – erlaubt langfristige Investitionen und sukzessiven Indikationsaufbau.
- Kommerz: Brepocitinib‑Zielmärkte (Dermatomyositis, NIU etc.) bleiben groß; frühe Zugangsprozesse patientenindividuell, Unterstützung über Hub‑Programme.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Priorisierung: Management nannte Kapazität/Manpower (nicht Kapital) als limitierenden Faktor für parallele Studienstarts und will priorisieren.
- Wettbewerb & Differenz: Warum Ärzte Off‑label‑JAKs verlassen sollten — Argument: duale JAK1/TYK2‑Wirkung + robuste Studiendaten und Supportprogramme erhöhen Wechselanreiz.
- Regulatorik FcRn: Für IMVT‑1402 (FcRn) in schwierig behandelbarem RA sind Weg und Umfang (1 vs. 2 Studien) noch offen; FDA‑Dialog entscheidend für Entwicklungsgröße und Zeitplan.
⚡ Bottom Line
Mosliciguat ist kurzfristig der größte klinische Upside‑Treiber nach den präsentierten Daten: klares Signal für Wirksamkeit und laufende Phase‑III‑Rekrutierung reduzieren Entwicklungsrisiko. Brepocitinib liefert positive Frühsignale für nachhaltiges kommerzielles Wachstum, wobei Access und Positionierung gegen Off‑label‑Therapien geprüft werden müssen. FcRn‑Programme und Graves‑Studien bleiben bedeutende, aber regulatorisch und designseitig risikobehaftete Catalysts; Priorisierung und Aufbau von Personalressourcen bestimmen Tempo.
Roivant Sciences — Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference
1. Question Answer
I think we're going to get started here. Good to see everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for the next fireside. My name is Derek Archila. I'm one of the Wells Fargo biotech analysts. So next company here, we have Roivant. From the company, we have Matthew Gline, CEO.
Matt, thanks for joining us today on a great day for some new data, not -- great times to always good data right around the conference.
That's right. No, thanks for having us. It's great. We put out some data in PH-ILD this morning that was pretty extraordinary. So it's exciting to be here.
Well, let's start there, very topical. So maybe walk us through kind of the PHocus trial and ultimately, what -- putting into context some of the data that we saw today.
Yes. Taking just like a 2-second step back first, just in case anyone is not familiar. So Roivant now just under $30 billion market cap company. At this point, a leg with 3 stools such as it were, brepocitinib is our "lead product," just got approved a couple of weeks ago in dermatomyositis under the brand name LISRAYA. We have an FcRn that Derek knows extremely well and I'm sure we'll spend some time talking about today in Immunovant.
And then the third of them, which had been third in line until this morning is mosliciguat. Mosliciguat is an inhaled sGC activator. So this is a mechanism. It's effectively a potent vasodilator, among other things. And it's a mechanism -- SGC-targeted therapies have been studied. And in fact, in one case, there's a systemically administered SGC called Adempas that was a Merck-Bayer collaborative project in PAH that was about a $2 billion drug at peak.
Anyway, PH-ILD, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is pulmonary hypertension that comes from having lung disease. And it's been a tough indication because systemic vasodilation for these patients is dangerous. You wind up -- all of the benefit you get from vasodilating the healthy lung tissue, you give up by vasodilating the unhealthy lung tissue. And so it's been a tough indication to study. And in the last few years, inhaled treprostinil, most notably Tyvaso from United Therapeutics, but also YUTREPIA from Liquidia and coming TPIP from Insmed, all different formulations of treprostinil have been successful at treating these patients.
And so we took mosliciguat, this inhaled SGC activator into PH-ILD with -- replicating that idea. PHocus was a large 100-some-odd -- 120-ish patient Phase IIb study in PH-ILD that was designed to demonstrate that we could treat these patients. And boy howdy, that was a really nice outcome. So we got the deepest ever observed PVR, pulmonary vascular resistance measured by right heart cath, I think, in any pulmonary hypertension study ever, we had about a 56% placebo-adjusted improvement in PVR.
We were not powered for a p-value on the functional endpoint 6-minute walk, but we delivered a p-value on the functional endpoint 6-minute walk. So just a really, really good set of data all around. And I don't know how familiar people are PH-ILD. This is a terrible disease. These patients are dying. And so it's phenomenal to be able to deliver this kind of outcome.
So what's kind of next steps here now that you have got the data in hand?
Yes. So we -- a few months ago or earlier this year, we're kind of looking at each other and realized that we had pretty good conviction and that we wanted to move fast. And so we actually have already -- we started the Phase III earlier this year. And so the Phase III is enrolling patients now. And so I think the next step is to finish that study, which should then be sufficient for approval. So that's what's ongoing now.
Is there any difference between Phase II, Phase III in terms of population or study design? Or we should think it's pretty replicable?
Basically, no, with one key exception, which is in the Phase IIb study, we did not allow for concurrent use of treprostinil Tyvaso. And in Phase III, we are allowing for some measure of concurrent Tyvaso. We have an open-label study that's a combo study that we haven't read out yet, but we will allow for some concurrent Tyvaso use. We'll probably -- it will be stratified, we'll probably cap it at some level. But that way, we won't have any label restrictions, which is -- pulmonary hypertension for those that follow it is a polypharmacy market, where these patients go on every available drug.
Actually, in PH-ILD specifically because these patients have lung disease, treprostinil is an irritant and it causes cough in these patients, which is lousy for a patient with an already like a coughing disease. And so we had less cough on drug than in placebo, 1 inhalation of a DPI once a day. I think we should have a pretty compelling value proposition. But ultimately, these patients are very sick, and I expect they will also wind up on a combination of these drugs over time.
Got you. So where do you kind of see like the opportunity here? And ultimately, I guess I don't put in the context or frame out the overall kind of peak sales opportunity potentially?
We don't have peak sales guidance to give. The most conservative estimates for PH-ILD as a sort of number of patients in the -- we think there's probably about 200,000 PH-ILD patients in the world. United Therapeutics gives a conservative estimate of 30,000 in the United States. Other companies have bigger estimates. I think there's tens to maybe low hundreds of thousands of PH-ILD patients potentially in the U.S. These patients are really sick.
I think with our quality of data and with the fact that we don't have cough and have simple administration, there's no reason to think we couldn't have frontline use or first line of major new therapy use in PH-ILD. We'll also, I suspect, be used after treprostinil in some cases, and they'll be used after us in some cases. And I think the real opportunity here is this is -- you don't have to outrun the bear situation. It's just these patients are sick and you got to get out to them.
Got you. So we should be feeling very good about the Phase III. When would we get data there?
We haven't said that either. We're just getting enrollment up and running now. We just read out the the Phase IIb today. We'll meet with FDA and confirm things like size and maybe able to repower, et cetera, now that we know the Phase IIb data pretty cleanly. But I think it should enroll nice and quickly given the quality of the data that we've got here and the Phase IIb enrolled pretty quickly as well. So fingers crossed for a nice time line. But I don't have a time line to share right now.
Got you. I mean anything else to highlight there? Any other thoughts on the data today?
I'm not very practiced talking about this data. We're an hour in, so I don't have like super prepared talking points. Look, this was phenomenal data across PVR and hemodynamics, across 6-minute walk and functional endpoints. Again, the lack of cough is really nice and the one inhalation once a day.
The only other thing I'll say is I think this opens the door to not just PH-ILD, but to, first of all, any form of pulmonary hypertension is for sure on the table. PAH is an indication that we got asked about a lot before this dataset, and my answer at the time was PAH is very competitive. There's a lot of other drugs there. This data is good enough that I suspect it opens the door for even competitive indications. So I think you better believe we're evaluating that.
We've been looking at IPF following up on United Therapeutics has had some success there with Tyvaso. So I think lots of places to go. And I think this really does become a proper third leg to the Roivant stool at this point.
Got it. Okay. So maybe shift gears to LISRAYA and dermatomyositis. So your recent approval -- so maybe talk about how you think of this opportunity. And ultimately, this is an area where there's really been a dearth of options for patients. So yes, just kind of thinking about ramp and uptake.
Yes. So it's hard to believe that this was just last week -- the week before last week. It was very recently that we announced the approval of brepo in DM. And it felt like we've been working on it for so long. It feels like -- I said on the approval call, it's the rare marathon that ends with the right to begin another marathon immediately. And so now we're out there with LISRAYA on the market.
Look, dermatomyositis, again, for those that aren't familiar with it, it's severe inflammatory disease. Terrible skin rash. In fact, many DM patients say the worst thing about it is this like very painful disfiguring rash. And then on top of that, it's got these muscle wasting effects that lead to things like can't climb stairs, can't lift objects, can't dress yourself, can't eat. So a really bad disease. There are basically no modern options approved other than LISRAYA at this point. People are on high-dose steroids, immunosuppressants. IVIg is approved and the label dosing paradigm involves basically 4 or 5 consecutive days, full days in the infusion clinic. So -- and a lot of patients are on it, which gives you a sense of how bad the disease is.
Brepo's data was really, really strong, and we were able to show not just very good clinical benefit, but steroid-sparing conjunction clinical benefit, which we got on label. So I think we have a really nice story to tell, a great value proposition to patients. I think the patient community and the physician community are really excited. Obviously, tremendously excited now that it's approved. Drug has launched, prescriptions written and all that. So really looking forward to just getting out there. We get asked all the time about ramp, and our answer has been consistent. I was talking to an investor this morning who wondered why we hadn't gotten slow and steady printed on headbands yet, which I don't look good in head bands, but otherwise, I think it's a good idea.
Look, I think it's a new indication. It's not like there's a lot of patterns to point to. There's a lot of physician and patient enthusiasm. And the most important thing is we're out there, and I'm excited for what we're going to do. It's obviously just like day 6 or something. So...
Well, I guess maybe talk about like rheumatologists are generally pretty familiar with JAKs and brepo kind of fits right into the bag of tricks for them. So I guess, do you think there's going to be much education and learning around like the actual mechanism or safety, things like that? Maybe just walk us through how you guys are kind of educating the field force is educating the docs here.
In general, two things. One is I completely agree that rheumatologists and even dermatologists are familiar with the mechanism or at least part of mechanism JAK and also familiar with TYK2s for that matter, brepo is a dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2. And I think there has been so little actual successful drug development in myositis, but there's like a ton of physician enthusiasm even apart from that.
And one of the things, you asked about safety, we have a black box warning like JAK inhibitors do. The truth is dermatomyositis as a disease causes things like JAK inhibitor side effects, malignancies, cardiovascular events, high-dose steroids and methotrexate and immunosuppressants cause the same. Treating these patients effectively is worth it and in fact, may even reduce the risk of those things depending on sort of how you look at it. Certainly, in our data in the study, we did not -- if anything, we saw lower events of these kinds of drugs than on placebo because I think you're treating these patients effectively, getting them off immunosuppressants and steroids and so on.
So I think it is -- there's not going to be a heavy lift on education. And in fact, one of the other things about myositis, it's treated in a pretty concentrated way. About half of the U.S. patients are treated at about 200 specialty myositis referral clinics. And those docs are familiar with our study, many were investigators in our study, excited about the drug. We've been talking to them from a medical education perspective over the course of the past year since the data.
So I don't think there's a lot of education to do. In fact, one of the reasons I feel obligated every time I go out in public to say the phrase slow and steady is because if you call these physicians, the physicians are incredibly enthusiastic. In fact, one of the ways a lot of investors have come to us in the last year or so is, you know well, Argenx has recently read out data in the myositis program. Argenx obviously has an impassioned and enthusiastic group of investors who were calling docs asking about argenx. And in many cases, what the docs wanted to talk about because it was more proximate was brepocitinib.
So we got a lot of Argenx investors showing up in our office saying, I keep asking you about efgartigimod, and I keep being told, first, you should look at brepo, it's sooner. so that I think there's just a lot of doc enthusiasm for the drug.
Yes, I mean we've heard the same and upwards of maybe 60% utilization for the patients that are candidates for the drug.
Those are large numbers. There are tens of thousands of DM patients. We certainly do not need 60% penetration in order to have a big and exciting drug.
Yes. Well, that's good to know. So I guess when you think about the field force that you guys are going to put out there, and you just kind of alluded to it in terms of the concentration of where these patients are, what kind of gets you confident in terms of your ability to launch brepo?
Oh gosh. Biotech is not a field that rewards confidence. So you asked me what my confidence is. Look, I think we have a great team. I think we have great relations with the doc community. I think the level of doc feedback and the early enthusiasm from the prescriber community is certainly encouraging.
And one of the things I really like about orphan disease launches, I often talk about how -- like we previously launched a drug in psoriasis. These bigger market indications are like a fluid dynamics problem where you can't approach the patients with individuals. You have to think about the shape of the surface and branding and marketing and DTC advertising are all like the sort of tools that you have for manipulating and accessing those patient population -- manipulating is right word, but accessing those patient populations.
Dermatomyositis, it's an orphan disease, and you can approach these patients where they are, one doc at a time, one patient at a time. And in many ways, treating these patients in the market is like treating them in a clinical trial. You find them, you get to them, you sort of communicate about the benefit of the drug. And I think that's like the way that you build a roster such as it is.
I feel confident that our relationship with dermatomyositis physicians are extraordinary. I feel confident that the Priovant team has done a great job building confidence within that community. And I think that's ultimately what's going to translate to uptake. And then the other thing that really matters in these fields are access and we have a great patient support team that's out there making sure that to the extent possible, these patients have no co-pay and are able to get on drug quickly and seamlessly.
Got you. So in the quarters, how should we be thinking about the KPIs that you guys will share in terms of the launch?
Net sales. Net sales to product. Look, the truth of the matter is in the long run, that's what matters is getting out there, getting reimbursed, getting patients on drug. And I think there's like a lot of desire to find measures early in launches to sort of tell what's going to happen. Look, I think we'll see how the launch goes, but my gut feeling is net sales is going to tell the story.
Got you. Anything else that we should be kind of thinking about? Pushes and pulls for the launch? I mean, obviously, there's reimbursement and things like that, that will come on. But anything else that we should be considering?
Yes. Look, we're obviously paying attention to how quickly we can get coverage for these patients. That's an important indicator. We're sort of alone in the field right now. As I said, there's not a lot of other novel drugs. And so I think that's -- most of it is just getting out there and getting behavior change in these practices.
One of the questions I get a lot is like which patients are going to be on drug first. I think the interesting thing is it's pretty -- different docs are approaching that question differently. And so there are some docs who use JAK inhibitors off-label and are enthusiastic to switch their off-label patients over to brepo. There are some docs who are heavier users of IVIg and to switch those patients. There are some docs who just have a lot of steroids and immunosuppressant patients who have resisted IVIg or off-label therapy, and they want to put those patients on. I think it's very much a meet the docs where they are kind of a launch. And so I think we're trying to figure out what the early patients look like in different settings.
Can you talk to like the amount of steroid usage in myositis? And obviously, the doctors, this is a huge benefit to get down to 5 milligrams or less, ideally 0.
Yes. Steroid sparing is a huge benefit here. It's funnily enough, when we designed the study, we had a steroid taper in the study, which you do in these trials in part, to basically protect the drug effect, right? You want to get patients off steroids, so you're not getting like placebo patients up-titrating on steroids and getting treated actively anyway. So you got a steroid taper. And in some sense, we failed the steroid taper that is what happened is we were able to get brepo patients to a much lower level of steroid use than we were able to get placebo patients because placebo were just sick enough, it was harder for them to titrate.
And that wound up being ironically one of the best features of our data was that discrepancy, which docs look at as a huge benefit to brepo. You can get patients on lower dose steroids. Many, many DM patients on high-dose steroids. You're talking about like average steroid burdens of 10 or 20 milligrams for 6 months out of the year. I don't know if you've been on oral prednisone before, but being on 20 milligrams of prednisone for 6 months is a miserable way to live. And so the docs are incredibly excited about the ability to get these patients to lower steroid doses.
Got you. So maybe shift gears to Immunovant 1402 and kind of the FcRn pipeline. So I guess one of the questions that always surfaces around kind of increased IgG reduction and conferring better efficacy. So I guess just kind of broadly speaking, but MG, CIDP, all these other indications, what gets you confident that you guys have maybe the best reduction and could lead to the best efficacy?
Well, I used to think data would answer that question. And now I think we've generated the data that answers that question in like 4 or 5 indications and still mostly people seem to want to ask it. So I don't know what's going to answer that conclusively for everybody else. We feel like in every indication where we've tested it, first of all, at the individual patient level, every patient for whom we have -- not every patient, patients who have deeper IgG suppression get better clinical benefit than patients who have lesser IgG suppression. That's been true in our MG data, in our CIDP data, in our RA data, in our Graves data, obviously, sort of across the board, every disease where we have been able to measure this effect, we have shown that deeper IgG suppression yields better clinical benefit.
And I think that's going to translate over time across indications to an attractive clinical profile for our drug. Obviously, in indications like MG, where efgartigimod is a very well-established therapy, whether this better by enough to win that market is something we'll have to see when we get our Phase III data. But I think in indications like Graves, where we're first, in indications like RA, where we're ahead of the field, I think that better clinical profile in our view, is going to translate to a real leadership position.
Yes. Maybe let's talk about difficult-to-treat RA. So the data, very impressive and maybe surprisingly so for period 1. As we look to period 2, I guess one of the questions is really that withdrawal period being long enough. And I think you set the right expectations in terms of what we should see, but maybe just rehash that and ultimately, how does this inform kind of a Phase III or the next development in this indication?
Yes, perfect. So look, for those that may or may not been paying attention, we put out data in sort of an interesting trial design. It was a randomized withdrawal design where period 1 was an open-label period where patients were on drug and then responders were re-randomized either to the high dose, low dose or placebo. And frankly, the period 1 data was so good that it has made the period 2 bar difficult. That is the endpoint in period 2 is loss of ACR20 response in that randomized withdrawal period. And of the ACR20 responders who got re-randomized, like half were ACR70 responders and 2/3 were ACR50 responders. And so you're talking about taking an ACR70 responder and trying to get them to lose an ACR20 response in 12 weeks, where they're still getting some pharmacodynamic benefit for the beginning of the period. It's just a high bar.
So I don't know, frankly, given the quality of period 1 data, what's going to happen in period 2, and I think it's a reasonable thing to be concerned about. That said, the period 1 data was so good that even if we don't get a p-value in period 2, it doesn't really matter. We're basically set on running a Phase III program here given the quality of the period 1 data as long as we see clear evidence that there is a drug effect, which I believe that we will, given the number of ACR70 responders and so on.
So we're looking forward to seeing that data, but also in parallel, we're setting up a discussion with FDA about what a Phase III program should look like. And our hope is that we can run a reasonably sized RA study, specifically in this late-line population that can get us to a product -- again, these patients -- the patient population that we studied, sorry, to take a step back, was refractory patients who have failed at least 2 basically of IL-6s, TNFs and JAK inhibitors. And for patients that have failed multiple lines of advanced therapy for RA, there really aren't options. And so our hope is that we can design a study for that patient population and have a real impact.
Yes. I mean this seems like almost like a fourth line plus setting for these patients. So I mean one of the interesting features here is that could you get kind of that most indication carve-out for difficult-to-treat RA. Like what do you think the FDA's receptivity would be and given the fact that you've now produced some really interesting data, very positive data in this population, which is very tough to treat.
I think one of the things that FDA is consistently "worried" about in RA is that people are trying to sneak into earlier line therapy, and we are not, right? CRNs have a different price point. It -- this does not make sense as an early line medicine. And so I think like we would be enthusiastic per se about a label restriction to late-line patients. And I hope that FDA will be receptive to that for a bunch of reasons.
There are, at this point, a couple of examples of people pushing in that direction. There's obviously the T cell engagers in the CAR-T therapies that will also be multi-mechanism failure patients. And so I think there's like a little bit of -- FDA is clearly thinking along these lines, but we will be the first with a Phase III study, I think, in this population. And so I think we're going to have to have that conversation.
So base case is that you're running another study, somehow if it hits that sig, would you file on that data like period for period 2?
I think it is extremely unlikely that the FDA would accept for approval a randomized withdrawal 170-patient study in RA. Obviously, if we hit a p-value, we're going to take the data to FDA as a part of the overall conversation. But I'm not holding my breath for that outcome. But hopefully, the Phase III program from here can be straightforward. And again, obviously, these are patients with a lot of unmet need. So we'll see what happens.
Got you. So we should be thinking probably more traditional type of trial, maybe single trial, but more traditional type of RA trial for just that specific population.
Probably that's -- look, I think our hope and our hope would be to run a single relatively small for RA Phase III study of a relatively conventional design. But there's still a pretty wide range of things on the table. We're talking to FDA. Obviously, if we did hit the p-value here, we could consider rerunning a randomized withdrawal trial. I don't think that's the base case plan here, but it's one of the things that's on the table. If FDA wanted 2 studies, as long as they were both reasonably sized, this study enrolled really quickly, I'm sure be a problem for us. But that's it. If this study hit, I'm not sure why we would need that. So it just depends on how this looks, and we'll have the conversation with FDA.
Got you. In terms of the opportunity, so it's fairly small, but again, maybe there's pricing opportunity here because it's such a narrow population and a very sick population. So I guess how do you think about the difficult-to-treat RA opportunity if that's kind of the specific label indication you're able to get?
Would you describe myasthenia gravis as small? I think it's comparable in size to the other FcRn indications. I think there's 75,000-plus patients who are multi-mechanism failure RA patients who would be potentially eligible for an FcRn. And I think that is -- the commercial model of an FcRn, that's an incredibly attractive market. And I think we've carved out a leadership position in part because I'm really proud of the study we run. I think we really have figured out how to enhance the patient population for FcRn applicability, both through things like ACPA titers and enrolling patients who have high autoantibody levels.
And then I think the very fact that we are looking at, let's say, JAK and TNF failure patients -- why is there a late-line RA patient who cannot be treated with all of the potent anti-inflammatories we know of? It's because their disease is caused by something other than inflammation. Like there's something interesting and causal about the autoantibody selectivity, if you will, of these patients who have failed inflammatory mechanisms. And I think that is giving us a super enriched patient population for our needs.
Got you. And is it fairly easy for these docs in kind of clinical practice to measure those titers and get that information to figure out who's best suited for a therapy like this?
Measuring autoantibody levels in RA is an easy thing to do is the honest answer. So I'm not worried about that. And the truth is if you're treating multi-mechanism failure RA patients, the willingness to go on a variety of drugs is an answered question. These are docs who are using pharmacotherapy for these patients. These are patients who are willing to try things, and they've just failed so far. So I think they should be pretty easy patients to access and they're sick and they need help.
Got you. So maybe moving along to the CLE. So you also have an update coming in terms of kind of more of a proof-of-concept trial, signal finding trial. So maybe put into context what we should expect from that trial? And ultimately, what's kind of the path forward there if we start to see an interesting signal?
Yes, perfect. Look, we said all along CLE is a bit of a flier for us. It's an indication that's high risk. If we are successful there, that will be an opportunity, we will be a first in mechanism approval or first mechanism program. But there's sort of 2 "issues." One is that lupus in general is a hard space and the other is it's not just good enough to have a successful study. There's a bunch of mechanisms coming in CLE that have less frequent dosing and other things.
So I think we've got to look at our data and feel confident that we have a commercial opportunity. It's a small and inexpensive study. And I think the way that I would prefer people think of it as a true proof of concept, like signal finding, what do we see? If we see great data, I think we'll be excited to carry it forward into Phase III. And if we don't, we'll write it off as an experiment and some information. So I think that's kind of how I think about the CLE opportunity.
How strong do you think the rationale there is given some of the data that's out there, either for FcRn or just in general?
Reasonably strong. I mean, look, nipo, obviously -- I don't know how much detail we have about it, but nipo has succeeded in SLE, which is a related indication and probably a harder one to study clinically. We had a couple of patients' worth of good data in a sort of small program, and I think it was New Zealand. And so I think there's reasonable rationale. There's clearly an autoantibody role in CLE. Forget Jaccoud's lupus. It's like a tough set of indications, but I think the therapeutic sort of mechanistic rationale is reasonable.
Yes. What's the win like for this? Like what's like, oh, this looks good. We're moving forward. We've got a path here versus like middling data?
Unfortunately, my unsatisfying answer that question, I think it's going to be a little bit of I know when I see an outcome in that there's like a bunch of different parameters and you're going to have to take a step back and look at the data and decide would a drug of this profile be competitive? And that's on top of the fact it's a pretty small study. So -- but look, I think you can certainly generate commanding data in small studies. And I think if we do, the path forward will be clear.
Yes. I guess should we think about -- because it's a small study, a lot of variability here? Or like again...
Absolutely. That's why I say like I think it's going to be a totality of the evidence kind of a consideration. It's just like hard to say with this number of patients. I think the main thing we're looking for is like, is there a real disease activity and if there is real disease activity, is it the kind of disease activity that we could design a Phase III study around to produce a competitive profile.
Got you. Okay. And as we think about kind of other type 1 interferon and autoantibody-driven disease, so we were talking about this with Argenx before. But ultimately, we're starting to get a nice kind of like proof of concept here across myositis. We're getting Sjogren's and also potentially lupus, JASMINE, your CLE data. I don't know, does that kind of like -- one, how do you think that impacts potential Sjogren's trial, but also just potential for future indications with that kind of mix of underlying disease pathology?
Look, I think it's difficult to appreciate because we all live it every day in different ways, just how like how large the potential field of FcRn indications could be. And every time you get a brick to wall, you put RA in, I mean, you're like, oh wait, there's a bunch of inflammatory diseases that kind of rhyme with RA that could be interesting. Obviously, if CLE works, there's a bunch of things that kind of rhyme with lupus that could be interesting. As we move into Graves, we haven't talked about it all yet in this conversation. There's like a bunch of endocrine diseases. There's like a bunch of different places you could imagine going.
And I'd say, as I'm sure Karen did the same, everyone keeps their best ideas quiet. But I think there are a lot of interesting places to imagine going with an FcRn from here, and we're working on a bunch of those possibilities in parallel.
Got you. So yes, maybe a good segue to Graves. So this is one where you guys certainly will be first for an FcRn and in general, but I guess we're seeing a lot more entrants, more competitive intensity that's kind of coming into the pipeline. So I guess would you kind of look at FcRn versus maybe more of the TSHR antibody approach. I guess, who do you think wins in this market?
Imitation is the finest form of flattery. I'm very proud of the following statement, but also I believe it. I think if we had not pioneered development in Graves' disease, it would not be a thing right now. I think like it was not on people's radars. People were sort of focused on TED and other places. And so I feel really great about that. And I think ultimately, Graves' patients are going to win from the plurality of options that are coming.
MG is a crowded field and Argenx is doing great. I don't think the fact of competition. I think the fact that competition is generally good for first entrants as we will be in Graves. And so I'm not like -- to be honest, like I'm not worried about it. I'm excited about it. I think the more people pitching new therapies to endocrinologists in the U.S., the more they will use new options for these patients, the more they will improve the lives of these patients and the more they'll wind up using 1402 if our clinical profile is what I hope it will be. So we'll see.
Specifically to your question about TSHR mAbs, look, I think the problem per se -- first of all, I think all these things are good approaches should work. I think anti-TSHR therapies, whether they are antibodies or small molecules or whatever, like should produce a good effect in Graves' disease. The nice thing about FcRn is it's a very elegant mechanism for Graves that is Graves is the cleanest autoantibody-driven disease in the book. It is caused by autoantibodies that are stimulatory of the thyroid. And if you can reduce the autoantibodies, they stop stimulating the thyroid, the thyroid stops being overactive. It's not very complicated.
The problem with the TSHR mAb is similar to the problem with like methimazole and ATDs. Ultimately, what's going to happen with a highly effective downregulator of the TSH receptor is you're going to wind up pushing patients into hyperthyroidism. So I suspect that most of those programs, the way they will be developed is they will dose to saturation, they will floor the thyroid and then they will replace with Synthroid, which is as a clinical profile, probably not as good as something that can elegantly take away the autoantibody.
Now the flip side to that is if you are a patient with 100x the normal limit of TRAbs, even a drug like ours that 80% suppresses TRAbs is going to leave you with 20x the normal limit of TRAbs. There will be patients that you cannot treat even with an FcRn and the TSHR approaches should work, right? They will effectively shut down the thyroid chemically, and you may be able to get patients reregulated that way.
So I think there's absolutely interesting opportunity for TSHR-directed therapy. I think it will be likely more complicated, potentially less pleasant patient experience than an FcRn, and FcRn works. But I think these things could all happily exist side by side. And there's other cool things, right? There's like specific autoantibody degraders in development and lots of other like neat ideas for treating these patients. And I'm sure there will be a plurality of approaches that make sense.
Got you. So one of the things, and I think this has evolved over time in terms of how investors in the community have looked at Graves as an opportunity. So originally, it was like, oh, there's really no market, ATDs are great, like whatever. And there has just been really little innovation in the space. So I think that narrative has changed. But I guess how do you guys view the market and the best candidates for therapy as you guys will be kind of emerging as the first new therapy in a long time?
I don't envy your job in that the problem with Graves' disease is you are faced with a whatever, with like a tough choice. You either need to believe in it, in which case, the numbers that stare back at you on the page are idiotic and difficult to reconcile or you need to find some reason to be skeptical so that you can write a normal sized number on the page. Those are like the choices. Obviously, it's clear, we are. But it's just like a tough problem. The truth is there are hundreds of thousands of poorly controlled Graves patients in the U.S., and they walk around feeling sick and some of them develop thyroid cancer and some of them develop other comorbidities, and it's a tough disease.
And I think if we're successful, there's a lot of different ways to get into that market, and we are enrolling a variety of different kinds of patients from patients who have sort of variable waxing and waning disease to patients who just have an inability to get controlled on antithyroid drugs to patients who are controllable maybe, but like only on pretty high doses of methimazole, where -- the unpleasant side effects of methimazole.
And further complicating things in the U.S. You could have 2 patients who are, in God's eyes, the same. The underlying Graves' disease is the same, but they are treated at different endocrinologists. And one of those patients is treated on low-dose methimazole and is miserable because the thyroid hormones are out of whack and the other patient is on high-dose methimazole and is miserable because of the side effects of methimazole, and that's like its own difficult thing to manage.
So I think the short answer is I think these patients are going to come from a variety of different phenotypes. I think we're going to have to meet them where they are. And it's one of the complicated things about getting out into the world.
Understood. And maybe in the last couple of minutes, just kind of like where kind of the FcRn the mechanism is evolving and obviously, long-acting and things like that. How do you kind of remain competitive here with 1402? And are there other things that you guys are working on in terms of life cycle extensions and things for your FcRn franchise?
Like everybody, we're thinking about novel next-generation ideas, and we've got some stuff in the works, and we'll talk about it when it's worth talking about. And until then, it's just an idea.
I'll say like I think the greatest mark of success is when people are asking what's next. I think mostly 1402 is a great drug, and it's not yet approved in any indication. And so I think our first and near-term goal is to turn that into a drug that matters for a bunch of patients in a bunch of different indications. Believe it or not, in addition to Graves, we have a full pivotal registrational program in MG reading out next year, and that could be interesting depending on what that data looks like. I think it will be hard to unseat Argenx as the king in the MG market, but we're going to hope that we generate compelling enough data to have a real shot, and we'll see where we go.
Got it. And maybe just lastly, just maybe walk us through the next 12 to 18 months in terms of readouts across the pipeline and other events that's going on for Roivant.
Busy. So today was PH-ILD data. Later this half, we have probably most notably at this point is the Phase III registrational program for brepocitinib in noninfectious uveitis, which will be a second indication for LISRAYA for brepo. We also have -- we have the CLE data, and we will provide an update on the second half of the Graves -- of the D2T RA study as well as hopefully on the FDA feedback and the path forward there. That's all coming this 6 months. I can't think of any other major event for now and the end of the year, obviously, other than the continued launch of brepo in DM.
Next year, we have the registrational data in Graves, the registrational data in MG, obviously, a full year of potential DM commercialization and a bunch of other stuff coming in different directions, some of which we have and some of which we haven't talked about. So next year is going to be really busy.
All right. Action-packed. Well, Matt, thank you so much for the discussion. Really appreciate it.
Thank you. Really fun. Thank you so much.
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Roivant Sciences — Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference
Roivant Sciences — Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference
Roivant präsentiert starke PH-ILD-Phase‑IIb‑Daten (mosliciguat), startet Phase‑III‑Enrollment und fährt gleichzeitig den Launch von LISRAYA (brepocitinib) hoch; FcRn‑Programm bleibt Treiber.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kernaussage: Mosliciguat zeigte eine sehr starke, placebokorrigierte Reduktion des pulmonalen Gefäßwiderstands (PVR) und positive 6‑Minute‑Walk‑Signale; Phase‑III läuft bereits. Parallel wurde LISRAYA für Dermatomyositis zugelassen und das FcRn‑Programm (1402) verfolgt mehrere registratorische Wege.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Mosliciguat: Inhalierter sGC‑Aktivator, ~56% placebo‑adjustierte PVR‑Verbesserung in Phase‑IIb; Phase‑III erlaubt eingeschränkte gleichzeitige Tyvaso‑Anwendung (stratifiziert).
- LISRAYA: Brepocitinib zugelassen für Dermatomyositis mit on‑label Steroid‑Sparwirkung; gezielter Specialist‑Launch, KPI‑Fokus auf Net Sales.
- FcRn‑Franchise: 1402 zeigt konsistente Korrelation zwischen tiefer IgG‑Suppression und klinischem Nutzen; Programme in Graves, Myasthenia gravis, refraktärem RA und CLE laufen.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Neue Daten: PHocus Phase‑IIb‑Readout (PH‑ILD) heute mit herausragenden Hämodynamik‑ und Funktionsergebnissen; Phase‑III bereits eröffnet, kein konkreter Zeitplan genannt.
- Launchinfo: LISRAYA ist frisch eingeführt; Management betont frühe Arzt‑Enthusiasmus, Patientenzentrierte Zugangs‑/Support‑Maßnahmen und Net‑Sales‑Reporting als wichtigste KPI.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Kommerz: Wie groß ist die Feldtruppe, wie schnell Zugang und Erstattung? Management: Fokus auf konzentrierte Spezialzentren, Net Sales als Leading KPI, Access‑Teams für Co‑Pay.
- Studiendesign: Unterschiede Phase‑II vs III (mosliciguat): nur erlaubte gleichzeitige Tyvaso‑Nutzung; Timeline offen, Treffen mit FDA geplant.
- FcRn‑Fragen: Reproduzierbarkeit der besseren IgG‑Suppression und Biomarker‑Selektion (Autoantikörpertiter) zur Patientenauswahl; Management verweist auf konsistente Signalstärke über Indikationen.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Der PH‑ILD‑Readout erhöht die klinische und strategische Relevanz von mosliciguat und stärkt Roivants Dreibein‑Portfolio (mosliciguat, LISRAYA, FcRn). Kurzfristige Kursrelevanz wird durch Phase‑III‑Enrollment, LISRAYA‑Uptake und mehrere kommende registratorische Readouts bestimmt; größte Risiken bleiben Zeitpläne, regulatorische Anforderungen und Marktzugang.
Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Mosliciguat in PH-ILD PHocus Study Top Line Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Stephanie Lee, please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review the results from the PHocus study of Mosliciguat in PH-ILD. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline CEO of Roivant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I'd like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Steph, and thank you, everyone, for joining this morning. These are always the fun ones -- great data is always good to report on. So I appreciate everyone making time for us, and I'm looking forward to taking you through the results from the PHocus study in PH-ILD. So I'll just -- I'm going to do a little bit of frame up, and then I'll get to the data, starting on Slide 3. This is a slide that we've been showing, I think, since our Investor Day late last year, laying out that we have a busy couple of years ahead. And I'm happy to report we continue to add checkmarks to this slide as we move forward.
And obviously, this one is particularly great. First of all, coming so closely on the heels of the approval of what's now LISRAYA in DM, but also, I think, properly standing mosli up as a third leg of the stool, which feels really awesome. So I'm looking forward to talking more about it. I'm not going to spend time on Slide 4 because I'm going to go through the data in great detail in just a moment once I get through some background. But the one thing I will say is, look, this is a great day. This is a phenomenal data set. It is robust across both the primary endpoint, PVR, functional endpoints like 6-minute walk, exploratory prespecified analysis out to 24 weeks, showing improvements even beyond what was possible at the primary 16.
We were not powered for a p-value at 6-minute walk, but we got a really nice one. Just a great data set all along. It's supported by hemodynamic measures and overall, consistent with the disease state, obviously, but a picture on safety and tolerability that feels really good. So this is a great data set. Obviously, and I'll do this again at the end, there's a bunch of people who need to be thanked here, including the Roivant team, the Pulmovant team for running a great study and always, most importantly, the investigators and the patients who trusted us with their care. That's actually a pretty good segue to -- again, I think many folks on this call are likely familiar with pulmonary hypertension and with PH-ILD. But I just want to spend 2 seconds on background.
This is, in short, a terrible disease. These patients, I'm on Slide 5 here, are very sick. They -- PH-ILD, these are patients with pulmonary hypertension that comes from lung disease. They often have lung function issues as the underlying lung disease and then also issues with blood flow to the lung from the pulmonary hypertension. They have a horrible shortness of breath on exertion. So really great difficulty in activity of daily life and then lots of negative sequelae, including, frankly, just a ton of mortality. These patients are really sick, lots of comorbidities -- things like pulmonary circulation disease, congestive heart failure, vascular disease of other kinds, just a really, really tough prognosis [indiscernible] options, right?
Within the last few years, there has been the introduction of inhaled treprostinil, which has been a big step forward for the field here, but we feel strongly that another option is a real benefit and one that delivers this kind of efficacy as well as the tolerability and safety that we've shown here is something we think could make a big difference for these patients. So we're truly thrilled here. PH-ILD on Slide 6, I talked a little bit about this just a moment ago. But again, a really bad disease, [indiscernible] survival despite best available standard of care treatment, which, as I said, includes inhaled treprostinil.
We said in other settings about 200,000 patients between the U.S. and Europe. It's a big patient population with a lot of people with high need. And again, other than sort of the really old stuff, really nothing other than treprostinil approved for this patient population. So a lot of opportunity to deliver some value. Mosli, which we've talked about at length on some earlier calls, is -- we thought from a sort of mechanistic rationale perspective, a really great fit for the disease, especially in the format we've got here, which is on an inhaled basis. We're delivered directly to the lungs to activate impaired sGC.
We think this could be the first non-treprostinil treatment option. sGC is a key enzyme in the pathway here, essential for vascular homeostasis. And we activate both impaired as well as native sGC and restore cGMP production. In short, we're an inhaled vasodilator, and we think that has some real benefits, and then we have potential reduction of fibrosis and inflammation as well. So we think a really good mechanism and again, obviously borne out with the data.
The study here on Slide 8 was a large double-blinded multicenter global trial, 135 patients in PH-ILD across close to 90 sites in 20 countries. Primary endpoint was PVR at week 16 with key secondaries, including 6-minute walk and NT-proBNP and then some prespecified 24-week exploratory endpoints, 6-minute walk, NT-proBNP and TTCW at week 24 as well or [ TTCW ]. So a robust study, and I'll talk more about the data in a second, but obviously set up for hopefully this kind of outcome. We had talked a little bit earlier in June about the blended baseline characteristics.
We show them by arm on Slide 9. In short, pretty well balanced across the arms in most respects, and I think a fair test of the drug. Not too much else to say about it other than it was a pretty sick patient population in the study, which I think speaks to the quality of the data that we've been able to generate here.
So I don't want to spend too much time on preamble. I really just want to get to the highlights. And by the way, this data was also just presented at ERS in Europe this morning as well. So excited to get it out to the academic community. And I think it hopefully will have made a splash there. My understanding is there were a lot of docs in the room.
So on Slide 11, in short, this is the primary endpoint data. I believe this is the largest reduction in PVR from baseline ever observed in any pulmonary hypertension study regardless of which type of pulmonary hypertension. It's in the box on the upper right-hand corner here, but 100% of patients on drug saw a reduction in their PVR.
We had a placebo-adjusted change in PVR with 56.3% reduction with obviously quite low p-value. So this is on an objective endpoint, a commanding outcome and one that we think speaks to the potency of the drug and the effect that we're having in these patients. So a great, obviously, primary.
This is on Slide 12, I just said this, but this is the -- we think the deepest or among the deepest PVR reductions ever seen in pulmonary hypertension. It's a very deep reduction, and it speaks to the breadth of outcomes that we're going to talk about today, including on hemodynamic measures and otherwise that we're able to deliver this kind of reduction in PVR. And I think it hangs in harmony with the rest of the data that we're going to share.
On Slide 13, this is actually an analysis that I just -- I found really interesting, and I think it speaks to the breadth of what we're going to be able to do with mosli from here. We saw a huge benefit relative to placebo in every prespecified subgroup. There were a whole bunch of them ranging from age and sex subgroups to patients with and without emphysema, patients on or not on antifibrotic therapy, patients with different levels of pulmonary fibrosis, patients with different levels of baseline PVR, baseline 6-minute walk, different forms of PH-ILD. And again, across the board, we saw really, really big benefits. Some of these are relatively small subgroups, but really big benefits in PVR. And I think this is helpful for a bunch of reasons.
One is it really underscores the robustness of the data for this patient population. And the other is it opens the door to all kinds of other potential forms of pulmonary hypertension, et cetera, for [ mosli ]. So we think there's a whole lot of opportunity here. And obviously, the robustness of this data across subgroups feels really good.
So on Slide 14, one of the sort of greatest bits of intrigue going into this data set is we had said a bunch of times, this was not a study that was powered to deliver in 6-minute walk. 6-minute walk is a finicky endpoint, and you just never know what you're going to see with that kind of variability. We had a really great outcome in 6-minute walk. We showed a 35-meter change from baseline delta to placebo at week 16. And you can see that on Slide 14 that this is -- I think it's the highest 6-minute walk change from baseline seen in a large placebo-controlled study in PH-ILD, certainly among them.
And so we feel really good about that data as well, and it gets to the crux of the matter here. By the way, one just note, often in the treprostinil studies, there's a discussion of trough PVR, and we don't have the trough data shared, this was measured at "peak". But one of the things about mosli that's interesting is it's got this sort of long deposition in the lung. We talked about a 40-hour half-life before. And actually, our peak and trough measures are nearly identical, very similar to one another. And so I think, again, it just speaks to the unique profile of the drug.
One of the things that I was most excited to see on Slide 15 is that obviously, 6-minute walk at week 16 was a key secondary endpoint, but we measured it all the way out to week 24. And this is a really sort of nice looking chart. It just shows that the placebo-adjusted benefit on 6-minute walk continues to grow over time. We obviously don't know what would have happened beyond week 24, but these are patients who are continuing to improve against the backdrop of placebo patients who are continuing to deteriorate. This is, again, just underscores the big impact that mosli could potentially have for these patients. And ultimately, at week 24 was over 50 meters with, again, a very low p-value separation from placebo.
So this is this is a great outcome. I'm going to move to some of the "more objective measures relative to PVR, starting with NT-proBNP on Slide 16. Again, an equally attractive picture through week 24 with continued improvement through the duration of the study, very low p-values, early separation of NT-proBNP. These are patients who are definitely getting better on drug, and we get up to greater than 75% improvement by week 24.
On Slide 17, one of the other sort of interesting things here is this data is just like fully hang together. This is not just a pulmonary arterial pressure benefit. There's also increased cardiac output for these patients. And obviously, that those components add up together to a significant portion of the PVR number.
So you sort of figured it had to look like this, but seeing it across both of these sort of fundamental hemodynamic measures, again, just gives you confidence that this is really sort of working to improve the overall health of these patients in an exciting way. And again, it gets to the robustness of the data set, again, really low p-values with significant benefits on both pulmonary arterial pressure and cardiac output.
We also did on Slide 18, an exploratory prespecified analysis on time to clinical worsening. We had a relative risk reduction of 37%, not quite a p-value here but 0.09 is still not bad. And again, a significant improvement in time to clinical worsening, which is an important endpoint and something that we would think about as mattering potentially in the Phase III as well.
And then one other point on Slide 19, one of the "issues" with current standard of care, which is these inhaled treprostinils that are good drugs that are important to these patients is treprostinil has a generally on-target effect of inflaming the airway and causing cough, which again, these are patients who already have a high level of cough because of their underlying lung disease. And it's one of the sort of common issues associated with use of treprostinil. And you can see our cough levels, and this sort of makes sense for the mechanism, right?
There's no on-target cough effect from sGC activation. And in fact, mosli patients had less cough than placebo patients on drug. And by the way, I haven't said this, I think, yet on this call, but one notable thing, this is a single puff on a DPI once a day. So these are one puff once-a-day therapy here. So -- and with less cough than placebo and obviously, significantly less cough than what you see on the treprostinils given the nature of those drugs.
Otherwise, on safety and tolerability on Slide 20. Overall, a clean picture. Again, these are sick patients and the overall rates of AEs here are consistent with the sick patient population. These are -- they look different generally than what you see in like a PAH study, for example, but fully consistent with what we've seen generally in other studies in PH-ILD. And overall, the kinds of things you might have worried about given some of the history of sGC and the mechanism, no significant AEs on hypotension that were meaningfully different from placebo.
We don't have data on oxygenation to share in detail today, but I can say, overall, like supplemental oxygen use both at rest and with [indiscernible] basically exactly the same between placebo and drug. Oxygenation at rest or oxygen saturation at rest look good on both placebo and drugs. So I'd say like overall, a data set that's encouraging relative to some of the questions we might have gotten going in.
And certainly, we think with an attractive risk benefit profile relative to the level of clinical benefit we've been able to show with the data set. It's always hard to do cross-trial comparisons on Slide 21, but we're really proud of this data set. We think it matters a lot to patients. And we think across the board, these are measures that stand out from the competitor profile across a bunch of different measures from obviously, PVR and the 24-week 6-minute walk number, which is really exciting to NT-proBNP to the difference in cough profile and the fact that we're 1 puff once a day. This is a phenomenal robust data set.
And again, I couldn't be more excited for what this is going to mean for the PH-ILD community, what it's going to mean for patients, which gets me to the last thing I want to cover today, which is we obviously didn't know what this data set was going to look like, but we were sort of thinking about it earlier this year and decided to accelerate the path to Phase III. And so we put some dollars and some time and effort at risk. And long story short, the Phase III PHrontier study is now underway. It is actively screening and enrolling patients. So the Phase III program is already up and running. It's currently set up as a 375-patient PH-ILD study.
Obviously, one of the things that we're going to do now is take this Phase IIb data to FDA and have a conversation with them about the design of PHrontier, any changes that need to be made, we can make on our end and so on based on powering based on what we now know. But this is -- it's down the fairway, large placebo-controlled, double-blinded multicenter study in PH-ILD with a primary endpoint at week 24 of 6-minute walk with key secondaries, TTCW, PVR, NT-proBNP, et cetera. And we're really just trying to look to replicate what we've been able to see in the PHocus study. As a reminder, we also have an ongoing combo study with Tyvaso -- that's an open-label study.
We will allow some amount of background treprostinil use in PHrontier. And obviously, we'll use the data that we get from the ongoing combo study to titrate a little bit some of the parameters of that. But overall, again, as a reminder, treprostinils are not approved outside the U.S. anyway. So there will be some mix of patients in that study, and we'll know more about how that looks as the combo study comes together. But really excited that, that study is ongoing. On Slide 24, just to sort of wrap up overall sort of the picture here. Obviously, PH-ILD has been a big and growing market for Tyvaso. And now with Yutrepia on the market as well, it's been a really exciting commercial opportunity, again, speaking to the unmet need. And with this data set, we think we're going to be able to play a really big role for these patients.
The other thing I'll say on Slide 25, I'll just reiterate, I'm sure we'll get questions around line of use. I'm sure we'll get questions around how we play versus the others. And one thing I'll just say that I think is an important point, PAH is a polypharmacy market. These patients are on multiple classes of drugs. They are really sick. They want to use everything that they can. And one of the most amazing things as a story for the biopharma industry is that over time, as you look at the history of treatment of PAH, each time a new class was introduced, life expectancy for these patients materially increased.
And I hope, obviously, we can't say anything about that from this data today, but I hope that the same thing is true in PH-ILD that as new options come to market, as new classes come to market, we can materially improve outcomes for these patients. And I fully expect that we are going to be used alongside treprostinil and hopefully, that will make the lives of pulmonary hypertension patients better over time. And it's the reason we're obviously allowing some amount of inhaled treprostinil use in the Phase III study as well.
I won't hammer this too hard again on Slide 26. I think a lot of this data speaks for itself, but we're just -- we couldn't be more pleased with the outcome here across all the endpoints across safety, across tolerability and obviously thrilled to have the Phase III program already underway and excited to talk to the agency about where to go from here. So really, really pleased.
This, as a reminder, although I think most people are aware of this on Slide 27, is only one of our programs. LISRAYA is now on the market in DM, and we've got more data to come in near future on NIU as well as a number of important late-stage data sets, Phase III data sets coming for brepo, a whole bunch of data coming starting later this year and then next year for 1402 on the FcRn side and excited to talk about both more about PH-ILD as well as indications beyond PH-ILD for mosli in the relatively near future as we get everything going.
So a phenomenal outcome, always a great way to get in front of people with data like this on the Tuesday after Labor Day. So excited to take some questions. I just want to say, again, and I'll say it one more time at the end of the call, a big thank you to everybody involved in this program from the Roivant team who brought it in and stewarded it to Drew and the clinical team at Pulmovant who ran this great study. And again, obviously, to the investigators and patients, really sick patients in many cases, who entrusted us with their care here as we tested out a new medicine. We're glad to have been able to show something for it.
So with that, I will wrap up, and I will pass it back to the operator for some Q&A. Thank you, everybody.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Yaron Werber of TD Cowen.
2. Question Answer
Great. Really amazing, amazing outcome. I have a couple of questions, Matt, I think you kind of touched on them. The first one is the 6-minute walk distance gets better as you dose longer and the Phase III is looking at 24 weeks and you're on top of inhaled treprostinil. What do you expect? Do you expect any synergy with the drugs or no difference in terms of better efficacy on the background? And what percent of patients would have inhaled treprostinil in the study? And I assume it's going to be stratified.
Thanks, Yaron. Yes, it will be stratified in inhaled treprostinil. I don't have an answer right now to what percentage of patients will be on. Obviously, it's only going to be U.S. patients who are on inhaled treprostinil some proportion of the patients. We may very well cap enrollment for inhaled treprostinil patients depending on what we find out in the combo study. So we'll see more about that. Look, I think mechanistically, I think you would expect some synergistic benefit between the drugs. But what that means on the combined outcome, I think we'll just have to wait and see what the combo data show, and that study is open label and ongoing. But look, generally, what we've seen in PAH and what I would expect here is that highly active agents are additive. And so I would hope to see the same here.
Our next question will be coming from the line of Brian Cheng of JPMorgan on the data.
Matt, can you give us a sense of the dose escalation, the titration up to the optimal dose here? How are patients experiencing dose escalation? And can you talk about the titration up to the optimal dose in the Phase III? Is that the same also as the Phase II? And I have a quick follow-up.
Look, great questions. Appreciate it. In the Phase IIb, the short answer is the vast majority of patients were able to get to the highest dose and to tolerate it which is obviously a great outcome. It's obviously we were hoping to see. And certainly, the outcome speaks for itself in terms of both efficacy and safety and tolerability. I think in general, the Phase III is similar, slightly quicker titration to the high dose in the Phase III, but I don't think it -- the details are not even that important here. I think the point is that we're going to -- we hope to be able to replicate that a high proportion of the patients are going to get to the high dose. And we saw pretty good outcomes there in the Phase IIb.
Okay. And then a quick one on the potential beyond PH-ILD. It seems like you're waiting for feedback with the regulator to get a sense of the next step for mosli. Can you give us a sneak peek there? How many indications are you thinking of? And how should we think about the steps beyond PH-ILD?
I think many people would shoot me if I gave a number of indications. But look, it's a great question. I think the short answer is, first of all, I would say we're not waiting for the regulator per se on indication expansion. Obviously, we're going to meet with FDA to make sure we've got the cleanest, fastest path forward, specifically in PH-ILD, but we've also got lots of other ideas that we're working out right now. And with data this good, especially across all the different subgroups, I think you got to believe every [indiscernible] on the table for consideration. Obviously, even before this, we had looked very closely at the TETON data and we're thinking a lot about IPF.
And frankly, I think as you want with a data set like this, our imaginations are running a little wider as we think about all the possibilities. So I think -- like I said, I think this becomes a real leg for us. I think there is more for us [indiscernible] do we have -- we have IP into the 2040s and the ATMOS data in Phase Ib, which was in PAH patients in part was really good and also showed a compelling PVR reduction, and that was with a single dose. So I think there's a lot of opportunity in that case as well. I think going in, our commentary on PAH had reflected the competitive dynamic in PAH. I think with data this good, we may very well find a role to play in indications that are more competitive. So stay tuned, but I think there's a lot of opportunity from here.
And our next question will come from the line of Prakhar Agrawal of Cantor.
Congratulations on the excellent data. Maybe on the 6-minute walk test, any differences you noticed across the subgroups? I saw that you had a chart on PVR, but I was wondering if something similar on the 6-minute walk test, specifically looking for patients who had CTD-ILD. Did they have any difference versus other subgroups? And then for patients who were on background PDE5, how did they perform given there is some overlapping hemodynamic mechanisms with mosli here? And then finally, given these strong data sets, how quickly can you enroll Phase III given that it took some time for some of the inhaled treprostinil trials in Phase III and the timing of readouts?
Yes, perfect. Great question. And as a reminder, in the deck on Slide 13, we talk a bunch about different subgroups, including with and without PDE5s. So you can see we saw pretty similar effect regardless of PDE5 therapy, which is great, exactly what you'd want. On 6-minute walk, as you're asking your question with no shade on the question, I was thinking about this sort of what have you done for me lately and that we came in with a study that was not powered for a p-value on 6-minute walk, and now we're being asked about subgroup on 6-minute walk. But look, I think 6-minute walk is a noisy endpoint.
But I think given what we saw in PVR just well as given the data set overall, I think the general view here is that there was no -- nothing stood out to us around subgroups in terms of performance here. This drug seems to work just across the board consistently. And again, obviously not powered for comparative analysis on 6-minute walk, but feel really good about the breadth of it. In terms of enrollment on the Phase III, I mean, look, stay tuned and I don't have guidance to give -- but I think the fact that we're presenting this data at ERS is helpful, and I expect it will make an impact in the doc community. And I think these are sick patients. And frankly, we were pretty happy with [indiscernible] that level as well. So we move pretty quickly from here. Thanks for the question.
And our next question will be coming from the line of David Risinger of Leerink Partners.
Congrats, Matt and team, on the spectacular results. So my questions are related to the future potential of the drug. So could you just talk a little bit about the design of Phase III in some more detail, specifically, what percentage of patients you expect to enroll ex U.S. where treprostinil is not typically used? And then do you see an opportunity to be more than just an add-on therapy to treprostinil in the U.S. in the future, i.e., be an alternative to treprostinil?
Yes. Thanks, Dave. Those are both good questions. On the second one first because that's the easy one. Look, I think with data this good, you got to expect that we have lots of opportunity to occupy lots of different lines of therapy in PH-ILD, including frontline therapy. So I think overall, I think we absolutely have an opportunity to be there. I think if we get used first, we will be used with treprostinil on top of us eventually. If treprostinil is used first or patients were already on treprostinil, we will be used on top of treprostinil. But I think we absolutely have a shot here at frontline therapy. It's convenient. It's got 1 puff once a day with significantly lower cost than you see with the inhaled treprostinil.
So I think we have an opportunity to exist on top of existing therapies before existing therapies on top of new therapies that will come in the future, et cetera. I think that everything is on the table here. On the first question on the Phase III design, without getting into too much detail, I think we aren't expecting any differences between the Phase III and the Phase II in terms of the impact on results. I think overall, the Phase III at this point is being designed with that in mind. And I think we are hopeful we're going to be able to replicate that. And like I said, I think we have an eye on the concurrent treprostinil, which is the only meaningful change in a way that we expect to allow the Phase II to fully translate to the Phase III.
And our next question will be coming from the line of Samantha Semenkow of Citi.
Congratulations on the great data as well. And I have 2 hopefully quick questions. I'm wondering, Matt, if you have any immediate feedback from KOLs following the ERS presentation that is worth sharing with us? And then also, just another question on capital allocation. With this great data as your expansion opportunities have just expanded, but you also have really great brepo data and lots of indications there and 1402 has a similar problem. Just how do you think about allocating your capital across these 3 pillars of your business?
Thanks. Both good questions. On the KOL question, we -- as you may know, Drew, who's been on some of these calls in the past, is not on this call because he and I are doing a little bit of a divide and conquer here. He is working in the room at ERS and talking to the docs, and I'm sitting in the Encore in Boston at a conference. So I don't have the direct KOL feedback myself. But what I'm told is that the ERS room was packed to the gills despite being quite a large room. And I know that the KOLs that we managed to speak to, the docs we managed to speak to about the data before today were incredibly enthusiastic, as you would expect, for this kind of data set.
And I know the professor who presented it was thrilled to be able to present it. So I think that the doc feedback so far has been very positive, and I expect we'll know a lot more by later today, but that's what I would expect to hear. On the capital allocation question, I'll say, first of all, we have been fortunate up until now and continue to be fortunate not to have to make the toughest of those decisions. We are spoiled for choice and I think expect to sprint at indication expansion here while continuing to sprint an indication expansion for brepo and to continue to sprint an indication expansion for 1402 in the FcRn world.
So I think we have great opportunities. And we have capital left aside even after all of that for in-licensing opportunities for BD. I feel like a broken record on this point and we've said the same thing for a while now, but there's some opportunities on our racket that we are really excited about that I hope we're going to be able to complete and talk about in the relatively near future. And we can hopefully -- there's nothing to say that a stool can only have 3 legs. So I'm excited to see where we go from here as well.
And our next question will be coming from the line of Yasmeen Rahimi of Piper Sandler.
Congrats for the outstanding data. Looking at the baseline population, it seems like a pretty sick group of patients, right, with baseline 6-minute walk test of like 260 to 285 and PVRs of 580 -- makes me think about as you're designing a Phase III study or the study -- Phase III is up and running, what is the requirement of the minimum 6-minute walk test and PVR that they need to have to be eligible for the study?
Yes, perfect. Great question. And look, it is a sick patient population, not sick. PH-ILD in general is a sick patient population. So this is representative of the PH-ILD patient community generally. And I think the only thing that we've said so far about enrollment criteria in the Phase III is PVR of greater than equal to 4 Wood units. So I think that gives you a sense. But I think in general, as like I said, this is a representative patient population of what the PH-ILD patient experience is like. And my hope and expectation is that the Phase III population will be similarly representative.
Our next question comes from Dennis Ding of Jefferies.
I have 2, if I may. So for the [ Phase II ] to 6-minute walk, it's really impressive that the delta continues to get better from week 16 to 24, but you guys didn't break out how drug versus placebo did at 24 weeks. So can you comment on the shape of the curves between mosli and placebo at 24 weeks basically with the bigger delta driven by mosli doing better and placebo doing worse sort of consistent as to what you saw at week 16?
Or maybe was it from placebo doing much worse? And then Question number two, on time to clinical worsening, can you give a little bit more color on why it mostly did a little bit worse early on? Maybe it's just small numbers, but just talk a little bit more about that and how important is this endpoint from a regulatory perspective in Phase III from the FDA as well as the EMA.
Thanks, Dennis. Those are both really good questions. On the first one on 6-minute walk, I'll say 3 things. One is we had to leave something for future academic conferences. So I'm sure more of that data will come out. The second thing is, and this is not our fault, the way the field works on 6-minute walk in pulmonary hypertension is the sort of interpolation models are complicated in a way that makes this question like slightly complicated to answer. But the short answer is it's clear from our data that both drug effect is consistent and increasing over time through week 24 and the placebo patients are getting worse. And so it's not just one or the other.
And the magnitude of -- in fact, in the academic presentation this morning out to week 16, this was showed. So you can clearly see just like a consistently improving drug effect as well as a consistently worsening placebo, and that was sort of smooth in both directions. And that continued out through week 24. So smooth worsening of drug and -- sorry, smooth improvement on drug and a smooth worsening of placebo patients all the way out to week 24 across the board. So I think anyway, short answer to your question on that is both the drug effect keeps getting better and the patients getting worse. On to TTCW, I'll say, increase for Tyvaso also had a similar early crossover effect. I don't have a clear answer sitting here right now as to why that seems to be the way it works in these studies.
But obviously, by week 8, mosli ahead and it continues to do better and better from there. As far as the regulatory significance of TTCW, obviously, 6-minute walk is a regulatory approval endpoint in pulmonary hypertension and has been used repeatedly in pulmonary hypertension studies. TTCW is looked at, especially in some other geographies. I think both are helpful measures. And obviously, we're measuring both in the Phase III. And in a properly powered study, I think they're both going to be useful outcomes measures that we should be able to deliver on.
Our next question will be coming from the line of Andy Chen of Wolfe Research.
This is Jason taking in for Andy. I just wanted to ask really quickly about the TEAE-related discontinuation rate. Was there any concerns about that? And what maybe drove it to be a little higher? And also, was there any concerning effects on oxygenation, oxygen requirement and blood pressure or hypotension?
Yes. I'll take the second question first because I'm going to pull up some data on this situation while I'm talking. But the short answer is no. We don't have -- I know there's like a lot of data we will eventually have on oxygen saturation and stuff like that. We just like don't have it all clean for now. So I can't speak to the full detailed data set. But we took a look in anticipation of getting this question. And the short answer is we have some oxygen saturation at rest data that was basically consistent between drug and placebo.
We have supplemental oxygen data both at rest and with exertion that are basically the same on drug and placebo. There's not any significant imbalance of hypotension as an AE between the arms. So I think overall, that looks good. Look, on discontinuation, I think the short answer is we're not particularly concerned. The slightly longer answer is this is just what PH-ILD studies look like. And so our TEAE discontinuation rates look like quite similar to what we've seen in the other programs that have been run here.
Obviously, they are generally higher in PH-ILD studies than they are in PAH studies. And I think that's reflective of a sicker patient population in some ways and just different set of situations. But I think overall, as we look across the board, I think our discontinuation rate is like a little bit lower than what we've seen overall on INCREASE, similar just overall like in the same general bucket as what you see in other PH-ILD studies. So we feel relatively unconcerned. And obviously, the fact that so many of the patients made at the high dose is a useful fact for us.
And our next question will come from the line of Chi Fong of Bank of America.
Matt, in the past, you have talked about taking a look at the FVC data in the subset of patients with IPF, granted it's a very small number. I think it's about 25 patients on drug and 15 on placebo. But is there any learning that you can talk about today? And I have a follow-up after that.
Yes, thanks. Look, the first thing I'll say is, like I said, we have to save some things for academic conferences. We have just started to peak at the FVC data and at the IPF subset. It's early days. Look, I think overall, given the magnitude of the effect, given the sort of breadth of the effect across different subgroups, I think we continue to have the belief that anything anybody else can do, we can also do with this drug.
And we're obviously well aware of the IPF data that's been generated by treprostinil, so -- by Tyvaso. So I think we're excited to continue to think about and explore that as an opportunity. And I think our data points to points in a similar direction. But in terms of the specifics on FVC or on the IPF subset, give us a minute, and we'll definitely be back with more presentations on that topic as we lay out our future plans.
And my follow-up question, if I may, is regarding your Phase III population, do you have any thoughts of exploring mosli in milder pulmonary hypertension more specifically between the 2 to 3 Wood units. I understand that the Phase II data and the Phase III enrollment is focused on the above 4, which is in line with the treatment recommendation. But if we were to go by the diagnostic criteria from the World Symposium of PH, there's quite a bit of patients in the 2 to 3 units. So I'm curious if you have any sort of like thoughts about pursuing mostly in those milder patients, maybe perhaps in a separate Phase III or subsequent study?
Yes. Look, I think I'll say 2 things. One is, obviously, our top priority right now in PH-ILD is to get this drug approved as quickly as we can and to run a study that's going to replicate the data that we've seen here as closely as we can. So I think in PHrontier, we're focused on what we're doing. Again, the data is new, and so we're still pressing it, but I would be surprised if we made major changes to that kind of inclusion criteria. That said, I'll reiterate what I said earlier, which is with data that's good. I think every form and severity of pulmonary hypertension is on the table in terms of things we would consider. And I absolutely think we will think about earlier line studies, studies in other forms of pulmonary hypertension, et cetera. So I think all of that is absolutely on the table.
Our next question will come from the line of Yatin Suneja of Guggenheim.
Let me add my congratulations as well. Not very often that you see practice-changing data gets replicated in Phase III. So congrats to the team. Two quick questions for me. The first one is on the PH-ILD population in the U.S. Could you maybe provide a little bit more color in terms of -- I know you mentioned 200,000 patient total, but just in the U.S., what numbers do you come at? Like what is the eligible number? And then -- and then just one quick one on the study, on the Phase III study. Could you talk about -- or are you able to share what magnitude of 6-minute walking distance effect you are powering it to? I mean, obviously, pretty strong result in Phase III. How should we think about modification there, if at all?
Yes. Thanks. Look, great question. On the second one, the study is 375 patients as currently set up, but we'll reevaluate size and powering now that we have the Phase IIb data in hand, and it could change modestly from there. So in terms of powering, stay tuned. But I think certainly, given that the Phase IIb saw such a robust p-value, the Phase III is healthily powered for 6-minute walk. On the market size in the U.S. There are a variety of estimates in the world ranging from mid-tens of thousands to very low 6 figures is probably the current range out there.
Diagnosis is increasing over time now that there are more therapies on the market. And our view is that trend will continue. And so look, PH-ILD is -- in short, it's a big patient population with a lot of really sick patients. And we'll see also -- look, I think duration of therapy will increase over time as mortality comes down and as patients are on multiple things that keep them healthier longer. So I think there's a whole bunch of reasons to expect this -- whatever always feel strange to call a patient population in the market, but to expect this patient population to grow over time. So it feels good to be here at this moment.
I would now like to turn the call back to Matt for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Look, I'll just say again, thank you, everybody, for joining this morning. This is a tremendous outcome for patients, for the investigators. There's a ton of people it takes to make this happen. The clinical team of Pulmovant ran hard at this study to get it enrolled quickly and run well. Drew, obviously overseeing it all, the Roivant team across the board from the investment team who brought the asset into the government team who oversees it. And then thanks to our partner, [ Bayer ], who got this program off the ground. And I'm happy to take the torque from them and continue to run with it, and it's really great to be here. Look, I'm excited to get back together over the balance of this year. We have a lot more coming. And hopefully, great things to say. I'm excited to talk much more about PH-ILD and [indiscernible] all the around great talking this morning, and we'll speak really soon.
And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant meldet starke PHocus-Ergebnisse: 56,3% placebo‑adjustierte PVR‑Reduktion, anhaltende 6‑Minuten‑Verbesserung und gutes Sicherheitsprofil.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Ergebnis: Mosliciguat (inhalativ, 1 Puff/Tag) zeigte in PHocus bei PH‑ILD eine placebo‑adjustierte PVR‑Reduktion von 56,3% und bei 100% der Patienten PVR‑Verbesserungen.
- Funktion: 6‑Minute‑Gehtest (6MWD) verbesserte sich um +35 m zu Woche 16 und >50 m zu Woche 24; NT‑proBNP sank bis zu >75% bis Woche 24.
- Sicherheit: Verträglichkeit günstig, keine relevante Hypotonie, weniger Husten als Placebo; TEAE‑Abbrüche im erwarteten Bereich für sehr kranke PH‑ILD‑Populations.
💡 Strategische Highlights
- Studienumfang: Phase IIb multizentrisch, 135 Patienten, ~90 Sites in 20 Ländern; primär PVR bei Woche 16, explorativ 24‑Wochen‑Endpunkte.
- Entwicklung: Phase‑III‑Programm (PHrontier) bereits gestartet, geplante N≈375, primärer Endpunkt 6MWD Woche 24; Hintergrundtreprostinil wird teilweise erlaubt und stratifiziert.
- Indikationspotenzial: Konsistente Effekte über Subgruppen (inkl. PDE5‑Therapie, Antifibrotika, Emphysem), Management prüft Expansion beyond PH‑ILD (z.B. IPF, andere PH‑Formen).
🔍 Neue Informationen
- Beschleunigung: Unternehmen hat Phase‑III‑Start vorgezogen und bereits mit Screening/Enrollment begonnen; Study‑Design wird mit FDA besprochen.
- Dosis/Titration: Mehrheit der Patienten erreichte und tolerierte die Höchstdosis in Phase IIb; Phase III plant leicht schnellere Titration.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Synergie mit Tyvaso: Management erwartet additive Effekte mit inhaliertem Treprostinil; Anteil der Treprostinil‑Patienten in Phase III noch offen, Studienteilnahme wird stratifiziert.
- Subgruppen & IPF: PVR‑Vorteile über alle Subgruppen sichtbar; erste Blicke auf FVC/IPF‑Subset sind vielversprechend, detaillierte Ergebnisse noch ausstehend.
- Regulatorik & Endpunkte: 6MWD bleibt zentral für Zulassung; TTCW zeigte 37% relative Risikoreduktion (p≈0,09) und wird weiterhin als sekundärer/unterstützender Endpunkt genutzt.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: PHocus liefert klinisch überzeugende, robuste Signalstärken auf objektiven Hämodynamik‑ und funktionalen Endpunkten; Phase III und Gespräche mit der FDA sind nun die kritischen Meilensteine. Für Aktionäre bedeutet das hohes Upside‑Potenzial bei klaren klinischen Vorteilen, allerdings bleibt die Bestätigung in einer größeren, globalen Phase‑III‑Studie der entscheidende Werttreiber.
Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LISRAYA approval call. [Operator Instructions ] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review the FDA approval of LISRAYA. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant and Ben Zimmer, CEO of Priovant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com.
We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along. I'd like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we have filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Steph, and thank you, everyone, for dialing in this morning. Obviously, an exciting update from us, so we're really happy to be here. I've reflected to a few people over the last couple of days the thought that I've had, which is that deeply unsatisfying marathon when the price for winning if you get to start running another marathon immediately. And that's the moment that we're at now where we finally, as you all know, have gotten LISRAYA to the point of approval, and now we got to get it out to patients, and there's a ton of work associated with that.
So we're talking a little bit today about what this means about why we're excited about it. Ben is going to talk a little bit about the label and the process from here. We'll do a quick review of the clinical data we have for the drug because we think it's worth remembering. And then we'll leave much time at the end for Q&A.
So I'm going to start just on Slide 3 of the deck with the headline, which is that LISRAYA is now approved. This is -- it's a huge day. It is the first modern therapy approved for dermatomyositis patients. The first oral targeted therapy approved for dermatomyositis patients. And just in general, there are so few options that a new option is a great thing here. And then also, there's just a bunch of other first associated with what this drug means.
We're super excited about the opportunity to get it out to patients. We're super excited to get to deliver this kind of potential benefit to them. So it's a big opportunity. It will be available at a list price of $35,000 for a 30-day supply, but -- and Ben will talk a lot about this. Access is obviously a huge, huge focus for us. And we're incredibly -- we're working incredibly hard to make sure that every patient who needs has access to it at a reasonable out-of-pocket price. I know that was a question on people's mind.
On Slide 4, it's -- FDA put out a press release on the approval of LISRAYA yesterday. Obviously, we put out on too. But we didn't prompt anything in the FDA press release. And actually, I thought they did a really, really nice job summing up just how exciting this moment is. And so I've just included on Slide 4, the quote from the Director of the Office of Immunology and Inflammation at CDER.
And I think it just sums up what we feel, too, which is that it's been far too long where patients with dermatomyositis have had a significant unmet need. And today is really the first time that there's something targeted approved oral study specifically in dermatomyositis to help them manage what is a really difficult disease.
I hit some of the points on Slide 5 earlier, but this is the first-ever targeted therapy approved for DM. The first once daily oral therapy ever approved for DM. It is the first therapy ever approved specifically for a steroid-sparing benefit in DM alongside, obviously, a disease improvement. It's the first therapy ever approved for DM to show statistical significance in a 52-week DM specific trial and the first ever TYK2/JAK1 inhibitor approved for any indication in a novel first-in-class approval for what we think is a unique mechanism that has a lot of potential from here.
And we've mentioned this, but I'll say it again on Slide 6. That's not for lack of trying. There have been a lot of attempts in history to bring some of the greatest drugs in immunology, Rituximab, Remicade, Enbrel, many others, across the finish line in dermatomyositis, and none of those have been successful in DM-specific studies, and we've continued to see challenges in getting p-value and DM studies until even more recently than that. So it's just really exciting that we've been able to deliver this kind of opportunity.
And I think the DM patient and physician community have been waiting for a moment like this. So we'll do a couple of things to review the data set here. Before I do that, I just want to hand it over to Ben, by the way, and I'll say this at the end as well. One of the things about these approval calls is they're an important moment to thank a ton of people who are involved in bringing these drugs forward.
Obviously, among the most important, they are the patients and investigators who trusted us in the execution of the clinical trial that trusted us with their care, and we're forever indebted. This approval is forever indebted to them. There's also just an enormous number of people at Roivant and Priovant. And I want to give a special note of thanks to Ben and the Priovant team before handing it over to him for the speed, rigor, quality of execution and patient focus of this program.
And although this morning, I was doing what I suspect many of people do every morning, which is talking to ChatGPT. In this case, about the timelines here, because the truth is I looked through the drugs that came to my mind and with the exception of drugs that have benefited from the new CNPV program, vanishingly few drugs have gone as quickly as we were able to go here, from the necessary Phase III data package to an approval. We got together to talk about the data for brepocitinib in dermatomyositis, less than a year ago, in mid-September of 2025, and it's just a huge privilege to be here now with this speed.
And I think Ben and his team deserve a ton of credit for a lot of things. But one of the things they deserve credit for is that they acted with urgency for a population that need it.
So thank you, Ben. I'll hand it over to you to take over on Slide 7.
Obviously, very exciting and meaningful day for me and all of us at Priovant and many others who have been working on the program for a number of years. And exciting starting on Slide 7, actually, not only because today marks the -- or yesterday marks the approval of LISRAYA, but yesterday also marked the commercial launch of LISRAYA. About a month ahead of when we had initially planned, again, speaking to the urgency that Matt spoke about in terms of our enthusiasm to make this drug available to patients and bring it to market for them.
Ultimately, that's really what drives us and drives the sense of urgency, DM patients deserve better treatment options. We're excited to finally have one for them, and we want them to be able to access it as quickly as possible prescribing is open as of yesterday. We actually have already received our first prescriptions for LISRAYA.
And importantly, we also have our first patients consented into the MyCompass support program. This is a critical service that we're offering to patients. Among many other things that will be provided through that is access to insurance assistance and financial assistance programs from Priovant. And we are -- believe that many patients on this drug will have actually $0 out-of-pocket costs.
So very excited and committed to ensure that patients are able to get access to this therapy, and we're really excited to have the launch underway. As Matt said, we celebrated the completion of the first marathon very quickly, and we've started charging ahead with mile 1 of the next one.
Turning now to Slide 8. I want to talk a bit about the label which generally speaking, we're extremely pleased with how that turned out, and I'll just spend a few minutes walking through in a little bit of detail on my own personal perspective on it. I think the first thing I would say that in my view, the most important part of the label is the indication statement and restrictions of use. And we're really quite pleased with how that turned out. Broad indication statement for adults with dermatomyositis with no restrictions based on clinical presentation, disease severity or prior treatment history.
And also no restrictions on concomitant use with steroids, conventional DMARDs or IVIg, which are the therapies that the vast majority of DM patients are on today. And importantly, that gives physicians a lot of flexibility to use LISRAYA in a lot of different ways and different combinations. It can be used as an alternative therapy to what patients are managed on today or in many cases, as an add-on therapy.
And we think that's going to be very important, combined with the broad indication statement, because we feel really that the vast majority of DM patients are good fit to be considered for therapy and really quite pleased with the fact that the label supports and enables that.
Turning next to the efficacy section. I would say that for many drug launches, this is obviously where the heart of the label is, and we couldn't be more thrilled with this. But I would also say, this is the point that I mentioned few times before we do what the final label is going to be if the only thing we could say about LISRAYA is that it is an oral once-daily therapy specifically approved by FDA for dermatomyositis that specifically targets the underlying disease biology. That would be enough.
We could have massive commercial success if that was the only claim we can make because this is a disease where the patients are really sick and they're managed on non-targeted therapies that are just kind of not really consistent with modern therapeutics. And it's important to understand LISRAYA coming to market in that context. But I'm thrilled to say that notwithstanding that fact, we kind of got the icing on the cake too, and got a lot of icing.
I think really the efficacy section of the label provides an extremely deep and robust set of support claims and really brings to life the breadth and depth of the benefit of the therapy for DM patients we have claims to support improvements in skin disease, muscle strength and physical function as well as overall disease burden, which is important in a heterogeneous disease like dermatomyositis where different patients experience the disease in different ways and we are able to call out both many of the specific symptoms on which we've shown benefit as well as benefit on the TIS, which measures whatever aspects of the disease are most burdensome to an individual patient.
So in a rare heterogeneous condition. TIS is actually a quite important and meaningful commercial endpoint, not just a regulatory one, in terms of bringing to life how the drug can help a wide variety of patients. And importantly, we have on the label, both physician reported and patient-reported outcomes. The latter, we think, is very important for our patient-focused promotional efforts. Patients really resonates with them to have proof points from how patients felt and function, not just how clinicians perceive their disease.
And then perhaps most importantly of all, is the steroid sparing benefit that is included on the label and actually two aspects of steroid sparing benefit, both absolute reductions in steroid use compared to placebo that those were quite dramatic in the trial as those familiar with the VALOR data already knew. And then also the endpoints that measure the ability to simultaneously improve disease while reducing or eliminating steroid dependency and I think Matt talked about the set of first that this approval represents.
I think one of the ones that I'm most excited about is to have the first and only medicine for DM that can deliver both benefit on disease activity as well as steroid sparing benefit simultaneously. And then lastly, in terms of the safety information. In many ways, this is really the most predictable part of the label. We've known since we in-licensed brepocitinib in 2021 that we were going to have the JAK-class safety warnings we did not make an effort to not have those warnings and they came in really as expected and consistent with other approved JAK inhibitors.
This is a safety profile that physicians understand and are very comfortable with. The therapies are now very widely used, including in diseases where there's many more alternatives treatment options and there are in DM. And we're very confident that LISRAYA presents a compelling benefit risk profile in this condition for HCPs and patients.
And I would also note that the VALOR trial specific data really reinforced this benefit risk profile both with the efficacy data that we saw in that trial, but also with the safety data in that trial.
And particularly notable, this is actually cited in the FDA's press release is the treatment discontinuation due to adverse events occurred at nearly twice the rate on placebo as compared to LISRAYA in that trial. So very low discontinuation rate due to AEs for LISRAYA very higher in placebo. And I think really nothing speaks better to the benefit risk than that in terms of the patients voting with their feet as it were.
Turning lastly to Slide 9. I just want to kind of bring to life with specific, some of the efficacy data that we were discussing before. And again, really hammer home, I think two specific points. First, starting on the left is the combination of the breadth and depth of response on the TIS. Nearly 70% of patients achieving moderate response nearly 50%, achieving a major response, which is a very high and difficult bar to achieve in a DM study.
And again, I would emphasize the TIS is obviously a cost end point serves regulatory purpose, but I think is very resonant to patients because it captures things like the patient's global assessment, the physician's global assessment, things that kind of overall capture whatever matters most to a particular patient about their disease.
And in a condition like DM where you have skin disease, you have muscle disease, you have in some patient's pulmonary disease or other various manifestations, the TIS is really a great way to kind of capture overall, whether patients are benefiting, and we see really the vast majority of patients who are in this trial achieving meaningful improvement.
And then finally, on the right side of the slide, really just repeating what I already said on the previous slide, the fact that we're able to achieve both very significant clinical improvement on disease activity and very meaningful steroid sparing. This is unprecedented and dermatomyositis and I think is a really compelling part of the LISRAYA value proposition. More than half of patients on LISRAYA are able to simultaneously achieve a TIS 40 improvement and bring their steroids down to minimal or no burden by the end of the study.
As you can see on the right, this is for patients who started on 7.5 milligrams per day or more nearly 2/3 of them getting to 2.5 milligrams or less, and nearly half coming off steroids altogether. So again, very meaningful clinical and disease benefit, very meaningful steroid sparing benefit and we're really excited to bring LISRAYA to market. We're off to the races already, as I said before, and look forward to sharing updates as we charge ahead with the commercial launch.
So thanks, and back you, Matt.
Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. And look, I'm sure, as you can hear from Ben's enthusiasm, we really feel like we got we've got everything we could possibly need on this label to help patients and physicians understand the benefit of LISRAYA and and the team are chopping it the bit excited to be out there of finally sharing that message appropriate way.
All the data Ben just described on Slide 9 is consistent with the FDA-approved prescribing information for LISRAYA. I think just like a great reminder of just how much we've been able to get on to this label to share with the community. I just say a few words, just as a reminder about the overall clinical data package for LISRAYA beyond just what specifically on the label.
So starting with -- on Slide 10, just a reminder, this VALOR was the largest Phase III placebo-controlled study ever conducted in dermatomyositis. We have had tremendous success owing to the quality of that study and the quality of the data and getting it disseminated in medical community, including with the publication this spring in the New England Journal of Medicine in the publication just this week, I think, in JAMA Dermatology of the skin-specific secondary endpoint, more to come there, but just an enormous wealth of new data in dermatomyositis owing to the side-scale study.
A little bit more in here on Slide 11, 12 and 13. I'll maybe just point out on Slide 12, as we've said before, this was a study that hit on the primary and every ranked secondary endpoint. This is the data as it was reported in the New England Journal publication. And it just gets to the breadth of what brepocitinib was able to do in this trial that it hit on skin and muscle activity that it hit -- across the board on these endpoints. One that I keep coming back to is HAQ-DI questionnaire.
The focus is on the actual disease burden in the daily lives of these patients, things like can you walk up 5 steps can you dress yourself, can you feed yourself and we delivered a meaningful, statistically significant improvement on that questionnaire. So just a tremendous and broad benefit to patients from the study.
We've also reproduced on Slide 13 the safety data from specifically within the VALOR study as presented in NEJM, again a table that highlights some of the risk benefit associated with the drug like brepocitinib in a disease where things like malignancies and thrombotic events are both the feature of the disease itself, the underlying inflammation as well as the things like high dose steroids that these patients are using. So excited overall with what the study was able to show and obviously tremendously excited as Ben highlighted with the data that's on label that's available now for use in this practice.
On Slide 14, we won't go through this again today. But just a reminder that while there's some breadth to this, this is a large indication affecting many people, and we are, again, excited that LISRAYA is now going to be an option for a variety of these patients and looking forward to getting out there.
On Slide 15, and then a fair amount of LISRAYA already. But again, this is just -- this is a tough disease. And I think that's a point that Ben has been mentioning on a day like today. These patients, 60% are more unable to climb a flight of stairs, half unable to walk more than a mile, a good percentage, 50% unable to bend, kneel or stoop. They rely on mobility aids. They are heavily treated with polypharmacy, including very high dose corticosteroids, if you've ever been on something like high-dose corticosteroids.
If you've ever been on something like high-dose prednisone, you can imagine the burden of being on that chronically is challenging. They are unhappy with existing options. They frequently switch. They have continued symptoms, flares, a lot of pain despite treatment.
And these outcomes are compounded by the toxicities of, for example, high-dose chronic steroids, which we've shown we can reduce that burden with brepocitinib. We are -- and you heard this from Ben, fully ready here from a commercial perspective. We are out and about -- patients are at the center of this launch.
Ben mentioned MyCompass Support, which is the patient assistance program with a dedicated patient access liaison on helping each patient through the -- navigating the complicated U.S. health insurance system and eligible patients will pay as little as $0 a month via the co-pay support program. We have a limited network of specialty pharmacies that are offering the kind of white glove high-touch support that rare disease patients have come to benefit from across other launches, and we're just excited to see all of that play forward.
On Slide 17, look, I'll just say we're ready here. All of this is in place. And as Ben said, prescriptions are already coming in. So excited to see that play forward. I mentioned earlier, again, the list price will be $35,000 for a 30-day supply. It's complicated and there's a lot of judgment in translating that to actual meaning in the end. But I think it's reasonable with compliance and other assumptions, and we're not prepared to break them out specifically yet. I think the net value to us or net price to us associated with the patient on a full year of therapy is probably in the low to mid- $300,000.
But again, there's a lot that goes into that estimate. And frankly, because no one's ever launched a novel therapy in this disease before, we'll know much more about that as we get into it. The other thing I'll say is I know Ben used the phrase massive commercial success in his presentation.
I'll just remind everybody that what we've said about this launch is that our expectation is that it will be slow and steady. This is the first time anyone's gotten a novel therapy out to these patients and that we are excited to do that, but obviously also know that there will be barriers and challenges that we'll have to clear through to be successful, and we're going to have to get behavior to change in an area that's been stagnant from a therapeutic development perspective for a very long time.
So looking forward to doing all of that, looking forward to coming back with further updates. I will move to Q&A in just a moment here. But before I do that, I'd be remiss on Slide 18 if I didn't say, for LISRAYA, this is really just the beginning. This is the first brick in what we hope is going to be a large wall of patient benefit that we're able to build or yes, a large wall of patient benefit that we're able to build across indications.
Obviously, DM with tens of thousands of patients now approved, but coming up very soon in the windshield is the non-infectious uveitis data, which, if successful, we'll add another indication here and then with ongoing registrational programs in each of cutaneous sarcoidosis and planopilaris coming in the near future. So just tremendously excited about what we've already built and are working on, tremendously excited about what's coming soon.
And as it says here on the slide, we couldn't be more excited to add even more indications for LISRAYA, think there's a lot of opportunity to do so given what we found so far in clinical practice. And then as a final reminder on Slide 19, brepocitinib LISRAYA is just the beginning. We have data coming in the near term in our PH-ILD program as well in the second half of this year in CLE for 1402.
We have further updates to our RA program all before the end of this year. And 2027 is an incredibly impactful year across the board, including specifically at Immunovant with 1402 reading out in Graves and myasthenia gravis, both. So gosh, we're just -- we're spoiled and privileged with the amount of clinical data and the opportunity we have for reaching patients in the coming couple of years here and looking forward to hopefully many positive updates, and I'm sure some negative ones, too, coming in the next months and years.
So with that, I just want to say again, a tremendous debt of gratitude to everyone who has supported this journey from Ben and the Priovant team to Frank and the other members of the Roivant management team and the entire team at Roivant who has worked tirelessly to make this successful.
And then really, first and foremost, to the investigators and the patients involved in the VALOR study who without the patients and the investigators in clinical trials, we wouldn't have new medicines. And today is really forward about them as much as about anything else. So I just want to say thank you to all of them.
I'll stop there. I will open the line up to Q&A, and I'll pass it back to the operator. Thank you, everybody, for listening this morning.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Dave Risinger with Leerink Partners.
2. Question Answer
So congrats to Matt and the team. I've got a number of questions. Is it okay if I go one by one?
Sure. Thank you.
Great. So I guess let me start with the first one, which is we spoke with a leading KOL last year who said that they would convert all of their off-label JAK patients to brepocitinib after approval. So I'm wondering if you could discuss the opportunity to convert off-label JAK users more broadly to LISRAYA given its dual JAK TYK2 mechanism.
Thanks, David. It's a great question. Look, I think the short answer, unless Ben has more to say is I think we believe a very broad set of dermatomyositis patients are potentially eligible, including patients on a variety of other therapies on and off-label. And certainly, we have heard also from KOLs about the possibility that off-label JAK inhibitor patients could benefit from switching to brepocitinib from a variety of different angles, and we may very well see some of that behavior.
Ben, anything you'd add to that?
Yes. I would add that I think many of those patients will switch. But I think also the ultimate eligible population goes well beyond that. I would also add, I think physicians do really understand and appreciate the distinctive value of TYK2/JAK1 inhibition. TYK2 contributes in real way to suppressing the cytokine signaling that drives dermatomyositis.
And I think people understand that. They understand the way that this drug is different from other -- from the approved JAK inhibitors used off-label, the previously approved JAK inhibitors used off-label. This drug has different pharmacodynamic effects that derived from TYK2/JAK1 inhibition, and that has implications for DM patients.
Not to mention there is the most massive DM data set ever generated for a therapeutic behind it. So I think that, that's certainly an area where we would see a lot of receptivity.
Excellent. And then could you comment on anticipated payer access, including the pace of achieving reimbursed prescriptions over the next several months?
Thanks, Dave. It's a good question. I'm sure it's on other people's minds, too. I'll just say, look, I think in general, one of the great things about this moment is that we've been able to follow and learn from many other launches in large orphan indications around access, around helping patients and physicians navigate that dynamic to the greatest extent possible.
I think we're following all of those best practices. And I think we will be there to help patients in every way that we're able. I expect that we will be able to get patients on drug and benefiting from the therapy quickly and that we'll be able to navigate the system. It may take some time to get to full coverage and reimbursement across the board, but I'm confident we have the right systems in place.
Excellent. And then could you tell us the WAC price? And then I'll pass it on to the next person to ask questions.
Yes. Thanks, Dave. Again, I think I mentioned this on the call, but the WACC price for the drug is $35,000 for a 30-day supply. And what I said is my -- look, it's hard to translate that into practice without sort of knowing what the real-world use is going to look like. But for a patient on a year of drug adjusting for compliance and with a pretty wide range of possibilities around GTN and other things, I think that probably translates after adjustments to somewhere in the low to mid- $300,000 on a net basis, but we'll see.
Our next question comes from the line of Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
This is Ben on for Sam. Given the lack of approved targeted competitors, do you anticipate prior auths primarily focused on diagnosis confirmation or step edit requirements? And then I have a follow-up, too, please.
Yes. I'll -- look, obviously, to the extent that we're able, we've had conversations, Ben and the team have had conversations with the payer community. We've had lots of conversations with the physician community. I think it's hard to say specifically how this plays out in terms of like which specific things need to happen.
The thing that I'm most confident of is that we -- as I mentioned in the prior answer, just have all the systems in place to manage and work through prior auths, medical exceptions to help people understand what's needed. And my belief is that the level of enthusiasm and the level of unmet medical need is going to carry the day there sort of regardless of what that looks like.
And I also think that will just evolve over time as the physician community, the patient community and payers get used to brepocitinib and LISRAYA and get used to using it in practice.
And then a follow-up, if I may. You highlighted no restrictions based on disease severity presentation or prior therapy. Based on your physician interactions, where do you expect uptake to occur earliest?
I think I know how I'll answer that question, but I'm going to hand it over to Ben to answer that question.
I think that varies by doctor is the short answer. I think what's exciting to me is that as I was saying, there's a wide variety of patients who are eligible for this medicine and a lot of different ways that doctors can use it. And ultimately, I think each of them will kind of decide individually how they want to approach that.
That is exactly what I expect you to answer.
Our next question comes from the line of Yaron Werber with TD Cowen.
Yes. Terrific. Congrats. Really, really great to see. A couple of questions. One is we've -- I know many people have been talking to a lot of KOLs and running surveys. We're hearing, number one, that some practices are already warehousing patients and have a high degree of potentially switching from other JAK1s. The key is going to be, can they get reimbursement?
And does that make sense to do? What are your thoughts on that? And then maybe secondly, a question that we get a lot from investors. We think the market is huge. And from our service, it's pretty clear that VYVGART, if approved, would probably be positioned more as an IVIg switch and LISRAYA could really get used in everybody. Sort of what are you anticipating in terms of segmentation.
On the first question and mindful of payers appropriately watchful eye. I'll just remind people that our expectation for the launch here is slow and steady. Look, we obviously also talk to the physician community. We know there's a lot of enthusiasm out there.
We are confident in the tools and supports we have in place to help patients navigate access. But how physician practice evolves in the coming weeks and months is something we're just going to have to wait and see, and we're here for the long run and here to build something big in the dermatomyositis community, not. It's about where we are at Mile 20, not where we are at Mile 1 is, I guess, what I'd say. But we'll see. And again, we hear some of the same messages that you do, obviously, from talking to physicians.
On VYVGART Look, obviously, we watched the data set earlier this month with interest and thought it was impressive, especially in IMNM, where there's a tremendous amount of unmet need and where we're excited to see a therapy. In DM, it was a small study. I think it will be interesting to see. They've expressed enthusiasm for getting regulatory approval in DM, and we're watching that.
Most of all, I'll say, there's an enormous amount, as you highlighted, of unmet need in dermatomyositis. And I have said repeatedly that if argenx or anyone else joins us in the space, I think it's a net positive for us in terms of increasing the level of attention paid to these physicians and the level of enthusiasm in the community for new therapies, as I think you've seen in indications like myasthenia gravis, where the more therapies come to market, the bigger that opportunity appears to be.
And I think as argenx has benefited from being the first sort of significant novel approved therapy in myasthenia gravis in terms of physician enthusiasm, I think we have the same benefit in terms of being first in dermatomyositis. And so I think we will reap the same benefit that they have as more people come up.
In terms of like how specifically VYVGART get used, I think the answer to that question depends enormously on the path they take from here from a regulatory perspective and what the data ultimately looks like. And so it's just hard to it's hard to say, but I think brepocitinib has a super attractive profile. And you mentioned some important dynamics, including being on the market first, probably being comparatively attractively priced and being a once-daily oral. Thanks, Yaron.
Our next question comes from the line of Brian Chen with JPMorgan.
Congrats on the approval here this morning. well, yesterday. First, it seems that some doctors are using JAK off-label more among patients with skin manifestation first. Do you expect the initial wave of LISRAYA usage to be driven more from that segment first? And then we have a quick follow-up.
Yes. I'll reiterate what Ben says and see if he has anything he wants to add to it. But I think the practical truth is that the early brepocitinib use is going to come from a variety of different sources and a variety of different sort of patient phenotypes. And I think one of the things that's so exciting to us is that there's a lot of different patients potentially eligible for brepocitinib and a lot of different use cases.
And I think we are keen to support the doc community in figuring out what works best for them and what works best for these patients. I think we'll see a lot of different kinds of experimentation in the early innings and support it.
Ben, anything you'd add to that?
No.
Great. And what kind of metrics could we get during the launch for LISRAYA? And will we be able to track the launch curve using some of the script service like IQVIA or Symphony?
Yes. Look, the truth is that the way these orphan disease launches work for reasons that have nothing to do with investor management, it can be relatively difficult to see that data. And so I think we will be roughly consistent with that. I think quarterly net sales will be a useful metric ultimately on which to judge us. And we'll see what else we're able to provide as we get further into it.
Our next question comes from the line of Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor.
Congratulations on the approval. Maybe just one clarification on the label. It seems like there were a few new cases of thrombosis, MACE and malignancy during the OLE period. So if you can provide more details about this, whether the open-label extension period had flexibility on management of their background treatment? And what are the commercial implications there?
And second question, fully realizing that you don't want to raise expectations here and expect a slow and steady ramp, but are there any specific barriers in DM that we should be aware of on why shouldn't this be the most rapid rare drug disease launch ever given the unmet need and the strong efficacy data for brepo?
Thanks. I'll take the second question first and then hand it over to Ben for the first one. On the second question, I will respectfully reiterate what we have said, which is that our expectation is slow and steady. Look, I think actually, it's important to note on the one hand, at some level, faster is better. But mostly, I think what we are optimizing for is getting this drug out to patients and making it a sustainable, valuable option for patients and physicians with dermatomyositis and changing treatment paradigm takes time, and it will here as it has in other orphan diseases.
So I don't have any -- I don't think there's any sort of magic specific to DM thing that affects the pace of this. But I think the truth is it's just hard to know in a novel disease state in a novel setting exactly what the future is going to look like. So that's why we're sort of thinking about slow and steady as the base case.
The other thing I'll just say is as a reminder, dermatomyositis is just the beginning for brepocitinib, and we want to set up a franchise that is not just sustainable to grow over time within DM, but is able to support all the other indications that are coming, and we're excited to see that play forward as well.
I'll turn it over to Ben, do you want to take the question on the OLE period and overall on safety?
Yes, sure. Yes, I think we will share the full efficacy and safety data from the OLE at a later point. I don't want to fully preempt that. I think your hypothesis is not entirely correct as worded. The one thing I would flag that is correct and is seen on the label is that there were MACE events in the OLE. This is to be expected.
Dermatomyositis patients are very sick. They're at higher risk of are higher risk of these types of events due to underlying inflammation due to steroid burden, which contributes significantly to cardiovascular risk. And then also, certainly, these warnings are on JAK labels for a reason. And all of these events have been seen across the brepocitinib development program, but consistent with other JAK inhibitors, they have occurred at rates that are rare and are uncommon.
And again, ultimately, as we've said before, it's a safety profile that physicians have become extremely comfortable with using JAK inhibitors very widely for patient populations with probably less need for aggressive therapy and more alternative modern options than we have in dermatomyositis.
Great. Thanks, Ben. And I'll just say one additional case of thrombosis in the OLE and no malignancies on treatment in the OLE. So also not a material change in the risk profile and just entirely consistent with the labeling and sort of considerations around the JAK class generally. And as Ben said, I think overall, given the background risks for these patients and the therapies that they're on otherwise, this is -- it's a relative nonissue in dermatomyositis.
Our next question comes from the line of Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
This is Anthea on for Dennis. Congrats on the approval. Just two questions from us. Matt, you kind of mentioned quarterly net sales as a potential metric for the launch. I'm curious how long you expect the lag to be between a patient being prescribed LISRAYA and that demand showing up in reported net sales and how that should evolve over the next 6 to 12 months?
And if we should expect any other launch metrics, disclosures around patient start forms, new patient enrollments, payer coverage, et cetera?
And then second, how should we think about conversion of patients who participated in the VALOR program in terms of how many patients remain on brepo through the extension and what proportion you expect to convert on to commercial drug over the coming quarters?
Yes. Thanks, Anthea. That's a helpful question. I -- on the first question about launch metrics and timing and everything else, look, I think I could give -- we could give best estimates on any of these things, but they would just be guesses on our part at the moment. I think we're just going to have to wait and see in the first months of launch, how this process plays forward. And so I think we'll be able to provide a little more clarity on this as we have it.
But right now, I don't have much to guess in terms of the timing. And I think on launch metrics, I think let's get a little bit further into it. I think in general, our view is we're playing for the long haul and sort of intrigue about the early numbers is less interesting than where we can get to over time. But we're going to sort of look a little bit at how things go in the first innings, and then we'll get back to you.
On the second question of conversions of patients from VALOR to commercial, actually, I don't -- I personally know the answer to that question. Ben, I don't know if you have an easy answer in terms of those conversions or if it's something we're working through.
Yes, I think many patients from the VALOR trial are excited to get on LISRAYA. It's not something we're singularly focused on. We're focused on all the patients who could benefit from the medicine, which includes, but is not limited to those.
Our next question comes from the line of Yasmeen Rahimi with Piper Sandler.
Congrats on your first approval and many more to come. So congrats. A few questions. Maybe just some easy ones in terms of like now with the launch under go, what is the size of the sales force that you've already put into place? And how do you envision sort of growing that over the next 12 months? And then second one is, what do you think the time it takes from writing the script to being reimbursed now that everything is ready to go?
And then also, how do you envision that 3 months from now, 6 months from now, a year from now? And at what point during this launch will you feel really comfortable to kind of give a little bit more color around the metrics and how things are going. Obviously, today is day 1, but like what are the things that you need to see where you could come back? And just -- because you guys are very numbers-driven, data-driven and do such a great job on guiding us.
So at what point do you feel like you could kind of provide some of these more granular metrics? I know that you can't do that right now. But what do you need to learn to do that? Sorry, 3-part questions, I guess.
Perfect. Thank you, Yes. Those are great questions. I feel pride bound to make one small correction to your question, which you said it was our first approval. It's actually the ninth approval to come out of the Roivant apparatus, obviously, including one of the drugs that we commercialized ourselves for a while. But it's potentially the one that's most impactful for us, and we're obviously super excited about it. And it's the first for Priovant, which will hopefully be the first of many for brepocitinib.
On sort of field force in general, I'll say we have a phenomenal team in place. Ben has been laser-focused, Ben and his team have been laser-focused on getting the right people into these seats and there are people who are going to do a great job engaging with the medical community, and we're really excited to see that play forward. We've said before, this is a relatively concentrated field.
I think one of the things we said before is about half of these patients are treated at 200 specialty referral centers. And so I think from that perspective, we feel confident. We will probably continue to grow our field force over time. But for the moment, I think we're in a really great spot in terms of how many people we've got and what we're doing. I think overall, as far as this is a part of cost question, the guidance that we've given historically on cost structure is approximately the same as we give now. No significant change there from what we said.
On the next question, which is what do we need to see to come back with more metrics. Look, I think it's just too early now to say exactly. But my honest view is -- and I don't mean to be glib. I just think in the end, the commercial performance of the drug is what's going to eat everything else that's being used to make predictions. And so I think mostly, we're just going to be focused on maximizing the breadth of usage and making sure that we're out there doing everything we can to make the lives of patients getting on drug easy and to help physicians understand what they can do here. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright.
Congratulations. Matt, maybe if you could just talk a little bit about what the considerations were in terms of the list price that we set. Obviously, DM is an orphan indication and you're largely pursuing other ones. But how do you see that playing out? And how much do you consider the addition of other indications on label? And if you had sort of used any other sort of commercial analogs that might be helpful that sort of informed your thinking.
Yes. Thanks, Doug. It's a great question. And obviously, there's a lot of judgment and debate and thought that goes into how you do this in the U.S. health care system in 2026. So it's a complicated question. Obviously, we have a number of analogs out there that are in various ways, launched in orphan diseases. And I think we've learned a lot from how those launches have gone and from our conversations with payers and other stakeholders.
Obviously, the commercial cost and value of IVIg is one consideration that was relevant to us as we were thinking about where it made sense to price the product. And I think overall, we are confident in the decision we've made in terms of getting maximum access and the overall value proposition for the drug to patients, clinicians and payers, including the long-term benefits from reduced steroid burden, which we think will be significant.
In terms of the list of other indications and the sort of relevance there, look, obviously, that's something we think about all the time in terms of what brepocitinib could become across a variety of indications. I think given the differences in dose and other things, we still have some flexibility to think creatively about that as the clinical profile of the molecule in these other indications and the breadth of indications becomes clear.
But I think the price point here supports and is homologous with or in harmony with everything else that we're planning on doing for brepo. And I think we feel really great about delivering on the full value proposition of brepo in orphan inflammatory.
And Matt, if I have a follow-up, and I appreciate your point that brepo offers a lot of versatility and could be relevant for a wide range of DM patients. I'm just curious if you have in mind sort of an initial group of patients that you're going to have the field force really sort of hone in on in terms of the messaging with clinicians in terms of who you want to sort of get on to drug to sort of have the real-world effect match what we saw in VALOR.
Thanks, Doug. It's a great question. I'm tempted because we've gotten this question in a few different forms to say something like, well, we're really focused on Fred, Joan and Amy. But look, obviously, the short answer to this question is to repeat what I've said, which is that we think there's a pretty wide range of patients who could benefit from brepocitinib.
And in talking to the physician community, I think it's clear that enthusiastic physicians have a variety of different sort of early use cases in mind for their patients and that we really do want to support all of those use cases.
And what I think in practice is there will be some docs for whom their early use case is converting JAK inhibitor patients and some docs for whom their early use case is patients on high steroid burden who are ineligible or don't want to use IVIg for various reasons and some docs who have been struggling with other off-label therapies are struggling with the side effects of steroid immunosuppressants.
So I think our view is wherever these physicians want to go, we want to be there to support it. So I think we have been specifically focused on not narrowing to a specific subset of patients, but rather helping the community meet us or helping meet the community wherever they want to be.
And if I can, one final one. You said that you expected -- Matt?
Go ahead.
Just one. You said that you expected like sort of low to mid-300s in terms of net to the company. In addition to rebates and sort of free drug, I think you mentioned some compliance. If you could just give us what that sort of -- everything that's going into that, just so we can -- so is it sort of like net pricing? Or were you just talking about net revenue to Roivant?
Yes, Perfect. I think -- the short answer is I think part of the reason we gave a range and part of the reason we caveated it as a rough estimate is there's a lot that goes into these assumptions around compliance, around GTN, around other things. And I think it's fair to say, while we obviously have some sense of how each of those components shake out, the error bars are sufficiently wide and the compounding across those different factors is sufficient, but like it's hard to say specifically, and there's even error bars around that range. So I don't have a ton more to add to that. I will...
Do you have a target for coverage sort of number of percentage of lives and so forth?
Our hope and goal is that every patient who would benefit from brepocitinib will have access to it. And hopefully, we'll have access to it in a way that works in terms of coverage and out-of-pocket expense and so on. So that's really where we're focused. Sorry, Ben, I want to hand it back to you just to answer. I think I missed one of Doug's questions about the VALOR trial specifically.
Yes. I just wanted to add, in terms of your question around kind of patients where we would see the results of the VALOR trial may be replicated in the real world. I just -- I thought that was a thoughtful question and just wanted to say, I think one of the things that's exciting about the VALOR trial and I think exciting to physicians about it is really the breadth of patients who are enrolled.
It enrolled a wide real-world population, including patients with mild, moderate and severe disease, patients on a wide variety of different background therapies, patients where skin disease was driving a lot of the disease burden, patients where muscle disease was driving a lot of disease burden. 20% of the patients had ILD. And across this heterogeneous population, we saw very strong efficacy on both the total improvement score and as we've discussed, other disease measurements across skin disease, muscle disease, physical functioning and steroid sparing. And I think that is what supported the broad label we have received.
And I think as a result, gives us the confidence that kind of broad set of patients being evaluated for care in the real world will allow the benefit risk of the drug to shine through in that setting similarly.
Our next question comes from the line of Andy Chen with Wolfe Research.
This is Brandon on for Andy. Matt, so you mentioned barriers and challenges that you need to get through on the launch. What specifically there were you referring to? I think we're curious to know like why this launch wouldn't be blasting out of the gates. And then second question, on your internal assumptions, what are the key factors that would push net price to the lower end or the higher end of that low to mid $300,000 annual expectation? Is there something within GTN? Or is it compliance that would be the bigger swing factor?
Yes. Thanks. On challenges. And again, I want to be clear, it's not that we're like nervous about facing anything specific to dermatomyositis that is unusual relative to other orphan launches, just that orphan launches are hard. But I'll give it to Ben to answer some of the specific things that we're working on preparing for.
Yes. Look, I would say I think it goes back a bit to the last question. I think the same thing that is the opportunity for this drug in the long term is what makes the early launch challenging in some ways, which is there has been no innovation here in decades and prescribers have been treating patients in certain ways for decades because there hasn't been innovation.
And obviously, they need to change that behavior. And behavioral change takes time for human beings even when there's a lot of intellectual enthusiasm around it. And I think there's as we've discussed, not like, okay, this is the singular group of patients who are going to get on drug initially at launch because in an area where you don't really have moderate approved therapies, every doctor manages their patients differently.
There's a lot of heterogeneity in terms of how patients are cared for today. So our approach is really to think about the medium- to long-term outcome of, as Matt described before, meeting doctors where they are and presenting the breadth of our label and the breadth of data from the VALOR study for them to really consider all adult DM patients who could be a good fit for the drug and consistent with the label for therapy. And we think that over time, that's going to come through. But exactly how fast that adoption is going to vary a lot by prescriber and it's pretty hard to predict with any degree of confidence.
And then I would say a similar approach applies to the reimbursement. We've been engaging with payers a lot. I'm very confident that they appreciate the unmet need. They appreciate how sick these patients are. But obviously, until we get into it, we won't know a lot about the exact way that, that's going. And again, very confident that over time, we will be able to have access to patients, and we have a lot of support in place to ensure they're able to get that access.
And we're committed as Priovant to providing that to patients 100%. But what it means in terms of our commercial results and exactly how quickly those are achieved, we'll have to see.
Thanks, I want to take a moment to unify the community of everyone listening to this call, and we will all silently in our heads, but with the knowledge that everybody else is doing at the same time, chance my other comment about this, which is that our expectation about the launch is that it will be altogether now slow and steady. So however many hundreds of people are now repeating that in their heads.
On the other question that you asked about the band of net price. Look, I think there's a lot of moving parts. You mentioned a few of them. I think the short answer is it will come into sharper relief relatively early in the overall picture here, and we'll be able to talk more about GTN, disclose it and so on when the time comes.
Our next question comes from the line of Yatin Suneja with Guggenheim Securities.
This is Min on behalf of Yatin Suneja. Congrats on the approval. You described slightly earlier, but if you can add a little more about the step edit expectation, the early adopter who can be? And how should we think about the launch cadence?
Look, thanks for the question. I don't actually feel like I have a ton to add on this question. I think from a physician perspective, the early adopters -- look, there's a lot of enthusiasm in the physician community for a novel therapy in an indication where there's not been a lot of innovation. And I think we have a lot of discussion with physicians who are excited to use the product.
Obviously, Ben and the team did a great job running a clinical trial and therefore, we have a lot of those relationships. I suspect some of the docs who are most familiar are probably also some of the practices from where the early scripts are coming. And on the patient side, I think we've answered already the question of what we think sort of "segmentation" looks like here, which is that we have a broad view of who the early patients are going to be.
And then on launch cadence, we get to say it one more time, which is we get to say, look, our expectation for the launch will be slow and steady and that we're building something big and important. And it's not about where we are in a month or 2 months or 6 months. It's about where we are in a year and 2 years and 6 years. And that's how we're thinking about the long-term proposition here, both in dermatomyositis and beyond dermatomyositis.
I think we've had -- look, I think we have a unique opportunity as really and maybe this is a good place to wrap this up to build a durable company that is benefiting patients across a variety of indications. I think the quality of the data in dermatomyositis speaks to what we're trying to do. And I think we're hoping to replicate that in a bunch of places and to build something that matters.
And I hope we can continue to share data in the near future that supports that mission as well as continuing to get this drug starting and now focusing on getting this drug out to dermatomyositis physicians and patients. Thank you very much.
And that concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to hand it back over to Matthew Gline for any further closing remarks.
Great. Thank you. Look, thank you, everybody, for listening this morning. It is a privilege to be able to take a drug like this, generate data like this and get it out to patients. It's something we have the honor and responsibility of doing at this point, and I know that Ben and the team are super focused on it. You've heard a fair amount of commentary on this call about our long-term enthusiasm and about our focus on doing this the right way.
And I'm hopeful and confident that we're going to be able to do that. So I want to say thank you again to the enormous number of people who it takes to get to a milestone like this one and in advance to the enormous number of people who it's going to take to carry the baton through the next race here. There's a ton of work coming to the Roivant team, to Ben and the Priovant team who executed tirelessly on this program and will execute tirelessly on what's to come.
And again, to the patients and investigators, it's hard to overstate the extent to which this carries, meaning for some of them who have been suffering from this disease for a long time. So look, thank you again, everybody. We look forward to getting back in touch in the near future on a pretty exciting 6 and then 12 months ahead. And I'm sure we'll have lots of opportunity to stay slow and steady on future calls as well.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
LISRAYA (brepocitinib) ist FDA-zugelassen und kommerziell gestartet — erstes orales, zielgerichtetes Medikament für Dermatomyositis; Launch ist „slow and steady“.
Zulassungs-/Launch-Call mit Management, Details zum Label, Preis, Patientenprogrammen und Q&A mit Analysten.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Zulassung: FDA-Approval für LISRAYA als erste orale, zielgerichtete Therapie bei Dermatomyositis (DM).
- Patientennutzen: Breite Wirksamkeit auf Haut, Muskulatur und funktionelle Endpunkte plus dokumentierte Steroid-Reduktion.
- Launch-Fokus: Kommerzieller Start vorgezogen; starker Fokus auf Zugang und Bezahlbarkeit für Patienten.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Label-Breadth: Breite Indikation für erwachsene DM-Patienten ohne Einschränkungen zu Schweregrad oder Vorbehandlungen; Kombination mit Steroiden und konventionellen DMARDs erlaubt.
- Steroid-Sparing: Erste Therapie mit gleichzeitiger signifikanten Krankheitsverbesserung und Steroidentlastung; kommerzielles Argument für Neu- und Wechslerpatienten.
- Kommerz & Support: Launch gestartet, erste Rezepte und MyCompass-Patientenprogramm (inkl. Versicherungs-/Finanzhilfe); Ziel vieler Patienten mit $0 OOP.
- Franchise-Potential: Weitere Indikationen in Sicht (nicht-infektiöse Uveitis, kutane Sarkoidose u.a.).
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Markteintritt: Kommerzieller Launch erfolgt früher als geplant; Verschreibungen laufen bereits.
- Preisinfo: WAC (Listenpreis) $35.000 pro 30-Tage-Packung; Management schätzt ein jährliches Nettoäquivalent für das Unternehmen im niedrigen bis mittleren $300.000‑Bereich (vorläufig).
- Reporting: Management nennt quartalsweise Net Sales als primären Launch‑KPI; weitere Detailmetriken folgen später.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Access/Payer: Analysten fragten zu Prior Authorizations und Erstattungs‑tempo; Management erwartet Herausforderungen, hat aber Support‑prozesse und Payer‑Dialoge vorbereitet.
- Wechsel von Off‑Label JAK: Abschätzung, dass viele Off‑Label‑JAK‑Patienten konvertieren könnten; Vorteil durch TYK2/JAK1‑Wirkung und großes DM‑Datenset.
- Sicherheit & OLE: Fragen zu MACE, Thrombosen und malignen Ereignissen im Open‑Label‑Extension; Management: Ereignisse selten, erwartet für JAK‑Klasse, kein materialer Profilwechsel.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Investmentblick: FDA‑Zulassung und sofortiger Launch de‑riskieren das Programm substantiell; relevanter Umsatzhebel möglich, aber anfängliche Ramp‑Geschwindigkeit bleibt unsicher und hängt von Erstattung, Verschreibungsverhalten und Real‑World‑Zugängen ab. Langfristiges Upside durch Franchise‑Pläne und breites Label.
Roivant Sciences — Q1 2027 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Roivant First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Stephanie Lee. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review Roivant's financial results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2026. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com.
We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along. I'd like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we have filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Steph, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining. This is a little bit of a calm before the storm moment for us. And so a pretty quiet quarter and maybe not the most interesting of our earnings calls in recent memory. But nonetheless, a lot of great progress in the business. And certainly, we're expecting a jam-packed second half, as I'll get to in a moment.
So I'll be relatively brief in my remarks, and then we'll go to Q&A. I want to start on Slide 4. This is a slide we took from our own prior deck. This is from the Investor Day that we did in December of last year, and this was a list of our priorities for the year. And we're sitting here a little bit more than halfway through the year. So I just wanted to highlight that it's gone well for us, that we feel really good about the setup.
And so on Slide 5, looking across the list here, we've got brepocitinib expected to launch by the end of September. Obviously, we got priority review and our PDUFA date, as we said, is this quarter. We have great data from 1402 in the D2T RA study that we presented on our last quarterly call. Probably the most notable update for today on the top center of this slide is that we've now enrolled patients in the Phase III study in cutaneous sarcoidosis for brepocitinib, which follows on the positive results that we had in our Phase II data, which I think we announced on our first quarterly call of this year, earlier in the calendar year.
We've now received the initial payment from Moderna in the settlement and that -- the sort of second part of that, the 1498 part of that case is progressing, and we filed international proceedings against Pfizer and BioNTech in that case. And finally, earlier this year, we added LPP as a fourth brepocitinib indication. And as I'll remind people later today, that study is continuing to enroll really well.
As I mentioned at the top of the call here on Slide 6, I'll just say this is a quiet quarter, and this is a quiet day. I don't know exactly how the following statement could be true, but I think it is. The next 6 to 12 months are, in many ways, busier than the prior 6 to 12 months for us. And so we just have an enormous amount coming up, starting, as I mentioned, with the upcoming potential brepocitinib launch in DM, which should happen imminently assuming everything goes as we hope and expect it will with FDA.
We've got top line data in brepo from the NIU study, an indication that could easily be as large as dermatomyositis. That data is coming in the second half of this year. We also have top line data coming shortly in the second half from mosli, the Phase II study in PH-ILD. I know that's being closely watched, and we're looking forward to getting that data and presenting it. We will provide updates -- further updates on the D2T RA program at Immunovant in the second half of this year, including hopefully a download on a conversation we hope to have with FDA about that program as well as the results of the second part of the study and a little bit more about our plans going forward.
And then finally, probably the smallest of these, we're expecting top line data from the POC study in CLE also in the second half of this year and looking forward to finding out what we've got there when that comes in as well. So just a jam-packed second half and even more coming in 2027 with the Graves data and beyond. So just a lot in here. I'll just hit a couple of highlights in terms of the pipeline updates in a little more detail here before, again, before we go to Q&A.
Starting on Slide 8 with a reminder because it's been a few months since we've talked about it. The initiation of the cutaneous sarcoidosis Phase III study is a pretty exciting event. It's a little bit ahead of schedule in terms of what we've been able to do here. And this is a disease that we're just privileged to be able to work in here. It's a high morbidity, very difficult disease with a high urgency to treat. You can see on Slide 8, some of the photos we've shared before, but these are patients who are really sick and have very few treatment options.
On Slide 9, as a reminder of the data that we generated in our Phase II study, we had set for ourselves a goal of a sort of 5-point benefit on the CSAMI scale for clinical meaningfulness. And in the study on the top left of this chart, we showed a greater than 20-point benefit compared to roughly nothing on placebo. So just a huge benefit to those patients in the Phase II study and really excited to carry that forward into the pivotal program.
As a reminder, on Slide 10, we think this is a pretty decent sized indication, again, with high unmet need, probably about 40,000 patients in the U.S. and reasonable overlap with some other organ systems, including ocular sarcoidosis or GI sarcoidosis, where that overlaps with NIU that is one of the types of NIU that we're studying as well as pulmonary sarcoidosis, which is a big potential indication as well and where we hope to be able to treat some of those patients via either their ocular sarcoidosis or CS.
The Phase III study that we've now begun, the design is laid out on Slide 11. I know there were some questions after the Phase II about what exactly this study would look like. It is designed to take all of the learnings from the Phase II study that was successful. It is a 16-week study with the primary endpoint of CSAMI greater than or equal to 50% response rate.
It's a 140-patient study across about 70 sites, 3 to 2 randomized with patients either on 45 milligrams of brepocitinib or placebo, and with a mandatory -- sorry, a mandatory steroid taper going from week 2 to week 8 down to 0, which is consistent with -- roughly consistent with what we did in the Phase II and generally consistent with what we think is appropriate for patients in this indication.
So that study, as I said, has already begun enrolling patients, and we expect top line data in 2028, which just adds to the list of registrational -- potentially registrational indications for brepocitinib coming up. I'll reiterate on Slide 12, the other ongoing registrational program is the brepocitinib study in lichen planopilaris, or LPP, that we announced earlier this year. That study is enrolling, I would say, extremely well. There's a lot of enthusiasm from physicians and patients for that, speaks to the high unmet need in the indication, speaks to the quality of the work being done by Ben and the Priovant team and looking forward to sharing more about that as soon as we've got it. So that's also moving along nicely.
Look, finally, and I'm sure there will be questions about this in Q&A and lots of opportunity to talk about it, hopefully, with a potential approval and beyond. Obviously, one of the major events in the near term here is the launch -- potential launch of brepocitinib in dermatomyositis. Obviously, I think we're in a phenomenal position here in terms of what we've got in terms of what we hope to be able to do, starting with the quality of our clinical data, which, as you know, from the multiple times we've talked about it from the publications, including in the New England Journal and so on, just phenomenal data, stat sig across all 10 endpoints big clinical benefit, a lot of enthusiasm from the doc community.
This is a really tough disease, a large addressable population, most of them on sort of polypharmacy, trying a lot of different things. And frankly, most of them still dissatisfied with the available treatments. So we feel like we have an opportunity to do something big and different for this patient population. Our team has been out spending a lot of time with the physician and the patient communities on overall education. And I think the enthusiasm for a new therapy is coming out loud and clear, including with all the academic presentations that have been done and so on. Commercial launches, there's not much to say today other than that it's on track. We're ready to launch on time, having received priority review. The sort of commercial and patient support teams are built out, trained, ready to deploy.
We feel really great about the hires we've made there, really great about the organizations we've built there. We think we're doing this in a way that is both capitalizing on all the learnings from successful launches at other companies in recent years and doing it in a Roivant-Priovant way. There's nobody in the world that will be more excited to see -- oversee this than the team we've got at Priovant with Ben and Daniel and others. And I think we're going to be fully ready. Everything is on schedule. So we'll have much more to say about that with the potential approval and after, but looking forward to it.
I'll say one more thing about the commercial franchise overall at brepocitinib on Slide 14. We get a lot of enthusiastic questions from investors around pace of launch. And we've been pretty consistent that our answer to that question is sort of slow and steady is what we're looking to build there. And I think there's a bunch of reasons for that. Obviously, some of them are DM is a new indication and no one's launched a novel therapy basically ever or at least a targeted therapy basically ever. And so it's just hard to know exactly what work will need to be done to get everyone comfortable and excited on drug, although I think we're fully prepared.
But also, to me, it's because brepocitinib is a lot more than just dermatomyositis. And to me, what we're really doing here is not just trying to make that launch as fast as possible, we're trying to lay the groundwork for the overall opportunity, which goes beyond DM into first NIU and then CS and LPP with the data coming thereafter.
And I think as you think about that layering, to me, it's much less about what week 1 or month 1 or quarter 1 looks like and much more about making sure that the foundation around access, the foundation around patient support, the foundation around the institutional activities, the foundation around our communication with the scientific and physician community and our communication with patients are all set up to deliver the maximum opportunity for brepocitinib across all of these indications. And so I think slow and steady isn't just about sort of guidance.
Slow and steady is about the approach that we're taking with the program to make sure we have maximum reach across everything that we're doing there, including indications that we're excited about beyond the ones we've already announced. So a lot to come, as I said, on track for that launch. You all hear the same thing we do, which is a ton of enthusiasm from the patients and physician community for new options in all of these indications and looking forward to sharing more when we know about it.
But our guidance is going to continue to be slow and steady because that's what we think we're building. Final business update here is we got the upfront payment in the settlement with Moderna. That $950 million has come in, $770-ish million of it to Genevant and the rest to Arbutus. So that's done. there will be progress in terms of return of capital, et cetera, of that and so on. The 1498 sort of appellate ruling is that that process is ongoing in the Federal Circuit. That would be another $1.3 billion if we got a favorable outcome there.
And then we continue to advance our litigation against Pfizer and BioNTech. We filed 3 international lawsuits, notably in Canada and the UPC in July, so just last month and continue to progress that case as fast as we can. Obviously, not all of it in our control, but equally enthusiastic about the potential there in terms of what we could get.
I'll wrap up just with our usual financial update on Slide 17. Look, I think overall, most importantly, we are spending in areas that we're excited to be spending. We're excited about all of our R&D programs, about $200 million of R&D expense for the quarter, of just under $100 million of non-GAAP adjusted G&A or $166 million of GAAP G&A expense and cash just under $4 billion, and that's before the receipt of the $772 million. Notably, pretty significant share repurchase activity, about $200 million in the quarter, a bit more than that when you include March.
Obviously, what we did there was we accelerated our share repurchase program upon the announcement of the Moderna settlement so that we could get those shares in. And the shares that -- and remember, the shares that we bought back kind of the first round of this, the $1.5 billion that we have bought back sort of up through mid last year, we bought back at around $10 a share. I think the average price at which we've been able to buy back stock since we kicked off the second round of this in earnest in March has been in the high 20s. So feeling good overall about retiring those shares and getting that capital back to shareholders. I'm going to continue doing that according to our authorizations for now.
And all of it ahead of on Slide 19, a really rich catalyst calendar ahead with a lot coming. So looking forward to all of that, with just an incredibly busy stretch ahead. On Slide 20, again, a little bit incredulous for the people around Roivant who are doing all of this work or incredible people to do this work. But by the end of calendar 2028, we'll have had hopefully 3 or more commercial launches, 9 or more pivotal study readouts, 4-plus NDA or BLA filings and a number of proof-of-concept studies, just a ton coming up in the near term. So with that, I'm going to wrap up my prepared remarks for the day, and I will hand it back over to the operator for Q&A in just a moment. Thank you again for listening this morning and looking forward to taking your questions.
Operator, over to you.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brian Chen of JPMorgan.
2. Question Answer
Maybe just thinking through the DM launch, Matt, can you give us a quick sense of what metrics we could be receiving right out of the gate to help us better track the initial launch? And then secondly, on PH-ILD, as we think about the baseline characteristics here in PHocus, it seems that more patients are on nintedanib.
We are curious if there's any implication in terms of the fibrosis versus emphysema ratio in the population? And then further down the line, whether there's any implication towards the bar for success for both 6-minute walk and also PVR?
Yes. Perfect. Thanks. I appreciate both questions. Look, on a thing I've gotten fond of saying as I've watched other companies with commercial launches is that you all don't deserve our guidance, which isn't quite fair. But look, I think other than sort of a slow and steady launch and obviously, the sort of top line metrics will be clearly visible in our financials each quarter.
I don't know that we're going to provide a ton of detail in the early days. I think it's important for us mostly to spend our time focused on understanding those dynamics ourselves, getting out, talking to patients, talking to physicians, doing the work we need to do. We'll give a little more color on what that's going to look like on a call with potential approvals, and then we'll start to flesh out the package that we share with each successive quarter.
But I don't have a lot to say right now about metrics. I'll say, I think typical with these launches, I'm not sure a ton is going to be visible in the early days, just given how the commercial apparatus is set up for practical purposes, but we'll provide more guidance on that as it gets closer and is here. On PH-ILD, I guess, first of all, we've obviously been watching, for example, the treprostinil data in IPF and trying to understand a little bit better what's been going on with these PH-ILD patients in treatment of PH-ILD for fibrosis and for lung disease. It's been a view of ours for a while that one of the things to look out for in treatment of PH-ILD with vasodilators is emphysema.
And so the study was designed with care around the amount of emphysema allowed in the study overall, and that was an important part of the guiding philosophy of the study to make sure that we could serve the patient population broadly, but also we're maximizing the potential benefit of the therapy. So that was considered from the beginning. So those are, I think, things we're keeping an eye on. I know there is a vocal cohort that believes that treprostinil has antifibrotic benefit.
Look, I think our view is if you treat PH-ILD patients well for their pulmonary hypertension, you may well deliver a benefit overall on their lung disease. And I think our view is probably that vasodilation is driving a lot of the activity there. But we also have some evidence from nonclinical models of antifibrotic activity for it. Overall, on 6-minute walk and PVR, and I'm sure I'll get versions of this question more today.
Look, I think it's consistent with what we said before. We're hoping to see a clear signal on PVR. We expect if the drug is all active, we will. We don't expect to see very much with clarity on 6-minute walk. The study is not powered for 6-minute walk. It would be nice to see some separation, but I don't think that's essential for our sort of go/no-go decision from here. And we'll just -- we'll know what we've got once we get a closer look at it, including the full balance of that data.
Next question comes from the line of Dave Risinger from Leerink Partners.
So I have three questions, but rather than rattling them all off right now, maybe if it's okay, I'll go one by one. So first, on mosli, you commented just now on 6-minute walk distance. But if you were to run a large trial, what type of 6-minute walk distance would you be hoping for, i.e., what would be relevant to the clinicians and to the patients? So that's my first question.
Yes. Thanks, Dave. Look, I think, obviously, we'll have a slightly better answer to these questions overall once we have a sense of what we saw in Phase II. The truth is the PH-ILD patients are really sick. There are not a lot of options for these patients. And as we saw in Group 1 in PAH, when you have more treatment options, first of all, patients go on multiple options, multiple lines of therapy.
And second of all, most importantly, like the actual -- not from a clinical trial perspective, but from like a real-world evidence perspective, like survival and mortality rates go down as new classes of drugs are introduced in PAH over time. And I think it's like less about a number on 6-minute walk and more about having an approvable therapy. Remember, these are patients that are trying to walk to the car.
They're trying to walk to the bathroom. They're trying to like live their daily lives. So I don't know that I think it's like correct scientifically to describe a specific numerical bar that matters versus just being able to get a new therapy. And some of that's, frankly, because 6-minute walk in clinical settings is an art that is complicated and noisy and like a little bit difficult to translate into daily lives, whereas if these drugs really effectively vasodilate and improve lung function and improve PVR, I think you wind up seeing a lot of benefit for these patients.
So I don't know that we're going to articulate or have a specific numerical bar versus a successful study. Obviously, we will be judged, especially by the investor community based on competitor data, but I don't think we even need to be per se better than any other mechanism in order to have a big benefit to patients.
Great. That's very helpful. And then regarding the forthcoming brepo DM launch, could you discuss the cadence of formulary reviews for rare disease drugs? I ask because for mass market drugs, P&T committees often wait until 6 months after launch before putting drugs on formulary.
Yes. Thanks. Look, I don't have a ton to say about that right now other than we're having all of the normal engagement with the payer community that you'd expect us to have at this stage. And also -- and I think this is a critical point about all of these launches. We are super focused on making sure that patients -- the physicians who want to write this drug and patients who want to get on this drug are going to have access. I think that's going to be really important for our engagement with the community for access generally.
I think in terms of like literal formulary, it's probably like not so different. It's not like there's a separate committee for different kinds of diseases, but there's lots of medical exception procedures and other things that you can do to get patients covered. And we have a whole team of people built out at Priovant that's dedicated to making sure whether the formulary -- the formulary work has happened yet, whether the P&T committee has happened yet is not something that our patients and physicians have to spend a lot of time thinking about as they're deciding how to use the drug.
Excellent. That's really helpful context. And then finally, beyond the list of programs on Slide 19, could you remind us about pipeline and product opportunities for your portfolio, including specific products that you could announce initiation of new studies for over the next year or so?
I think every single one of the programs that the world is aware of in our pipeline as well as potentially ones that the world is not yet aware of in our pipeline. In all of those cases, we could announce new trials, new indications in the next year. I think it's every one of those are eligible and all of our molecules could be put into indications beyond the ones we've talked about.
And I think it's fair to say in each case, we have specific ideas of indications we're excited about. We've done active work and are, in fact, like preparing to initiate programs to varying degrees depending on how busy those teams are today versus next month or the month after, but real progress. So I think the answer is we are actively working on that, that all of our products are, as you call them, pipeline of products and that we're excited to share more indications as we start those studies.
The next question comes from the line of Samantha Semenkow from Citi.
I also have 2, one on mosli, one on brepo. For mosli, I'm wondering if you could just talk about the translatability of PVR reductions in patients with PAH to those with the PH-ILD population that you enrolled in PHocus. Are there any aspects of either disease that could influence the magnitude of PVR that you could see in the mosli data? And I have a follow-up.
Yes. So look, I think -- thanks for the question. I appreciate it. I think the translation from PAH to PH-ILD is the fundamental question being answered by our study. And so the first unfortunate answer to that question is we're just going to have to see what we see. And it is the it is the risk of the program at some level that we find something -- again, the Phase I data, including in PAH patients look very good on a PVR basis.
So one of the main "risks" of this program is that there's something, I would call it, unexpected in the PH-ILD translation. Obviously, I use the word unexpected because I think scientifically, it seems relatively straightforward that inhaled vasodilation is an effective mechanism in PH-ILD, but we'll find out. Obviously, the lungs of PH-ILD patients are different than the lungs of PAH patients.
And so you might expect some difference in sort of the pharmacodynamics of the drug in those patients. But overall, it seems pretty clear that when you take an inhaled vasodilator in PH-ILD patient, you get drug to the healthy lung tissue and it matters. So that's what I'd say.
Got it. That's very helpful. And then just on brepo and DM, in your conversations that you've been having with physicians for education, I'm wondering if you could just talk about the reception to brepo given the JAK class safety concerns. Obviously, the safety profile on VALOR was quite favorable. But from a class perspective, it would just be helpful to hear how the physicians are thinking about safety, particularly since DM patients already tend to have a higher underlying risk for cancer.
Yes. We've said a few times that when we first in-licensed brepocitinib, we didn't exactly know what the reception to JAK inhibitors was going to be following the addition of black box warnings. And our whole view is to choose indications where the safety profile of JAKs was going to be much less of a focus. I think dermatomyositis is a poster child for this in that while JAK inhibitors are at this point, extremely widely used in diseases with much less morbidity, many more alternative therapies in dermatomyositis, there's really no other options available. And I don't think physicians, therefore, are going to be particularly focused on this question.
Remember, these patients are often -- first of all, I think you sort of alluded to the profile in the trial. Dermatomyositis patients are inherently at risk of many of these concerns, malignancies, cardiometabolic events and treating them well makes them healthier and reduces those risks. And then on top of that, the therapies that they are currently on for dermatomyositis are things like high-dose steroids, which themselves add meaningfully, in fact, in many cases, much less severe disease.
As a reminder, we fully expect that our label is going to look like the labels for other JAK inhibitors that's going to have the black box warnings that's going to talk about experience with JAK inhibitors and other indications. And like I said, I think docs expect that. And I think are not going to be too concerned about it because these patients are, a, very sick; and b on other drugs with, in many cases, significantly worse safety concerns.
Our next questions will come from the line of Prakhar Agarwal from Cantor Fitzgerald.
Congrats on the continued execution. So maybe a couple of questions from my side as well. Firstly, on brepo and DM, could you remind us what percentage of DM patients are on off-label JAKs based on your latest primary or secondary research? And would you expect rapid switches from these patients who are on off-label JAKs to brepo? If not, why is that the case? And secondly, for brepo and NIU trial, what do you see as the biggest risk for Phase III, given the Phase II was really strong?
And is this geographic variation, which has been a key risk for this trial, which could drive some of the baseline variability -- this has been flagged as one of the risk factors by some of the KOL checks that we have done.
Great. Thank you. So I -- in terms of your first question on brepo and DM around who's on off-label JAKs and what does that look like? Look, I think, first of all, there's just like variability in physician practice and some physicians use more JAKs and some physicians use less JAKs. And that has more to do, I think, with the docs in many cases than with any specific subcategory of patients.
I think what we've said publicly is a low single-digit percentage or mid-single-digit percentage of dermatomyositis patients have experience with these things. Some of the docs who are involved who do use -- and some of that -- some docs don't use off-label drugs full stop. I think some of the docs who use off-label JAKs have said they expect to switch patients over, and I hope they do. And obviously, we'll be working to help them where that's appropriate, facilitate those switches.
I think it's just going to be down to the preference and practice of each individual doc. I think one of the things that our team is finding in talking to physicians is that different patients have -- different docs have different sort of ideals in mind for who their sort of first patients might be. And I think it just varies based on the patient experience, the physician. And so obviously, we'll be able to have much more of these conversations pending a potential approval.
But I think medically, we'll see a wide variety of different phenotypes. On what is the biggest risk in Phase III, it feels funny to call placebo risk in these trials and that's not quite exactly what I mean, but I think the variability in placebo response rates in immunology trials is significant. And if you're asking me what keeps me up at night, it's that we don't know exactly what placebo response rates will be in that study.
And that just makes it hard to know exactly what the trial is going to look like on outcome. Obviously, the Phase II data was quite compelling and the level of drug activity seems good. And so I'm pretty optimistic about the study, but there's certainly -- this is biotech, you can lose sleep over anything. Is geography a risk?
I think there may be geographic variation just as there is in many other indications and some of that's literally driven by geography and some of it's driven by physician practice and some of it's just noise. I don't know that it's a risk in the sense that it's like unanticipated or whatever. It's just a feature of running immunology studies. But overall, I think the team is doing a great job with the study, and I hope it's going to come out well.
Our next question comes from the line of Andy Chen of Wolfe Research.
I don't think this has been talked about yet. But for the brepo launch, can you maybe talk about a few launch analogs that you're assessing right now, either patient curve or market share curve? What are the historical products with the most resemblance to brepo and DM?
Well, thanks. It's a good question. The truth is there has never been a launch of a targeted therapy in dermatomyositis before. And so there is no good "analog" in the sense that you can point to lots of other launches of lots of other kinds and some have been faster and some have been slower and some have been slow and steady and some have been -- it's like different versions of different things.
And I think it's hard to say, and there have been successful products with all kinds of different launch phases. So I think the short answer is I don't have a specific analog for another drug that we're watching as like evidence of our own penetration. I think what we're really focused on here is the dermatomyositis opportunity itself, these docs, these patients and the benefit and the cost of being a pioneer in an indication is that you don't get to look at others, you have to try your own course. I don't have an analog to point to.
Our next question comes from Yatin Suneja from Guggenheim.
Just a quick one on difficult-to-treat RA. Could you maybe talk about the strategy there? Would you need one more study, 2 more studies? How are you thinking about that? What should be our expectations for the randomized withdrawal phase that we're going to get data on?
Yes. Thanks. Great question. Look, on study design, so we're going to come back later this year with a full update on that program, and that includes -- we don't yet have the randomized withdrawal period data yet, so I can't speak to what's in it or how it will or will not inform strategy from here. And I think at some level, the results of that study may inform whether it is usable or not as one of our pivotal studies, et cetera. I think we designed it to serve potentially as 1 of 2.
But obviously, it's got to hit for that to work. And as we said, when we announced the data, the quality of the response rates in the open-label period have set a somewhat higher bar for hitting a p-value on the randomized withdrawal section. So I think we've got to sort of see all that taken in aggregate, look at the patient level data, understand what's going on. And we are planning for an FDA conversation this fall that will inform both the exact design of that study as well as help us answer those questions.
I don't have a specific guidance to give on exactly what those studies are going to look like now because we don't know, but I'll say the team is working on it hard. The data was obviously exciting. It has gotten noticed. We've got a lot of enthusiastic reception, including from the doctor community on it. And we're excited to finalize those plans and bring them back to you later this year.
Our next question comes from Yaron Werber from TD Cowen.
Great. I have a couple of questions. The first one with mosli, once you release the data this year, would you release both the mono and the combo data at the same time? And then secondly, for CS, the trial design is super interesting. It makes obviously a lot of sense. The primary endpoint is CSAMI more than a 50% response -- can you maybe translate the Phase II data into the same context? Because I think the Phase II looked at CSAMI over 10 points and the change from baseline. So I'm just trying to get a sense of apples-to-apples kind of what to expect.
Great. So on mosli, I think the short answer to your question is we will not release the monotherapy data and the combo data at the same time because the combo study started much later and is enrolling now, whereas the monotherapy study, obviously will read out pretty soon in the second half.
So I think the answer is they won't come out at the same time, and we'll put out the combo data when we've got it. The combo study, remember, it's an open-label study. It was designed -- the truth is, I think a lot of the information that we could want will come out of the monotherapy study anyway, so the combo study like won't provide that much incremental. I think it was designed in part to give us really good safety experience in the combination as well as like a little bit of information about incremental efficacy just so that we could get a sense for like inclusion criteria and management in the Phase III.
But I'm not sure it's going to be like a super, super informative outcome. Yes. So that's what I'll say on mosli. I think data are going to come at separate times. On CS, I don't have to give right now the exact delta, but I'll say we saw meaningfully higher rates of greater than 50% CSAMI in the treatment arm than in the placebo.
So the delta was wide. And I think in the press release that may have gone out around the initiation of the CS study, it will have said well north of 50% of the patients in the treatment arm of the Phase II had a CSAMI response rate greater than 50%, I think it was 0 on placebo. So it should be a good bar to set for us in terms of the endpoint. I don't know that we're going to replicate exactly what we saw in the Phase II, but I think the point is it's well powered for probability success given what we saw in the Phase II.
Great. And if I can maybe just sneak in the Phase III NIU, do you have a sense, is the percent Humira experience going to be the same as the Phase II, given that the data looked pretty good overall. So it must have been pretty good in that segment, too.
I don't think we've said -- thank you. What's the percentage of patients in the Phase III have HUMIRA experience. I don't have that number on the top of my head, so I'll have to check into it. But I think the answer is there's no reason to expect it to be very different than what we've seen. There are a meaningful number of HUMIRA experienced patients in the Phase III, which matters in terms of ability to go into all of those patients. But I think the short answer to your question is I wouldn't expect it to be a major driver, and I wouldn't expect anything markedly different about the patient population from the Phase II.
Our next question comes from Thomas Smith from Leerink Partners.
On the 1402 difficult-to-treat RA program, I just wanted to clarify how you're approaching the disclosure in the second half of the year. Should we expect to see the Part 2 randomized withdrawal data prior to your meeting with FDA? Are you planning to share the data and the regulatory feedback and next steps simultaneously? And then on Graves, I just wanted to get your thoughts on the competitive landscape.
Obviously, you're the first advanced therapy there with really stellar Phase II data, and you'll have the first pivotal readout next year with 1402. But there are a number of different approaches targeting various segments of the Graves patient population. Just wondering if you could comment on the competitive landscape. And as you see some of the approaches some of these competitors are taking with respect to the patient population, wondering how you're thinking about potential future studies for 1402 and Graves.
Yes, perfect. Those are both really great questions. On the first one, I think what we said we put the data out still holds. I think my dream, our dream for the second half of this year is that we can come back with everything tied as nicely into a bow as possible, which is to say the period 2 data, the FDA conversation, maybe some further analysis of patient experience through both periods in the RA study, all shared at the same time.
Obviously, until we have the Part 2 data in hand, we can't sort of specifically know whether there's anything in there that requires earlier disclosure. But in general, I think the answer is our hope and expectation would be to give a fulsome update later this year on everything all at once for D2T RA. On Graves, look, I think, first of all, I cannot say enough times that discussion of competition in Graves' disease among therapeutic categories is just misplaced in the sense that you've got so many patients with unmet need that have had no -- the last time a novel therapy was developed in Graves disease was like the 1950s or 1960s.
There's so many patients who have need of novel therapy that it's not about outrunning the bear. It's not about beating some specific competitor. It's about changing doc behavior in an indication that badly needs new options. 1402 will have been studied in lots of patients. It's a safe and well-tolerated drug. Graves is going to have room for lots of mechanisms and lots of products.
Among the other mechanisms, some will have specific either safety liabilities or they'll mimic a thyroidectomy and they'll require treatment with Synthroid or there's just like lots of different approaches and those patients may be appropriate for -- those drugs may be appropriate for later-line patients or a different subset of the patient population. And over time, I'm sure that segmenting will occur.
But first of all, we're going to be first out in the marketplace there long before anybody else. And so we're going to get to have some influence over the treatment paradigms and also just get an option out to patients and physicians before some of those other choices are available. And second of all, I think it's mostly about building the market, not about any specific alternative and so on. So look, we're tremendously excited to be in our position in Graves to be first to be able to offer hopefully a new option here. The only other thing I will say is -- you learn a lot running these studies.
You learn a lot engaging with this physician community. And I do think there is nuance to the patient population. I think there is nuance to the prescriber behavior. I think there's a lot of heterogeneity in terms of how these patients are managed around the world and around the U.S. And I think one of the things that we're going to be able to do is to take advantage of those learnings in future studies, in these studies, in commercial prep. And I think that will be a big benefit to us in being in the first place here.
Our next question comes from Yasmeen Rahimi of Piper Sandler.
This is Shannon on for Yas Rahimi. Congrats on the great quarter. Maybe just one more from us about clarity with the readout in second half '26. Could you give us just maybe what you might be thinking about narrowing guidance if you expect to do that? And then sort of how you're thinking about the bar for success? And then timing post data, would you expect to file an sNDA and sort of what would be the cadence on that?
Thanks. Look, I think I doubt that we're going to provide more specific timing guidance at this point than we have. We announced, I think, when the study was fully enrolled. I think we're just going to read the study out when it's done and we have the data clean. The truth is NIU is another one of these diseases where there's a lot of unmet need. HUMIRA leaves a lot of room on the table.
And frankly, a lot of patients aren't even getting it. And so I think the truth is that the bar for success is successful studies that would support registration. And I think if we get that, we will have a big opportunity to help lots of patients who need it. So I don't think there's like a numerical bar. Obviously, better data is better. And the more we mirror our Phase II, the happier I'll be about that.
Our Phase II was really, really great data. But overall, I think as long as we have a successful clinical trial, a successful outcome, we're going to get what we need and we have a lot of patients we can reach. And I don't want to put Ben on the spot right now on exactly when that sNDA goes in, but we got the DM1 in nice and quickly. And I know the team is enthusiastic for indication. So if that study is positive, you got to believe that team is going to be working really quickly to get that sNDA in as fast as possible. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Douglas Tsao from H.C. Wainwright. The next question comes from Sam Slutsky from LifeSci Capital.
Two quick ones for me. I guess for the proof-of-concept readout in CLE, there's a few parts to that study. So just remind me what we'll be getting in that initial release this year. And then for the initial launch in dermatomyositis, remind me how many clinics you're targeting and the concentration of patients at those clinics?
Yes. On CLE, and again, I think we've said this before in other settings, as I was mentioning, I think CLE is an interesting indication. This is a small study. It's really a fact-finding proof-of-concept study. We've been watching the competitive landscape in CLE closely. There's a lot of other exciting therapies in development as well. Our early data from a couple of patients that we have dosed was encouraging.
We're really sort of overall just looking to understand what our treatment benefit looks like, how we could conceptually stack up in the future treatment landscape. And I think that will all be super informative to what we do from here and whether we go forward. I think the primary, as a reminder, is 12 weeks, 600 versus placebo. And then in period 2, all patients collapse 600 at 52 weeks. The thing that we'll be reporting first is that 12 weeks for 600 versus placebo. So that's what we'll see. And then obviously, a bunch of other data beyond just the specific primary endpoint.
On the DM launch, I'm not going to share today exactly what our sort of targeting strategy is. But as a reminder, there's about 200 myositis referral centers that treat approximately half of the U.S. patient population. And so obviously, those clinics are -- those docs, those centers are an important part of the overall picture, but there are other important physicians as well.
And I think Ben and the team have done a really great job overall engaging with the physician community. So I'm excited about what we've done there, excited about the sort of medical publication strategy. Obviously, New England Journal publication was a great outcome. So feeling good overall about that plan. And we're going to talk to as many docs and get out there as much as we can, pending potential approval. So thank you. Great questions.
We will now take the last question from Alex Thompson of Stifel.
Maybe two more on 1402. Going back to the questions around placebo responses, how are you thinking about managing placebo response in the Graves studies, particularly in the backdrop of ATD down titration and the potential for waxing and waning of disease in that context over longer periods of time? And then secondly, what's your current thinking on sort of where 1402 could fit within MG and CIDP as that landscape continues to evolve?
Yes. Thank you. Great questions. I appreciate it. Look, on Graves, I think the short answer to this question is if you set the bar high enough on the endpoints, these are just not patients who are spontaneously remitting. And so if you're looking at patients who are getting to proper thyroid hormone levels and off ATDs, I think the simple truth is placebo should be pretty manageable here without saying much more about exactly how the ATD titration works and so on and different of the studies being run by different companies are taking slightly different approaches there.
So I'm not going to say too much about exactly what we're up to. But overall, I think this is something that is likely manageable. And then I think as far as MG and CIDP are concerned, and I'll say first of all, it's pretty rare that you have a great drug where you can run a clinical trial and be just like very confident that the trial is going to work. FcRns have been studied many times in MG at this point.
1402 really should work in MG. The data that we generated in bato, although I know there was plenty of debate over the deeper is better question, we think showed a real treatment benefit, especially on things like MSE and sort of clinical remission that other FcRns in our view, have not been quite as compelling on. So I think we have an opportunity to deliver really great data, and I think that data will translate to adoption.
I'll say two other things. One is that the MG market has just shown itself to be extremely large. There's room for lots of different classes. There's room for multiple FcRns. There's a little bit of cycling going on. There's differences in dosing paradigm and so on. So I think like no matter what share we take, even a relatively modest share of a market that size is a big opportunity. I think argenx has done a really great job establishing that market, establishing themselves in that market, becoming the drug of choice that people reach to for a next-generation therapy.
I think they may very well remain the class leader there. And I think we will find lots of operating room around them with hopefully incremental meaningful benefit to patients beyond what they can deliver and just with another option with different route of administration and so on. So I think in MG, we'll be out there. I think we'll have a big opportunity just given the size of the overall market and then exactly what our share is and where we fit in will depend on the clinical data that we generate in the study.
CIDP, my one comment is, I think there is -- I think the -- the end on other indications. I think in CIDP, class leadership has been less concretely established at this point. It's a more recent launch. And I think there's probably a little bit more room for improvement on treatment paradigm.
And so I think what we showed with bato in the CIDP study was pretty encouraging, and I hope we're able to do something similar with 1402. And I think there will be a lot of enthusiasm if we can, for our role there. So I think we have an opportunity to be a major driver in that market. Overall, I think the level of success that argenx has had with things like MG and CIDP make me tremendously excited about Graves and about D2T RA and the other indications where we are first in that the first-mover advantage that argenx has been able to develop in their indications are significant, and I expect to build a similar moat for ourselves.
Look, I think ultimately, these docs are going to be sensitive to clinical data, focused on clinical data. And I think if our data is phenomenal, we'll be able to lead in every indication where we have that kind of data. Big docs are going to follow the quality of the evidence.
With that, I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing.
Great. Okay. Well, look, thank you, everybody, again. Thank you for the thoughtful questions. I appreciate how much work it is to come up with good questions in a quiet quarter. I promise there'll be lots coming in the coming weeks and months to give you more substrate in the future. But in the meantime, we appreciate it. We appreciate everyone for listening. As always, I'm super appreciative of everybody who works for Roivant and the Vants who are working just super hard on all of these programs to move them forward.
I've been very proud of our execution and pleased with the quality progress we made. And I want to thank the physicians and investigators and patients in our studies who trust us with their care. And I couldn't be more excited for the 12 months ahead. This is the last -- one way or another, this is the last boring quarter we're going to have for a while. So looking forward to the more exciting ones ahead and losing sleep over them until we get there. Thank you, everybody. Have a good day.
That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
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Roivant Sciences — Q1 2027 Earnings Call
Roivant Sciences — Q1 2027 Earnings Call
Roivant berichtet ein ruhiges Q1, aber betont zahlreiche bevorstehende Zulassungen/Readouts und nutzt Moderna‑Settlement für Buybacks und Bilanzstärkung.
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- R&D: ~$200 Mio im Quartal, Schwerpunkt auf registratorischen Programmen und Proof‑of‑Concept‑Studien.
- G&A (GAAP): $166 Mio; Non‑GAAP G&A knapp $100 Mio.
- Cash: ~ $4,0 Mrd vor Eingang der Moderna‑Zahlung; Settlement erhöht Liquidität weiter.
- Buybacks: ≈ $200 Mio im Quartal; Rückkaufprogramm beschleunigt nach Moderna‑Abschluss.
- Moderna: $950 Mio Settlement erhalten; ca. $772 Mio an Genevant, weitere Rechtswege gegen Pfizer/BioNTech laufen.
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- Strategie: Fokus auf „slow and steady“ Launch von brepocitinib in Dermatomyositis (DM) mit Aufbau von Zugang, Patienten‑Services und wissenschaftlicher Kommunikation für Folgeindikationen.
- Pipeline‑Priorität: Mehrere registratorische Programme laufen: NIU (non‑infectious uveitis), Cutaneous Sarcoidosis (Phase III initiiert), Lichen Planopilaris (LPP) und weitere Proof‑of‑Concepts (CLE, PH‑ILD, D2T RA).
- Kapitalallokation: Moderna‑Zahlung stärkt Bilanz und ermöglicht weitere Kapitalrückgabe; internationale Klagen weitergeführt, potenziell zusätzliche Zahlungen möglich.
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Nahfristig: Potenzieller Launch von brepocitinib in Dermatomyositis bei Zulassung (Prioritätsprüfung/PDUFA dieses Quartal); mehrere Top‑Line‑Readouts H2/2026 (NIU, mosli PH‑ILD, D2T RA‑Update, CLE POC).
- Finanzen: Liquidität gestärkt durch Settlement; Share‑Buybacks werden fortgesetzt, weitere Kapitalmaßnahmen möglich.
- Risiken: Placebo‑/geografische Variabilität in Immunologie‑Studien, Übersetzungsrisiko von PAH zu PH‑ILD (pulmonaler Gefäßwiderstand, PVR), und Wahrnehmung der JAK (Januskinase)‑Klasse gegenüber Sicherheitsbedenken.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Launch‑Metriken: Analysten fordern Früh‑KPIs für Dermatomyositis; Management will keine detaillierten Early‑Metriken liefern und setzt auf quartalsweise finanzielle Transparenz.
- PH‑ILD (mosli): Nachfrage zur Übertragbarkeit von PVR‑Effekten aus PAH; Management erwartet klares PVR‑Signal, sieht 6‑Minuten‑Gehstrecke (6‑MWD) aber als weniger aussagekräftig/unterpowert.
- Studien‑Design & Zulassung: D2T RA‑Programm: Ergebnis der Randomized‑Withdrawal‑Periode und ein anstehendes FDA‑Gespräch sind entscheidend; Placebo‑Antworten und geografische Unterschiede bleiben Hauptunsicherheiten.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Bottom Line: Solide Bilanz und ein dichter Katalysator‑Fahrplan: brepocitinib‑Launch, mehrere H2‑Readouts und Moderna‑Zahlung stützen Wertschöpfung und Buybacks. Kurzfristig sind klinische Resultate und die kommerzielle Umsetzung entscheidend; die Aktie bleibt datengetrieben und volatil.
Roivant Sciences — Goldman Sachs 47th Annual Global Healthcare Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Great. Thank you guys for joining us, and good morning. I guess we're still morning at the Goldman Sachs Global Healthcare Conference. I was thrilled to be joined on stage today with the Chief Executive Officer for Roivant, Matthew Gline.
And so maybe first, Matt, I just wanted to ask you maybe a little bit of a higher level question, which is, the company was originally developed on the basis of this Vant model. You had distributed and uncorrelated development programs across subsidiaries. But how are you thinking now about kind of the core competencies of the Roivant business model across programs? And how has that model evolved over time?
Yes, thanks, and thanks for having us at the conference. It's great to be here. I can see that you think we're a worse and worse client by the fact that our room keeps getting smaller and smaller. It's all good. No, it's -- look, it's been a fun year.
I think there are things we've always been good at. And then there are things I think we've like more recently gotten better at, which I think is sort of worth the model. The truth of the Vant model, which for those of you who don't know, so we are a $20-ish billion biotech company principally focused on developing and soon to be commercializing a portfolio of late-stage drugs. We're really excited about. In that sense, we look like basically every other company. But if you sort of look beneath the surface, we're organized in this weird portfolio model as opposed to a single sort of R&D structure is what you're referring to the Vant model, where each sort of program lives within its own company which I think makes us a real devil to model.
The truth of the model -- the truth of why we're set up that way is because every time we deviate from that model, we get worse from an execution perspective. And so it's just having tested everything else that is how we run our programs best. And I don't think we have any sort of near-term plans to change that. It's just been what's working for us. In terms of what I think we're good at, I think we've always been good at asset selection, going out to the world and finding programs we're excited to work on.
I think we've generally been pretty good at like indication selection. I think we've gotten better and better at that over time as we've learned more and more actually how we want to do it. And then I think recently, we've built some real capabilities in actual -- just like clinical development and execution that have gotten. Again, it's something we've gotten much better at over the last 5 or 6 years that served us well. And those things, I think, together form the core of what Roivant is, is being able to like choose programs, choose smart places hope, smart places to develop those programs, and then hopefully run those programs while we're developing them. And I hope is over the next 12 to 18 months, we'll show that we can also now launch a product in one of those indications as well.
That is an excellent segue into my first question, which was on the commercialization front. Brepocitinib is your most advanced asset on that front, and you've got a PDUFA set now for September 2026. Maybe you could just refresh us on the highlights of the data in that indication and how you think that could translate into a label?
Sure. So brepocitinib -- again, I think everyone is familiar with this, but it's a dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2. It's a drug we've had since about 2021, where we in-licensed it at a time where JAK inhibitors were at sort of meter of their own development. And our view was we know exactly what's going to happen in the class. It turns out the class has done just fine. But what we do know is there's an opportunity to develop these drugs in orphan inflammatory disease that nobody else is taking. And so that's how we built our franchise.
The first indication that we chose, the one that we're now sharing our initial PDUFA date for is dermatomyositis, which is an orphan inflammatory disease. It affects probably 70-ish thousand people in the U.S., of whom 40,000 show open claims database right now is actively treated terrible disease. There's really very little for these patients. Most of them are sort of living on high-dose steroids and immunosuppressants -- some of them go on IVIG, where the treatment paradigm is 5 days a month in an infusion center, 8 hours a day or on a variety of off-label things, most of which has failed studies in dermatomyositis. So that's kind of what the setup is.
Now our data Look, our data is great. In a field where very few people have succeeded. Great is a complicated bar, but we've shown really nice separation on the endpoint in dermatomyositis which is thing called total improvement score. It's one of these composite scores in immunology not only that, we got responses quickly, and we were able to maintain those responses against the backdrop of a pretty significant steroid taper. So these patients were both getting a lot better and also reducing their background steroid dose, which is important because these patients come in often on quite high doses of oral prednisone .
And as you think about what will kind of show up on the label or what you'd like to see show up on the label, what are you framing as kind of like a base or best case scenario on that front?
Yes. The truth is we haven't had labeling discussions with FDA yet. So I don't really know what's going to be on the label. I don't know that I'm that worried about how the label reads. We're really the first targeted therapy that hopefully will be approved in dermatomyositis. I think there's a lot of flexibility. I think the FDA is excited about the drug in the sense they're having good constructive conversations with us, but we'll see what they think in terms of labeling when we get there, that's really a discussion to have with them.
I think mostly what we need is -- look, I think ideally, we get a broad dermatomyositis label, lets us approach all of the patients. Even if there were some restrictions on that, I think it would be fine. It would be nice to get some of the data on label around steroid use in the trial. Certainly, one of the secondaries involved benefit well on low steroid doses, but also some of the clinical conduct stuff around steroids. It would be nice to have in there. I think docs are mostly at this point getting familiar with the data and the way the trial was run, the way that makes the label a little bit less important. It's pretty academic field of physicians. But regardless, I think that's all coming.
We will have, in all likelihood, JAK class labeling, there will be a black box on a label for the things that exist on JAK class black boxes mortality, et cetera, but nothing that we're particularly concerned about being unusual or mattering much in this patient population.
Okay. You just mentioned that it's a pretty academic kind of group of physician's. I guess, how is that -- how are you thinking about the size of the commercial sales force you need to build? And where are you in terms of hiring that out?
Yes. So we're making great progress. So there's -- about half of the U.S. patient population or a little more than half is treated at 200 referral centers, most of which are academic. It's things like Johns Hopkins and Mayo Rochester and stuff like that at Cleveland Clinic. And they -- about half the population is treated at those 200 centers. We will cover all of those centers and then into the tail of community derms and rooms. We will have a field force numbered in the 10s, exactly where in the 10s, we haven't said, and we've made tremendous progress at hiring those in general, a pretty experienced capable sort of medical personnel with a myositis KOL herself before leaving clinical practice to work with us. It's a field force that knows in many cases, this community. A lot of the people who are taking into the field from a medical perspective, worked on the clinical trial and have now moved over into the medical field force for this sort of launch. And so they already had the relationships from clinical trial sites coming in. I think it's been a great process for us.
And how are you thinking about pricing strategy, particularly given you have a sort of other indications coming behind DM?
Yes. Look, I think all of the indications that we were studying with brepo have in common that they are between, call it, 20,000 and 150,000 patient orphan inflammatory diseases without a lot of other options, they should all sustain or support pretty similar pricing bands. So I'm not -- I think whatever we do here is going to work within the envelope of the flexibility we have going forward, it's going to work just fine.
All we said publicly about price is that IVIG on the low end is a $200,000 a year-ish therapy. And if efgartigimod is successful in myositis, it will be a call it $500,000 or $600,000 net price therapy maybe. And so those are reasonable bookends. I think anywhere within that range is still on the table. To be honest, given the size of the patient population, if everyone just models the bottom, then everyone can be pleasantly surprised.
Under promised, over delivered. So in terms of the you have just mentioned -- sorry, I lost my train of thought. But in terms of the patient population, how are you thinking about like what the right peak penetration is? And how do you think about like the path to peak, given this is a rare disease? And what would you point to as analog in that market?
Yes. I don't -- the truth is with 40,000 patients at the price points I just articulated, you don't need very deep penetration to be a great foundational indication. Remember brepo is in development in three other indications, a lot of other places to go. We will certainly add indications beyond these four. So I don't think we need very high penetration [Audio Gap] incredibly enthusiastic [Audio Gap] 30%, to much higher than 30% of their patients. any of those numbers would be just fine from a penetration perspective.
I think I don't have analogs on launch trajectory. I think every rare disease is its own thing, and I think slow and steady is the right way to think about the launch in any new indication until you have a better sense of how the payer and physician dynamics are going to play out.
I'll say in terms of like market size, first of all, DM does feel like a market where the total patient number could grow once there's novel therapies in the market, it's somewhat -- despite the already relatively high number of diagnosed patients, it's somewhat difficult to diagnose and you get patients with lupus diagnosis or you get patients with other myositis. So I think there is an opportunity for the patient population to grow. And without intending to give any guidance on trajectory, I'll just say in terms of like analogs to the patient population. There are not a whole lot of things you would have said about the myasthenia gravis market in 2019 that you wouldn't say about DM today, right?
Before the introduction of efgartigimod, there were about 40,000 MG patients in claims data sets. About 20% of them were on sort of novel therapies, much of which was IVIG like a relatively similar composition. And obviously, that market over time has shown itself enthusiastic for a new option. I hope and expect we'll see something similar in DM.
Great. You mentioned there's three other indications in development. Maybe could you speak to what each of those are and how they match the indication selection strategy you've already outlined?
The other three indications are cutaneous sarcoidosis -- let me go in order. The first next indication is noninfectious uveitis, which is a noninfectious inflammation of the eye. We're focused on back of the eye inflammation that will read out a registrational data set in the second half of this year, which would then be a second approved indication if all that is successful. That is 70,000 to 180,000 patients, depending on how you count it. It's a very messy claims landscape or a very messy diagnostic landscape. So a little bit hard to know the precise number. But a severe disease third leading cause of blindness in the United States, low tolerance for optical inflammation. So if our drug works, and we have a really good Phase II study there. I think that will be an exciting market and pretty similar in size or maybe even a little bit bigger than DM.
The next indication is cutaneous sarcoidosis, where we are beginning a pivotal study this year. We had a Phase II data set readout earlier this year. That's a slightly smaller indication, maybe 20,000 to 40,000 patients, but still quite severe, no approved options, really sick patients with a really bad set of inflammatory and potentially permanently disfiguring skin symptoms. So that pivotal program will be ongoing shortly.
And then the most recently announced indication is Lichen Planopilaris, which is sort of form of lichen planus that involves scale scarring of the scalp and can involve permanent hair loss, very painful, high concurrent use of opioid pain medications. It's like really tough disease for the people that have it and basically nothing approved so far. We're, I think, the leading and potentially only mechanism or only program in late-stage development at this point. So an exciting addition and that's in sort of a continuous Phase II/III study that will start -- has started is enrolling nicely already.
Could you speak to the conviction you have in the Phase III NIU study that's coming based on the data you've presented to date and if there's any sort of like commercially relevant, secondary endpoints or bar that you think matter here?
I feel pretty good about the Phase III study. I lose sleep over it because it's biotech and you have to lose sleep over everything all the time. It's just the rule. But we had quite good Phase II data, which left quite a lot of margin. So the challenge of the Phase II data is a relatively small end study and didn't have a placebo. And placebo in all these conditions are variable and have been trending up over time.
HUMIRA in their Phase III study in NIU, the primary endpoint is something called time-to-treatment failure, which is what it sounds like it's how long these patients take to fail treatment. Placebo patients failed in 3 months and change in the HUMIRA study and the drug delivered just under 6 months of sort of total benefit, so 2 or 3 extra months over placebo. In our Phase II study, it was greater than 12 months. That was as far out as the study went -- and so I think a lot of cushion.
Frankly, I don't even think we have to be better than HUMIRA to be commercially successful, HUMIRA fails in a lot of patients. And the HUMIRA there's about 40,000 TNF patients with NIU now. So even in the half of those patients who eventually fail, that's a pretty big market, but I expect it would grow over time. But I think based on the Phase II data, there's certainly a possibility for better than HUMIRA across time treatment failure across treatment failure rate itself. Docs look a lot at indocyanine fluoroscopy and some of these other measures. So I think those things will matter commercially as well.
So recognizing this is somewhat early and you haven't provided guidance, how do you think about like the total sales opportunity for this product across the indications that you guys have outlined?
Across all of the indications. Look, I think it goes beyond those indications, too. Again, I think if it is inflammatory and has between [ 20,000 and 150,000 ] patients, it ought to be an eligible indication for us. I think over time, we could be in quite a large number of diseases. We have IP as it stands out to 2039.
If each indication we're in is a low blockbuster indication, you can just start adding things up and finding a $5 billion to $10 billion drug pretty easily. And so I think as we continue to add indications and continue to find success indication by indication, the opportunity here is very large.
All right. Let's switch gears to Immunovant program, IMVT-1402. And again, let's start at a high level. As you think about the FcRn cost and your development strategy there, like where do you see unmet need? And how did you map the development strategy to that?
Yes. It's interesting. So we had a couple of ideas in mind with our FcRn franchise. One was just that we thought we could build a best-in-class agent, right? We have a better administration than the other drugs. We have a simple subcu injection, low-volume, sort of normal similar to DUPIXENT and other very successful subcu medications. And One of the key things in FcRn is the way these drugs work is by suppressing levels of IgG and there for autoantibodies, our view has been consistently and our clinical data has shown consistently the deeper you suppress IgG, the better you treat these patients.
So the world sort of split into a few different categories. There are indications where others in the FcRn space, especially Argenx sort of the leader in the space, have carved a path forward, myasthenia gravis CIDP. I think in those indications, our goal is optimistically to deliver better clinical data and to take share that way to win share in route of administration. Those are really big markets, and the studies should work. And so it's like an opportunity to have sort of a base level of just even relatively modest penetration of those indications would matter.
Then there are two other categories of indications, The indications I am most excited about are places where we have carved out a path either where we were first or where we are now first by end of the way that we've developed the drug. This includes things like Graves' disease, which is probably what I would call our lead indication, which is a truly massive opportunity, hundreds of thousands of poorly controlled patients where I would say there had been -- despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of patients who have failed every therapeutic option available to them. No modern clinical development had been done in Graves' disease prior to the introduction of our studies. And it feels like we have just a great opportunity to provide a new option to a ton of patients.
We're now mutations of finest form of flattery. We're now the leader of a large number of companies doing different things in Graves' disease. And I think that will also help the market and help us in the long term. But now we've also added to that this sort of late-line multi-mechanism failure, D2T RA, rheumatoid arthritis, where these patients have failed multiple lines of therapy. We are not the first FcRn to be studied there, but I think we have found in our view, the right patient population is borne out with our clinical data for a real opportunity in FcRn. I think in both of those, we are now kind of the pole position FcRn.
And then there's a third category of indications like Sjogren's disease, where we're not first, but we're much closer to first than an MG and where we think between the time line gap being shorter and the quality of our agent, we have a chance of being sort of a class leader or at least close to the front of the pack.
Great. You just mentioned the RA data from period 1, which came in earlier than we expected, and it was definitely pretty impressive. Maybe you could walk through the highlights of that data with an emphasis on contextualizing those results in the context of this patient population.
Yes. So this is a study that we ran. It is bluntly a weird study in the design of it. We had watched J&J begin development of nipocalimab in RA. And the thesis behind an FcRn and RA is RA is principally inflammatory disease, and most of the approved drugs are anti-inflammatory drugs, but at least in some subset of RA patients, there is an autoantibody component that is it seems like some of these patients have elevated levels of certain autoantibodies that are causal.
That was the idea behind development of FcRns in general. And J&J showed something. They showed that if you suppress IgG, you can deliver at least modest benefit. And what they also showed is that benefit was significantly higher in patients who were positive on autoantibody titers than patients who weren't. And because it is orthogonal to the anti-inflammatory mechanisms, early evidence from the J&J data suggested that the benefit might be preserved even in patients that have failed anti-inflammatories.
So we designed a study on that basis that looked at truly refractory patients who have failed at least 2 of the 3 late-line classes, JAKs, TNFs and IL-6 is about 60% of the patients we ran up setting had failed both TNF and JAKs, which is that's like basically the sickest of the patients or at least the most refractory of the patients. And what we showed in those patients and contextually, this is in the open-label lead-in portion to a randomized withdrawal study, we showed ACR20 response rates very high in the 70s. We showed ACR50 response rates above 50%, and we showed ACR70 response rates in the mid-30s, which even in an open-label study, you just don't see a lot of placebo response in ACR70. And so it's clear that there is real activity there. We selected for a high baseline antibody -- autoantibody titer of ACPA, the specific autoantibody that we think is most likely to be causal in the disease.
I think in practice, in a multi-mechanism failure population, the data could be much worse than this and still see use because these patients don't have a lot of options. And this data is just pretty exciting data.
Okay. Broad brush strokes, knowing that you're still working on it. But what does the things I kind of have to look like here with respect to trial size? And how quickly can you start moving towards that?
That is mostly a question for FDA to answer. And I think there's a pretty wide range of possible answers. We would like to see, given that we are happy to accept restrictions in terms of being late line, et cetera. Smaller study, the typical RA study is 1,500 patients or 2,000 patients and FDA has historically been concerned that everyone in RA is trying to move into earlier treatment and so they want to make sure for the size of the RA population early line therapy that the drugs are sort of safe and efficacious.
Our view is, if you're looking at that later line market, you should be comfortable from a scientific perspective with smaller studies, hopefully hundreds of patients. And that's certainly the conversation we intend to have with FDA.
I think the most likely thing is that we would run a placebo-controlled study of a normal sort of head-to-head versus placebo design, but there's a lot of possibilities, including attempting to replicate the existing Phase IIb randomized withdrawal trial. That's just all a conversation for us to have with FDA. It's a conversation that we will have with FDA in the second half of this year and come back hopefully with everything kind of packaged in the bow in terms of what our plan is.
One thing I'll say is I think we will be among the first companies to have a discussion with FDA about late-line RA studies, but it's coming, right? There's CAR-T studies, there's NK-targeted studies. There's T cell engagers there's people doing work. And by dint FcRn being quite a safe mechanism, I think like we're in an interesting position where all of those other mechanisms that I mentioned are not going to run 1,500 patient studies. You couldn't possibly. And so I think we get to approach FDA as kind of the first in this category, with a willingness to do more than I suspect others in the sort of general indication space are going to be able to do, and we can use that flexibility to hopefully have a constructive discussion.
You mentioned it already but Graves' disease is definitely the lead indication for the development program for 1402. Maybe you can refresh us on the clinical data to date and how it answers for the unmet need you see in that patient population?
Yes. So there are -- so Graves' disease is a disease where you have [Audio Gap] a way that causes the thyroid to become overactive. There are [Audio Gap] most of them are effectively treatable with the course of an antithyroid drug of some kind. And in fact, many of them eventually, if they're treated on relatively low doses of methimazole can get under control and then get off antithyroid drugs. For about 350,000 of these patients, 330,000 of these patients, their journey just can't end there. That is either they can never get off methimazole or methimazole is insufficient to control their Graves' disease and they continue to relapse and have issues. And those patients they're sort of stuck at that point.
About 20,000 of them a year wind up having their thyroid removed, either surgically via radiation or radioactive ablation. And other than that, they just live sick. They live either on high-dose methimazole that's miserable or they live with symptoms of Graves' disease or both.
Our clinical data suggests that for that patient population, we can get a very high proportion of them controlled. In our Phase II study at our high dose, over 70% ultimately got controlled and somewhere between 30% and 50% depending on how you count it got off ATDs and controlled. And in fact, of the people who were controlled and off ATDs, not that, but we were able to drive remitted benefit where even after some period of time, they could get them off our drug and remain off ATDs and control. Remember, these are patients who weren't controllable on ATDs before. So this is a pretty remarkable outcome for the data. Again, paves the way for a real clinical benefit, let's call it, 350,000 patients who otherwise didn't have a path.
Great. And you have Phase III data next year. I guess, what do you need to see there for clinical and also commercial success? And could you talk about the design of the two Phase IIIs you have relative to that?
So we're running two studies. One is a relatively straightforward 6-month study. The other is a 12-month study, where the primary endpoint is at approximately 6 months, 26 weeks. And the study is designed to allow us to show a remitted benefit in the second period. So responders in the first period are then taken off drug on a randomized basis and looked at for remission. So that study will read out effectively after 52 weeks. The other study will read out after 26 weeks.
In terms of what we need clinically, again, first modern therapy ever in Graves' disease, a p-value we will do it. We think that will lead to an approvable drug, knock wood. That's really all we need, I think, also for commercial success, to be honest. Again, the size of that commercial success and how the competitive field plays out will depend on what we show. If we show anything that looks even remotely like our Phase II data, it will be transformative for tens of thousands or more of these patients. I think it's a huge commercial opportunity. But even with more modest data than that, I think we can have a big effect on the second of these patients.
You mentioned the size of the number of patients you have need here. I guess, how are you thinking strategically about pricing for this lead indication relative to a broader development path across indications?
We haven't given an answer to that question. But I think in general, our mind is on pricing comparably to in the same range as other FcRns and this is a refractory population that has no other therapeutic options. And so there are definitely large subsets of that population for which I think that price point could be sustained.
How do you think about the role of remission in the patient population? And what is your expectation in terms of how long patients -- like that the impact on duration of therapy?
Yes. Look, I think on the second question, based on what we know, there will be some patients who -- probably some patients who can't even get controlled on our drug. So they're better controlled on our drug, but not fully control in our drug. I suspect there are some patients who can get fully controlled in our drug potentially in perpetuity, but will need to be on our drug in perpetuity. And some of those patients will continue to require methimazole and our drug to be controlled and some will not require methimazole at all, but will require our drug to be controlled.
And then I think there are patients who will go into remission. I think that whole spectrum will exist. And so from a duration of therapy perspective, obviously, the patients who can get into remission will be shorter duration therapy, but there will be some patients for whom this is unfortunately just going to be a chronic condition, whatever.
Overly simplistically, I think 1402 suppresses IgG by about 80%. If you think the equivalent is roughly -- impact is roughly equivalent on TRAb, so if you're coming in at 5x the upper limit of normal antithyroid antibodies, then we will get you to within the normal range. If you're coming in at 20x the upper limit, we won't get you to it within the normal range. And I think that's sort of a rough heuristic for like how you might think this will evolve over time.
Okay. And how are you thinking about the emerging competitive clinical landscape? Obviously, there's other FcRns coming. There's also degraders that have entered the Graves' disease market? And how do you think about those agents?
Yes. As I said earlier, imitation is the finest form of flattery. I think this is a very much -- you don't have to outrun the bay indication. And what I mean by that is first of all, we're first, but even more importantly than that, it will be years before novel agents have saturated in Graves' disease. There are hundreds of thousands of patients treated in a variety of settings. I think the main question for everybody approaching Graves' disease is just like how do we build awareness of novel therapies? How do we get out there? How do we get patients out of the uneasy existing paradigm and into a space where there are actual treatment options.
Practically speaking -- so that's the first answer. I think a rising tide lift all boats. I think this field is about to be transformed, and I don't think it's about sort of jockeying for position versus other competitors and won't be for many, many, many years.
Of the stuff in development, I think general IgG approaches, other FcRn, the broad IgG degraders, et cetera, are going to look pretty similar conceptually to one another. And what we can do, they can do and probably vice versa. The degraders, I'd say like the one asterisk there is obviously like they haven't been tested in large-scale clinical trials at this point. So we'll learn more about how that actually plays out in Graves' disease and generally after we see that data, and there could be some issues. But mostly, if I had to guess, they'll all be sort of fine and pretty similar.
Then there are two other approaches that people are taking. One is not autoantibody driven at all. There's just people working on therapies that either directly affect the TSH receptor in one or another. There's either small molecules or antibodies. Those approaches may very well treat patients even sicker than the ones we can treat, but they will send patients from hyperthyroid to hypothyroid and so they'll either need to be carefully titrated or you'll need to concurrently dose synthetic thyroid hormone. So my guess is they will be reserved in many cases for the sicker patients who can't be treated with a more elegant autoantibody-driven mechanism.
And then there are a couple of companies now that are working on autoantibody specific degradation, meaning like TRAb degraders or whatever, I think that's a really interesting idea. It is the kind of mechanism that in the fullness of time could deliver even better data than we could, but it's just early to know how possible that's going to be. And how varied the antibodies are in Graves' disease is not something we have a very clear answer to scientifically yet.
I want to switch gears again to mosliciguat. And maybe you could just remind us the Phase II results that we should expect in the second half of this year and where you get conviction in, potentially a positive outcome?
Sure. So mosliciguat is our third late-stage drug. This is an inhaled sGC activator, which we're developing in pulmonary hypertension for lung disease patients. This is a mechanism that is a cousin to sGC stimulation, which was the basis of the drug called the mechanism of the drug called Adempas, that was a collaboration between Merck and Bayer that was quite commercially successful in Group 1 pulmonary hypertension.
We are developing drug in PH-ILD as an inhaled formulation. Our Phase IIb data comes later this year. PH-ILD is an indication that has risen in prominence and relevance with the commercial success of Tyvaso and with Liquidia now coming into that market as well and Insmed eventually, all with different formulations of treprostinil.
It's worth noting that Adempas, the drug I mentioned before, which was a systemic sGC stimulator failed in PH-ILD and had some pretty significant safety issues. Our expectations -- first of all, what do we know? We know that mostly in Group 1 pulmonary arterial hypertension patients, healthy volunteers is a very good local vasodilator that improves cardiac output and lung function, saw very deep reductions in PVR. We know that other systemic vasodilators in PH-ILD, the treprostinil, for example, don't work. We know that other locally administered inhaled vasodilator, treprostinil for example, do work. The end of those mechanisms is small, but that is where we get our conviction. Our drug is good as an inhaled as a dilator in Group 1 patients. The other drugs that have been good as inhaled vasodilator, Group 1 patients have worked in Group 3, and that other drugs have mechanisms that have failed systemically in Group 3 when administered from a local perspective, administered on an inhaled basis have worked.
That's basically what gives us comfort, there's a lot of uncertainty there, and we won't know if it works until it works. I'll say we have the benefit and the challenge that if the drug works in hindsight, everyone will say, obviously, it worked, it was just as you described, inhaled vasodilators work in Group 3 and local and systemic vasodilators don't. [Audio Gap] everyone will say, obviously, it failed. Adempas failed, why did you think an sGC [Audio Gap]. Either way, we will look like with obvious in hindsight. But in fact on an end basis, who knows.
There's the reason we play the game, right?
That's right.
Yes. So in terms of investing further behind this program, what do you need to see from the Phase IIb coming to kind of move into pivotal?
The reason, I guess, you're implying is fear or gambling addiction or something, I'm with the hope of helping patients. Sorry, what do we need to see here? Look, I think if you can improve cardiac output in these patients in a properly sized Phase III study, it will benefit them clinically on measures like 6-minute walk. This study is not powered for 6-minute walk. I don't expect to see a p-value on 6-minute walk. I don't even know what kind of delta we're going to be able to put up in 6 minute walk. It would be nice to see some kind of trend. But the truth is if we see significant benefits in PVR and cardiac output, the rest will follow. And so as long as we see that and a safe agent in Phase IIb, we will run a Phase III study. It would be nice to see something a 6-minute walk. We're not looking for p-value. I'm not expecting a p-value to say that 1 million times in public settings so that the [ goofy Bloomberg chats ] about this will at least have me to contend with. So mostly, I think we're looking for good safety, the kind of thing that would support a registrational program and a strong benefit on PVR.
Okay. Great. And how are you thinking about positioning of this agent relative to the other things that are in development? You kind of mentioned a bunch of them in PH-ILD?
PH-ILD -- pulmonary PH, Group 1 pulmonary hypertension is a polypharmacy market. Basically, every patient in the fullness of time ends up going on every mechanism or at least many, many patients do. Right now, only treprostinil approved in PH-ILD. I think PH-ILD will evolve the same way. These are really sick patients if multiple mechanisms are approved, patient will try all of them. So this isn't really an us versus them. This is -- if we present a good compelling option, people will use it.
I think given the PVR reductions we saw, given we are a once-daily puff of a DPI, which makes us nice from a form factor perspective relative to the treprostinil that are currently on the market or even coming. And given that treprostinil causes cough as it's an irritant. It causes cough as an on-target side effect, and we shouldn't. I think we have a chance of early first-line use in PH-ILD, but that's not really important. What's really important alongside these other agents.
Significant capital on your balance sheet and you have an upcoming launch. Can you walk us through the path to profitability from here?
Well, I think if our launches are successful, they will be high-margin launches and will become profitable. We have not given specific guidance on timing, but I think we've got plenty of cash to get there and shouldn't need any more money to do it. We've been buying back stock pretty consistently, and we'll continue to do so.
Okay. Speaking of that could you speak to the capital allocation priorities you have between returning cash to shareholders, business development and investing in the existing pipeline?
Yes. So last year, ending the middle of last year, we bought back about $1.5 billion of stock at about $10 a share, which has proven a good investment in hindsight. We are now doing further buybacks, we've sort of ramped them up after we settled with Moderna back in March and continue to buy back stock here.
That's sort of on the premise that we've articulated for years that if we can't make it with $4 billion, we probably can't make it with $6 billion. And so we feel like we've got some flexibility. And then the $4 billion, we've said consistently is more than enough to fund both all of our existing programs to profitability as well as new stuff. The new stuff is new indications as you even announced for FcRn and brepo and mostly new stuff is business development, which we're continue to be focused on. And one of these days, we'll get a deal done and even we'll be excited about it. I hope.
In terms of the business development, we have 1 minute left. So what kind of criteria are you guys using as? Have you consider these potential opportunities?
In general, we like what we like, which is late-stage programs with relatively open competitive fields with a clinical development strategy that we think is interesting and differentiated. So that's most of what we're looking for. It's most of what we brought in historically. And we continue to see lots of opportunity approximately meeting that description.
All right. I think that does it for us today. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining us. And thanks to everyone, who joined us here and online.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.
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Roivant Sciences — Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Welcome to the Jefferies Healthcare Conference. My name is Dennis Ding, Biotech Research Analyst here at Jefferies. I have the great pleasure of having Matt Gline here, CEO of Roivant. Welcome.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Before we kind of get into Q&A, and there is certainly lots to talk about, I'd love to hand it over to you to just kind of give an overview. I mean it's been incredibly -- I mean, Roivant is a $20 billion market cap company now.
It's true. It's a while -- look, it's been a really great 12 months for us. Look, I think many of you know a little bit about our story, but we are roughly out there trying to do the same thing everybody else is, which is to develop medicines that matter. And we've been very fortunate to have now 3 drugs in our late-stage pipeline and brepocitinib, IMVT-1402, our FcRn and mosliciguat, all of which appear to be drugs that matter.
We have our first sort of major commercial launch, certainly our first next commercial launch in brepocitinib in dermatomyositis, which should be by the end of September, assuming everything goes along as expected with FDA, a bunch more data coming later this year and all that building on top of positive data in DM, in cutaneous sarcoidosis, in D2T RA at Immunovant, all sort of in the recent history. So just a ton going on, a ton we're excited about and a really great year for us.
Yes. I mean I think going back several years, one of the big narratives around Roivant is that you guys are really good at identifying assets going outside of the cookie cutter, right, and finding unique opportunities that you guys could capitalize on under Roivant. Has that changed at all? Or are you guys more focused right now on developing mosliciguat or 1402 and launching DM? And has that focus shifted?
I'm smiling in part because I thought you were going to end that sentence. But you guys haven't found an asset in a few years. So now you must be known for something else. Well, look, I think the other side of the finding a good asset coin is how do you know it's good? Well, you know it's good when you've successfully developed it in indications, you've generated good clinical data, like that's actually when the -- when you know the answer, right? Every new program is a question being begged. And until you've run the study, you don't know what the outcome is.
And I think one of the things that I'm probably most proud of is I feel like at this point, I believe one of the things that we ought to be known for is creative aggressive clinical development. We found great indications. We've run good studies. We've generated a lot of data that has created a lot of value. And I think that's something we are excited to continue doing with each of our late-stage programs, all of which have opportunities for expansion. That said, look, we were built on DNA of thoughtful asset hunting and creative development. And I think we will continue to be who we've always been. We're excited about deals in the market, excited about things we're looking at. And despite appearances, we've been super active on the BD side and have been at the one yard line multiple times in the last couple of years. And when the right thing crosses the finish line, everyone will know about it.
Is there a sense of urgency in terms of finding the next big asset? Or are you fairly content and excited about what you have right now?
We're definitely excited about what we have now. I would say constitutionally, content isn't our thing. So we're never like fully content. I think one of the things that has served us well is restraint that is I think we've been pretty disciplined allocators of capital. We've been pretty disciplined about chasing the right opportunity. We haven't sort of built a portfolio for the sake of building a portfolio.
And by the way, that's in part because we, at various times in our history, did more of that, and I think we regretted it after. And so I think as a consequence, we've been pretty choosy, and I think we'll continue to be pretty choosy. One of the things that's great about where we're at now is, obviously, thinking about the 10- and 20-year future, we replenish our pipeline, we need to keep bringing things in, we need to keep building on what we've got. But I think for the immediate term, we don't need anything else to build a big company. We have all of the ingredients in-house. We just need to nail the execution. And so that's where a lot of our immediate focus is.
Yes. So maybe let's talk about DM because that's going to be approved soon and knock on wood. And I guess, how are you thinking about that launch? What sort of commercial readiness initiatives that you guys are doing ahead of the PDUFA?
Yes, perfect. So dermatomyositis for those who are not familiar with it, is an orphan inflammatory disease. There's about 40,000 treated patients and claims data sets now. There's probably 70,000 patients on an epidemiological basis. And it's one of these diseases where that population could easily grow as more people get diagnosed as more treatments are available. The data we generated last year was really great. This is the first effectively modern targeted therapy ever to succeed in the Phase III study in dermatomyositis. There's IVIG. But other than that, there's really been nothing out there.
And one of the things that I feel very privileged is the Priovant team has done a phenomenal job working closely with the doc community in DM. And I think the community of physicians and patients is excited about the fact that there's a new opportunity coming. So I think, look, one of the main things -- well, so anyway, so I think we've got all the right ingredients in front of us on the table. I think one of the great things about dermatomyositis is it rhymes in severity and scale in existing treatment landscape with a bunch of the other indications like myasthenia gravis, like TED, where commercial launches from biotech companies have been successful. And so I think the first thing we're doing is just making sure that we've learned all of those lessons as well as we possibly can.
We studied those launches, Ben and the Priovant team have studied those launches. And certain patterns emerge on pricing, on rebating strategy, but also just on like how you structure the organization that you have medicalized field forces that talk to these docs where they are, that build good relationships with them on a scientific basis, that you focus on the broad community of docs, including community docs, but especially on the referral centers where a lot of these patients are treated and that you build these patient support organizations that are designed to help manage the coverage and payer process.
And I think we've been both like trying to learn as much as we can from other institutions that have done this successfully and in many cases, hiring people from those institutions who have been successful because I think at this point, I hope someday we are thought of as commercial innovators. But before we get that opportunity, I'd like to be thought of as people who successfully replicated the commercial model that's working for other companies now, and that's a lot of what we're after.
What are some of the learnings on price? Because historically, you've given a fairly broad range in terms of what to sort of expect for this sort of prevalent population in DM?
One of my learnings on every sort of number is not to provide guidance because it doesn't benefit anybody else who's ever done it. So I don't have a new narrow or benchmark to give on price. Look, I think the truth is what we've said about price before without giving any guidance around price is that IVIG is about $200,000 in dermatomyositis and if efgartigimod is successful in myositis, it will be a $500,000, $600,000 plus drug. And that sets some bookends, and there's a lot of good territory between those bookends in which we can develop a commercial strategy.
I think access is important. I think talking about learning from other launches, I think the work that Argenx has done in moving into earlier and earlier line therapy in myasthenia gravis has been powerful. And I think it's not an accident that Tim made a good decision that they made a good decision to price lower in that indication. So I think -- but then also, they've been very successful in indications like CIDP at higher price points. So I think there are good arguments for living anywhere in that band, and I think we will make a choice on that basis. What I've been saying lately, which I think works well for us is everyone should assume we're going to be at the low end of that range, and we're pleasantly surprised if we price higher because there's just plenty of patients here such that it's really just about the commercial model working the way we want it to.
How do you think about the phases of uptake in year 1, year 3, year 10 in terms of, I guess, the low-hanging fruit perhaps would be off-label JAKs and you switch those patients over. Do you agree with that? Or just any kind of color there?
I'll say, first of all, I think the truth is in any indication where nothing novel has launched for a good time -- for a good long time, there's like very wide error bars around the early launch. We've been saying slow and steady. I believe slow and steady is the right way to think about this. It's just like it's just really hard to know who the early patients will be, how the payer process will work, and it could take a long time to dial all that in. And so in some weird perverse way, it's easier to have confidence around the peak number and the size of that opportunity than it is to have confidence around year 1 or year 2 or year 3 or whatever.
And I think there's pretty wide error bars around the early launch. And I don't think it -- in the long term, I think it may not matter that much in the sense that if we launch slow and enroll to a big opportunity, I think that could be the best outcome. I don't know that I agree that like off-label JAK use is the lowest hanging fruit. I think the truth is the DM population is littered with poorly controlled patients. And some of them are poorly controlled patients because they're on off-label therapies like an existing JAK inhibitor or rituximab or something like that, that doesn't -- or Remicade, that doesn't work very well. Some of them are poorly controlled in the sense that they're on IVIG and maybe their disease is okay, but they're spending 5 days a month, 8 hours a day in an infusion clinic and want to try something different.
And then that -- together, all of the sort of "Advanced therapies," IVIG and off-label stuff accounts for about 25% of the treated patients. And 75% of these patients are just on high-dose steroids and immunosuppressants. And in many cases, like very high-dose steroids, like more than 6 months a year at over 10 or even over 20 milligrams of prednisone. I don't know if you've been on oral prednisone before. Being on 20 milligrams of oral prednisone is miserable for a weekend. Imagine doing it for 6 months. It's terrible. And so those patients are like -- and it's probably not doing a particularly good job of controlling DM in the long run. So these patients are like sick, miserable, unhappy and are ideal candidates even though they're not in any of the treated population. So I think it's going to come down to each physician is going to approach the early patients differently, and we're going to meet everybody where they are and just like find the right patients to get started with and build from there.
Yes. I think you guys are somewhat steroid sparing as well, right?
That's right. Look, we -- in what I best describe as an accident of history, we ran very intentionally in our Phase III study, a steroid taper, which was designed as with most steroid tapers to ensure or protect separation from placebo in the study by making sure that the placebo patients were not sort of just increasing steroid dose over time because they were getting worse as the disease progressed.
And what happened in practice is these patients were sick enough, it was like relatively difficult to guarantee a full taper. And we wound up with a pretty significant difference between the steroid dose on drug versus steroid dose off drug, which wasn't the goal. But it turns out I wouldn't change a thing in hindsight because I think one of the things that docs are most excited about is that we've demonstrated that we can get patients with a clinical benefit also on significantly reduced steroid burden, and that's something that these patients think a lot about.
Okay. One of your competitors, Argenx is going to have Phase III data in the third quarter also in DM. So I'm curious how you're thinking about the market, assuming their data is positive. Now we obviously have to see if -- what the magnitude of this is in the clinical trial. But do you have any thoughts on that?
Yes. Look, I -- the first thing I'll say is efgart is a great drug. Argenx is a great company. They've done a phenomenal job. I think, in general, the lesson from Argenx' experience in diseases like MG is that these are markets where more new drugs actually benefit everybody. I think efgart has done better in MG because of the complement inhibitors. I think we will do better in DM if efgart is approved because there will be more awareness of novel therapies, more docs trying to figure out which drug to use for their patients.
And frankly, we get to play in DM, the role that Argenx got to play in MG that is we are coming in as the [indiscernible] drug, the docs are excited about as other things enter the market, they will find new patients, they will get new docs excited, and I think that will continue to accrue to our benefit. So I genuinely believe Argenx' success will be our success. That's thing one. Thing two is, look, I think biologically, there's reason to believe that IMNM is probably a better myositis for an FcRn and DM is a better myositis for an anti-inflammatory like brepocitinib. And so I think like my hope and to some degree, expectation is that we have a better agent for this patient population. I think indeed, Argenx' body language around their trial suggests that their heads in a similar place.
And so I think that's all potentially helpful. And I think if you look at the Argenx data, as of -- I think they cover some more today that I can talk more about a second, but even as of the earlier data, we had a significantly faster path to a moderate TIS response, and we saw at least a comparable TIS benefit while they didn't have a steroid taper in their induction study. And so I think all of those suggest to me that we have a good setup here from a data perspective. That's -- and I think this is both a liability and a blessing.
Argenx' study is very different than ours. It's not a DM study. It's a study across 3 different myositis subtypes, IM, DM -- sorry, IMNM, DM and polymyositis. And in each myositis subtype, it's about 25 patients on drug and 25 placebo patients. So first of all, DM treating physicians are obviously aware of that and are, I think, deeply appreciative that we ran a proper sized study with lots of patients, specifically in DM. And second of all, look, it does mean they could just get lucky, right? Like if 25 patients, TIS is a noisy endpoint, we're going to have to contend with whatever that study shows. Again, I'm not that worried about it long run, but I think that's sort of the rub.
Sure. Okay. Even outside of DM, you guys have NIU data coming up. I guess like a big part of the brepocitinib thesis is way bigger than just DM, right?
I totally agree.
I call it RINVOQ for rare disease...
Yes, I think...
Multiple indications.
I appreciate that nomenclature. Anything to draft off RINVOQ.
So for NIU, I guess, characterize how that -- the size of that opportunity relative to DM.
Yes, perfect. And by the way, I think in some ways, NIU is among the more underappreciated of our commercial opportunities in that it is devilishly hard to isolate in claims data sets. So it's like hard to isolate -- even for us, and we're out there in the field with these docs all the time in the trial, like hard to isolate the size of the patient population. But I think it could be, frankly -- so first of all, NIU overall non-infectious uveitis and eye inflammatory disease. These are patients who have eye inflammation and it's the third leading cause of blindness in the U.S.
So high morbidity, docs want to treat it aggressively because it can lead to blindness. Of the 400,000 NIU patients in the U.S., the vast -- significant majority of them have mostly front of eye inflammation and get treated with steroid eye drops, and those are not our patients. We are treating patients with back of the eye or whole eye inflammation. And I think like there are somewhere between 70,000 and call it, 150,000, 160,000 those patients, which is wide error bars because there's a lot of diagnostic slop. But I think it just gets to the -- the answer is probably there are more such patients than dermatomyositis patients. HUMIRA is approved in NIU. It doesn't work spectacularly well and certainly left some room in our Phase II data for what it's worth was obviously meaningfully different than what HUMIRA had seen in NIU. But if we're successful, I think there's a huge opportunity in NIU to be a big market.
Yes. How would you approach pricing, I guess, for DM? And like how much do you consider some of these pipeline opportunities?
Yes. I think we are absolutely thinking about a collection of indications that can support the same commercial model, the same price point, the same orphan setup, the same patient support structure. And I think we certainly have some levers to pull. We could decide to do different prices for different doses. DM is a 30-milligram dose, NIU is probably 45. But overall, I think the answer is like these are comparably morbid, comparably sized populations. Like I think these are both really bad disease -- they're all really bad diseases.
And I think they will all support the kind of price point to commercial model that we have in mind. And the one thing I'll say is like, look, I think it's very tempting you're at this stage in the game to think of brepo as a dermatomyositis drug. To your point, that's not how I think of it at all. Like I think dermatomyositis is a base layer on which to build a really big setup across a whole bunch of different indications. And while DM is certainly large and you can underwrite, in my view, like a very big peak sales market opportunity for it. By the time it's close to peak, there will be -- we've got 3 other indications in active late-stage development and more to come. So we have a lot more work to do to build this into what it could be.
For NIU, remind me what do you view as like a clinically meaningful improvement on treatment failure?
Well, HUMIRA, as I recall, in visual had like 3.5 or 4 months placebo time to treatment failure, around 6 months of drug time to treatment failure. And in our Phase II, we were greater than 12, meaning the median patient had not failed by the end of 52 weeks when we finished the study or 48 weeks or whatever it was. So look, I think the answer is HUMIRA is viewed as not a perfect agent in NIU, but clinically meaningful. And so I think like certainly anything in the same ballpark as HUMIRA is going to matter to patients. And the more better than that, that we can do, the more people will be excited about the data. But there's room for a lot of degradation from the Phase II.
Your Phase III, does it enroll pre or post HUMIRA or it does not specify?
It doesn't specify. We have both.
Okay. Okay. Well, that's a readout, the Phase III readout in the second half.
Yes. Absolutely.
Very interesting. It could be, in our views, $2 billion to $3 billion peak sales depending on price. I mean, let's see on price. But another catalyst that's super interesting to us is PH-ILD, right? This was a small asset that you got from Bayer several years ago, very under the radar, but here we are Phase II data coming up in the second half. So maybe talk about the opportunity in PH-ILD and what gave you the conviction to go away from PAH, which is where the Phase Ib data or trial was run in and into PH-ILD?
What gives us conviction is a question that investors ask often, and I think it presumes that I sleep better than I do. Look, so this is a drug we in-licensed it from Bayer. It is an sGC activator. That's a related mechanism to sGC stimulation, which is a mechanism of a systemic drug called Adempas that was commercially quite successful in PAH and failed a clinical trial in PH-ILD in our indication. What we think we know from the field, and this is principally paths paved by prostacyclins by Tyvaso and other treprostinils is systemic vasodilation works in PAH, does not particularly work in PH-ILD. And the ostensible reason is you vasodilate a lung with diseased tissue and as much benefit as you get from vasodilating the healthy tissue and improving lung function on healthy tissue, you give up a lot of that benefit in the disease tissue.
And so you get this like VQ mismatch basically. The solution for PH-ILD in prostacyclins and treprostinil world has been inhaled prostacyclin. Tyvaso is approved and doing very well in PH-ILD. YUTREPIA is on a path to doing well in PH-ILD is another formulation of treprostinil. There's clearly like a lot of enthusiasm for that idea. The thing that we've done is neither more simple nor more complicated than simply try to replicate that with sGCs. That is we know that systemic treprostinil does not particularly work in PH-ILD.
We know that systemic sGC modulators did not work in PH-ILD, but we have an elegant formulation of an inhaled sGC activator. And in Group 1 patients, it demonstrated extraordinary some of the best PVR reductions ever seen. And so we believe strongly that it is an effective locally administered vasodilator, inhaled vasodilator of this mechanism. And the hope is that we replicate this idea that taking an inhaled potent vasodilator into PH-ILD can yield benefit for these patients. That's the bet. That's the risk, that's the setup.
Okay. So then on PVR in PH-ILD, right? I think PAH is fairly standard to assume that anything north of 20% will -- is clinically meaningful, and there's a good shot that 6-minute walk will be positive. But what about PH-ILD?
Look, again, the end of studies run in PH-ILD is small. So I don't have like some giant body of evidence to point to. I think we do a lot of translational thinking from PAH. And I think our general view is north of 20% on PVR is likely to -- the math or the mechanism of translation from cardiac output or PVR to 6-minute walk is pretty similar in PH-ILD. There's probably some differences related to the other causes of morbidity associated with PH-ILD.
But like in general, I'd say, if we see north of 20% on PVR, I think we're going to be pretty happy with that. And I think ideally, we would see some directional signal on 6-minute walk. We're not powered for 6-minute walk. I don't expect a p-value on 6-minute walk. And to be honest, if we see a high enough PVR, we could see literally nothing on 6-minute walk and still go ahead with the Phase III because I think you'd have to -- if we saw good safety and a deep PVR reduction, you would have to really contort our current understanding of these patients to not think we could generate a 6-minute walk benefit in a properly sized study.
When you say it's not powered for 6-minute walk and there's no p-value, are you saying that's not even being tested or that is just vastly underpowered?
We will mechanically run stats on 6-minute walk, but I expect to not get a p-value on 6-minute walk.
Okay. Okay. When you think about the mechanism of action, right, and you guys have -- you guys and Bayer have done a lot of studies across Phase I and studies, right, in healthy volunteers.
170 subjects. Yes.
It seems like from what's disclosed, I believe the MOA acts specifically to improve PAP, mean PAP. But then for PVR, there's obviously that cardiac output component to it, right? So in your Phase Ib, it was interesting to me that I believe only the 4-milligram dose had an improvement -- or sorry, improvement in cardiac output, but not the others.
We ran a bunch of Phase I studies. And in general, I'd say the picture was consistent, and we measure different things in different studies. Like, for example, we see elevated cGMP production for 48 hours after a single dose of drug at different dose levels. So I'd say, in general, I'm pretty confident looking at the totality of the evidence that this drug will deliver a cardiac output benefit.
And I think that's just what we've consistently observed. That said -- so the way the Phase IIb works is a dose titration paradigm where you start at a low dose and you get up to 4 milligrams pretty quickly. And one of the things that gives me comfort, especially from a safety perspective or tolerability perspective is that 95% of these patients are getting to 4 milligrams and staying there. And that's obviously a sign that people are, a, tolerating the high dose; and b, not having sort of massive safety issues.
Yes, this is a once-daily inhaler.
Once daily, puff of -- once daily, one puff of a DPI.
That's right. Okay. And one of the key reasons that's able to do that is that there's a lot of deposition in the lungs.
That's right. We really -- we do well at getting into lung and we do well at staying in the lung.
Yes. Okay. Perfect. So you guys are -- the Phase II is for PH-ILD, but I'm also curious like how you're thinking about opportunities beyond PH-ILD.
Look, PH-ILD is obviously a great market, and we're excited to be there, and we're going to learn a lot from this study, including one of the things that we're going to measure in this study is things like FVC and other measures of like underlying lung function. Obviously, one of the things we've watched closely is the TETON data around IPF. Certainly, once we've seen this data, I think IPF is a natural place for us to be thinking about. But also we think about PH-COPD, we think about PAH, we think about other indications of impaired lung function or other subgroups of pulmonary hypertension. So I think there's a lot of places to go. Obviously, first and foremost, this is a don't screw it up opportunity in PH-ILD, but it's the kind of mechanism that should work more broadly as well.
Yes. I mean, depending on the Phase II data, like how would you approach the development of mostly across many of these indications?
Well, I think we would run more studies if the -- if the Phase II data was suggested...
Like one at a time and look at PH-ILD and see how that goes? Or would you take a [indiscernible] can go broad.
Look, it's not -- we haven't like perfectly clearly articulated the regulatory path that we intend to follow from here to approval in PH-ILD. But I think insofar as that path cuts through another Phase III study that we're probably going to start relatively soon in PH-ILD, I think we would start other indications in parallel with that study. We're not going to -- at this point, after we generate this Phase II data, are going to wait to go broader.
Maybe briefly, how big do you think is PH-COPD? I'm just curious because Merck has a 5475 product that's availed, that's supposed to read out this year. So if that data were positive, like...
Yes, that would be informative. Look, the scary thing about PH-COPD for clinical development of inhaled therapy is the -- is like the lung tissue is a little bit more complicated to work with. And so I think that's on the list of like things that would give us some consideration there. But obviously, if Merck succeeded there, that would be super informative. That Merck drug, if I'm remembering the study correctly, is a once-daily study of a drug with less deposition in the lung, which is one of the issues they've had with that drug in PAH.
So even if that study doesn't work there, if we see evidence of good safety and the possibility of really efficacy, I think that could be informative as well. I think PH-COPD is a big market. Look, one facile explanation for why there are a lot of theories as to why treprostinil works in IPF. I think there's like a series of religious devotees who think it has to do with this like preclinical fibrotic -- anti-fibrotic effect of treprostinil.
I think there are people who are just of the opinion that you get vascular remodeling when you improve lung function in pulmonary hypertension patients with lung disease. And then I think there's like another possibility, which is just a lot of IPF patients have undiagnosed pulmonary hypertension. And when you get out there and you treat their pulmonary hypertension, they get better. And so I think like across a variety of different explanations, I think a lot of those explanations potentially hang true for us.
Yes. Okay. That is very helpful. So in the last few minutes, we'd love to talk a little bit about Immunovant.
Sure.
Just remind us, you guys did have some RA data recently. And it seems like still kind of TBD and we'll get some more updates in the second half, but just remind us of where you are?
Now I've been caution not to answer questions on Immunovant because you're hold rated on it. But I'll do it anyway just because we're here. Look, so the D2T RA data was -- it honestly better data than we expected in D2T RA, and it showed meaningful -- whatever, it's an open-label run-in to a randomized withdrawal study. And so it's like hard to interpret, especially in this patient population. But we have pretty high ACR70s and ACR50s, which are not the sorts of things that happen that often spontaneously. And so it feels like there's a real effect here, and we're excited about it. As we said when we announced the data, so this is a randomized withdrawal study, there's an open-label run-in followed by a randomized withdrawal period.
And the truth is because the data was as good as it was, a lot of these patients had ACR50 and ACR70 responses, the primary endpoint of period 2 of the study is loss of ACR20. If you are an ACR70 responder, are you definitely going to lose an ACR20 in 12 weeks? I'm not sure. You've got some extended pharmacodynamic benefit from the drug and then you're trying to get a lot worse fast on placebo. So I don't know exactly what our likelihood of "Hitting in period 2 is." So what we said is we're going to look at period 2, obviously, but equally informative is like a lot of patient level work we want to do on inflammatory markers, dimensioning autoantibodies and trying to understand like which patients are responding and why and looking to make sure there's like coherent narratives that support the drug activity. So we want to do that analysis.
And then bluntly, there's like a pretty important regulatory question here in that historically, basically every approved RA therapy has gone down the broad indication, like large, in some cases, thousands of patients, large study. And so we're trying to understand what a regulatory path looks like for an agent willing to restrict itself to late multi-mechanism failure D2T patients who have like, for example, failed like a JAK and a TNF, where the needs are different. And I think what that pathway looks like affects a little bit whether and how we run the second Phase II.
One thing that benefits us is there's a whole class of -- between the CAR-Ts and the T-cell engagers, there's a bunch of stuff coming in late line RA where they obviously won't run 2,000 patient CAR-T studies, and so there's going to be answers to these questions but we're kind of out in front of that. Anyway, what I'm hoping is that by the end of this year, we can package period 2 with the patient level analysis I just described and with that regulatory feedback and present it as a coherent whole with a plan forward, and that's what the next update will really look like.
Got it. Perfect. Well, I will just limit it to one Immunovant question. But thank you so much, Matt, for being here. It's great to hang out with you. Have a great conference.
Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
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Roivant Sciences — Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference
1. Question Answer
All right. Welcome, and good morning. Thank you all for joining us. My name is Will Pickering. I cover U.S. biotech at Bernstein. I have the privilege of sharing the stage with Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant. The company has had a remarkable run over the past year, certainly with brepo as the standout, but far from the only value driver. We'll dig into that and the other assets over the next 50 minutes conference, I would also like to spend some time on bigger picture questions, the Roivant business model and Matt, your view as an asset hunter about the overall health of the biotech ecosystem today.
For those in the audience, please submit your questions through the Pigeonhole app so we can make this as relevant for you as possible.
So with that as a preamble, Matt, how would you describe the evolution of Roivant over the past a few years into the company than it is today?
Yes, thanks, and thanks for having me. It's nice to be here. I appreciate the invitation. Thanks for all the work you guys have done on us. It's been a fun early run here. So look, it's always funny when I'm at a more generous event or just like ask to talk about Roivant because I feel like there's so much complexity in our history in that we got our start as sort of a -- whatever these words are all overused, sort of a Maverick outsider biotech company doing things our own way, walking our own path. We're built in kind of a funny way that I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about with this Vant model.
And I think we do bring a pretty different philosophical lens to the industry and that we are a mixture of experienced industry insider drug developers, but also a lot of outsiders like myself. I was a physicist, I was an investment banker. A lot of my leadership team had been public markets biotech investors before joining Roivant or private markets biotech investors before joining Roivant. And so you take all that history and you hold it and it sort of creates opinions, attitudes, a feeling of not fitting in as it were.
And then the moment that we're at in the business actually is, in some ways, it's the most normal moment in biotech. It's the moment where finally, we've invested for years. We've wandered through the desert. We've reached the other side. We have a portfolio of programs that I think can convert us into, for lack of a better phrase, a real business, right? We're at this precipice of launching one and then multiple drugs and one and then multiple indications that I think stand us a real chance of building one of the next large-cap biopharma companies. And that's just a tremendously exciting moment to be in.
That's great. And BD has been a huge part of your approach historically, but the current pipeline is very full. So I think 10 indications across brepo, mostly, Immunovant, if I'm counting roughly right.
I trust that you have.
How much of a focus is further BD for the company today?
Yes. So I'll say for those who don't know the company, look, I think if you're thinking about biotech from the outside, I think people take a relatively reductionist view on what sort of "science" is and I've used like mental image of science as like a thing that happens in the lab at the bench for the white lab code on. And in fact, there's like many different kinds of science that happen within biotech. And bluntly, I make that maybe defensive sounding case because we've never been that good at the white lab code version of the activity.
But we have been, I think, increasingly, and I'm super proud of this, very good at the kind of science that takes place in the clinic in doctors' offices around the world, in clinical trial design and indication selection and understanding patients and diseases and figuring out the right way to develop a drug ideally in a disease where the patients have high unmet need and where not a lot of novel science has been done. And if you're good at that latter kind of science, but don't fancy yourself that good at the former kind of science, you're sort of stuck, right? Because it turns out every drug must be discovered in some kind of lab before it is studied in the clinic. And so we have, as Will has alluded to, built basically our entire pipeline via collaboration, via BD, via acquiring programs.
And in fact, another thing that I'm proud of that I think we're pretty good at in addition to sort of asset hunting, spotting things in the world that are attractive, is most of our partnerships have come from big pharma companies. And I think we have built a pretty good understanding of and some very good relationships with some of the largest pharma companies in the world. And they all have a problem, which is that they do all kinds of science. And sometimes the first kind of science that happens in the lab and the second kind of science that happens in the clinic and third kind of science that happens when you're trying to build a commercial business don't all align in a nice train that makes you want to start on the same projects that you want to end on.
And so big pharma companies often have really great things that fall by the wayside, not because they're not great, but because they don't fit with the strategic commitments the companies have made. And I think what we've built a lot of our portfolio around is bringing in those programs. It is profoundly a part of our DNA to be on the hunt. And frankly, biopharma is a treading water industry. It's like whatever the -- I'm not sure it's actually scientifically accurate, but they say that if shark stop swimming, they die. If pharma companies stop replenishing their pipeline, they die because our drugs are all wasting assets. From the minute you invent a drug, it has a fixed life before the patent runs out.
And so we are always on the hunt. And I think that still serves us well in developing the drugs we have now. But absolutely, we continue to look for programs, and we'll continue to bring more in. That said, I completely agree with the comment that you made. Our pipeline is rich and exciting, and there's plenty to do just within the context of the late-stage clinical programs that we're bringing to market.
And as you look at the biotech landscape today, both from an innovation perspective, but also looking at valuation, how attractive is that for an asset hunter?
I mean, very -- look, I think the last really 25 years in biotech have been pretty remarkable in that we went from an industry in the early 2000s where 99.5% of drugs were small molecule pills of the same general sort that has been around a long time. And the big story in the previous 25 years have been the invention of modern synthetic medicinal chemistry that lets us do some version of designing those drugs intentionally to now we have mRNA vaccines and monoclonal antibodies are used left, right and center, and people are injecting themselves with unapproved peptides manufactured by small Chinese CDMOs. Like the world is crazy in terms of like the kinds of things that people are working on.
And while our understanding of human biology remains what I'll call nascent across the industry, it's gotten better. And I think that has made for an explosion of ideas. And look, I think anyone living in the world knows that we are still far behind in terms of our fight versus disease illness and aging. And so with the explosion of ideas and a lot of territory left to cover, it's a good time to be an asset hunter. There's a lot out there that could be valuable.
And then there's all kinds of more localized shifts, right? There's geopolitical things going on. There's the incredible pace and quality of antibody discovery, especially in China. There's the pace with which you can run early clinical trials in places like Australia and New Zealand and China. And there's a series of global and U.S. political factors buffeting big pharma that creates a need for shift in their portfolios. And I think all of that also benefits us.
Excellent. Well, why don't we dig into parts of the pipeline, I'll start with brepo. You're approaching your first commercial launch in dermatomyositis. Could you start by framing the opportunity and then talk through the key priorities for your commercial team to drive that launch?
Yes, perfect. I get ever so slightly defensive, although maybe it's not serving me well when people call it our first commercial launch because, in fact, we have had now 6 or 7 FDA approvals come effectively through our business. Many of them have been commercialized externally, a number of them through Sumitomo, a company we partnered with a few years ago on the first generation of our pipeline. And then we did, in fact, launch a drug called VTAMA in psoriasis. I'm not sure it benefits me to bring it up in a setting like this because it didn't go spectacularly well, but it went fine.
And then we sold it to Organon a couple of years after we launched it because it just didn't fit with the quality of the pipeline that we had in-house. But we learned an enormous amount about what it takes to launch a drug and what we think will make us successful, including enormous amount that makes us more and more excited about launching brepocitinib. So I think that's kind of where we're at now.
What would you say are like the top priorities for your commercial team to really get that launch?
One of the cool things about the current moment is if we were at this stage, if we were about to launch a drug like brepocitinib and it were 2019, I think there'd be a lot of healthy skepticism would be a sort of a short launch story. But you look out over the past 5 or 6 years and probably first Horizon with TEPEZZA, but Horizon, argenx, obviously, Insmed now, Madrigal, Verona, BridgeBio, there have been a number of very successful commercial launches from and out of biotech. And in fact, I suspect that at least some of those drugs have been launched better in the hands of companies like argenx than they might have been in the hands of big pharma companies that argenx' creativity in crafting a modern commercial strategy has been really transformative.
And so the first thing that we're trying to do is, look, I hope eventually people describe us in the same terms that they describe companies like argenx as a commercial innovator. But before that, I hope they simply say they learned the lessons that argenx taught us. And so we are trying to do everything that argenx and Horizon and others have done. And that includes -- look, the world has had some structural shifts on access, for example, where rebating at least in orphan disease is less a part of the landscape and where patient support has been an enormously important part of access. And so for example, we hired this woman Lee Liberator who built TEPEZZA's patient support organization, and she is building our patient support organization.
I think one of the things about launching an orphan disease that's become increasingly true is these patients, and this is true in DM, are treated at a more and more concentrated set of referral centers. And a, we've built excellent relationships with those referral centers. They were the people who ran our clinical trial in many cases, and they are where we are spending a lot of our commercial time and medical education time now. And then b, I think you build a field force, therefore, that is the right people not necessarily to call on a community dermatologist, but to call on an expert in the field who spent their entire career treating dermatomyositis patients.
And that means we have recruited some of the -- one of our field force personnel, one of our sales reps is a career-long myositis KOL who left clinical practice because she was so excited about what dermatomyositis might do that she thought she'd take a hand to like help them make it a success. And I think that is -- she's not really a sales rep therefore, she's a medical care professional. She's jack of all trades, but I think that's the sort of thing that is a really high priority for us and making sure we're making the launch success.
The point that you made about short the launch not being as successful of an investment strategy today as it was maybe a few years ago. I mean, part of that is these companies have done a good job. Part of it, I think, is also that I think expectations have been a little bit more well grounded. How are you thinking about what that means for communication with investors about the early launch, about KPIs, what you're planning to share for brepo?
I -- this is a subject of healthy debate at Roivant and other places historically. And bluntly, I think we've learned a few things from recent launches and from the investor trajectory of recently launched companies. The first is I have a great deal of confidence in the ultimate commercial potential of brepocitinib as a drug, specifically in dermatomyositis and across indications. These are -- there's a lot of these patients. We can talk more about it. They have high unmet need. It's not a very competitively intense field right now in terms of people who are offering them options.
And look, at some level, this isn't rocket science. The only other approved therapy in dermatomyositis requires on label that you spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a month consecutively in an infusion center receiving an IV infusion, and we are a once-daily oral that provides probably better clinical benefit. This is not the most uphill battle in terms of convincing people that it's an attractive alternative. So I think all of that pulls together to a high set of expectations. That said, no one has launched a novel targeted therapy in dermatomyositis ever. And so the pace of the launch, how quickly we'll be able to get doctors changing clinical practice, how quickly we'll be able to work with payers in this specific population and do the education work. I just think it's basically impossible to know. And we've certainly seen launches rocket out of the gate, and we've seen more slow and steady ramps.
My general view is I expect -- I think everyone should expect slow and steady. And also there is 0 benefit to providing guidance. Just standing up there and giving people a sense of what I think is we're going to have to wait and see, and we're going to do our level best to make it a long-term success. And along the way, I'm sure we'll have fits and starts, but I'm excited for where it heads. And frankly, I think the companies that have attempted to provide guidance have not been rewarded for providing that guidance anyway. And so I'm not sure -- that's also a lesson learned from the Darwinian process.
Yes. Other indicators like new start forms? Have you thought about whether you'll be sharing that information?
Yes. So the honest answer is most of our decisions on that basis are going to be rooted in commercial and competitive dynamics. We will be, as all orphan launches do now, using tailored quite narrow focused, limited distribution. And in general, for a variety of commercial reasons, when you do that, you pretty rarely wind up sharing scripts. And so our scripts will probably not be widely available on a regular basis just because of our commercial distribution plans. And so that's just how that's going to play out.
Got it. Got it. What are you hearing from docs on the likely mix of patients in terms of prior therapy? And one of the questions that we get a lot is the pace of JAK switching.
Yes. Look, I think -- so taking a tiny step back, in claims data sets today, there are about 40,000 patients actively treated for dermatomyositis. That is a portion of the total dermatomyositis population. I think epidemiology suggests maybe that number is 70 plus. It's also a relatively difficult to diagnose condition. And so there's probably more patients out there who have either not received the diagnosis at all or have received a lupus diagnosis or whatever, who like may very well have dermatomyositis show up later once we arrive.
And anyway, of those 40,000 patients, about 75% of them are on steroids and immunosuppressants, prednisone, methotrexate. And many of those patients are poorly controlled. And the way we know they're poorly controlled is they're on quite high doses of steroids, in many cases, more than 6 months a year on greater than 10 or even greater than 20 milligrams of prednisone. If you've ever had like an allergic reaction, you've spent time on 20-plus milligrams of prednisone, it's a miserable existence for 3 days. I cannot imagine doing it for 6 months.
And so you know those patients are poorly controlled because they're making that choice. That is absolutely one of the early groups of patients that we are most enthusiastic about. Those patients are not on other therapies for a variety of reasons. They can't spend 5 days a month in an infusion center. They don't want to take an unapproved B-cell depleting drug like rituximab or whatever that has failed clinical trials in dermatomyositis. And so they're sort of stuck with steroids and DMARDs and dealing with the unsuccessful treatment that comes with it. You can imagine an IVIg patient spending all this time in an IVIg infusion center, thinking that maybe a 1 pill regimen sounds good.
So that's like -- that's another place where I think we will get early patients. There are -- so about 25% of the patient population is on something other than steroids and DMARDs. That's like about half of those patients are on IVIg and the other half are on a collection of off-label stuff. The vast majority of the off-label stuff are literally drugs that have failed dermatomyositis trials, but that probably provide some benefit in inflammatory disease. And so docs are trying it because they don't have anything else to do. Some small low to mid-single-digit percentage of those patients are on off-label JAK inhibitors.
The truth of the off-label JAK inhibitor population, when you actually do the math, low single-digit percentage of a 40,000 patient number, it's hundreds of patients basically, maybe a couple of thousand patients in total. It's actually a pretty concentrated group. For example, I think at another bank's KOL call, Julie Paik of Johns Hopkins said she had 70 patients on off-label tofacitinib. What she said she -- that's like a relatively significant percentage of the total patients off-label JAK inhibitors. What she said she would do is switch those patients as soon as she could basically.
So I think like what will wind up happening is prescriber by prescriber. Some docs will be eager to switch. Some docs will say, look, at least the off-label JAK patients are like kind of on something that works for them. I'm going to go with my high-dose steroid patients. I think some of that will come down to access and how easy we make it to get patients on drug. I think some of it will come down to how the docs that were on our trial and have a lot of familiarity with brepocitinib, may be faster to use it. The docs that were not in our trial and are still coming to speed with it, may do a little more experimentation. So I think it will be a mixture.
Yes. In terms of competition, VYVGART, they got the Phase III IM later this year. Assuming that works, like how much of a swing factor are the actual results really in terms of brepo's future market share, do you think?
Yes. I mean, look, they're 18 months behind us probably. And so we're not that far. Right now, we do have to outrun the Bayer as it were. That is it's not about the competitors. It's just about the disease. Later, we only have to outrun them or something. Look, I -- first of all, I think DM is one of these diseases where the unmet need is so large and there are so many patients that more share of voice by the industry, more new therapies, more options for doctors is mostly going to be a rising tide. And I think VYVGART in MG has benefited from the existence of the complement pathway programs. I think we will benefit from the existence of VYVGART.
And I think I would much rather be VYVGART in MG than a complement company. I would much rather be brepocitinib in DM than VYVGART because we're first because I think -- look, we're getting a lot of inbound calls now from investors and the path they're taking to get to us is they are argenx shareholders, and they're focused on DM. And so for the first time, they're doing KOL calls in DM and they pick the phone and they call DM docs and they like what do you think of VYVGART and the docs are like, "Hey, have you heard of brepocitinib? And so they're calling us because they're sort of coming at this from the side, and that's an enormously rewarding thing in the sense that it helps bring people to our story. I think it just underscores the lead that we've got.
Practically speaking, I think there are reasons to believe that dermatomyositis is not going to be the strongest setting for VYVGART among the myositis. The trial of VYVGART is running is across multiple different myositis. It's running in IMNM and in DM and in polymyositis. I think IMNM is more biologically on point for an FcRn. And I think their efficacy will probably be better in IMNM than it is in DM. I think that based on biological rationale, I think that because argenx' public statements to me suggest that they generally believe that, too. And I think if you compare our Phase III data to the Phase II data generated across the myositis, they didn't break it out by subtype in their Phase II study.
We were faster to achieve a moderate TIS response and achieved our responses against the backdrop of an aggressive steroid taper and still did comparably or better than VYVGART did. So I think we will have a competitive profile. The truth is, ultimately, you're only as good as your label. And if VYVGART gets lucky and blows out of the park in this study, it will be more of a competitive factor than if they don't, and we'll just have to see what their data looks like when it comes.
All right. NIU, next most mature indication, you've got the Phase III later this year. Phase II, highly compelling small cohort. But I mean, frankly, I've not heard a real strong bear case for this trial. I'm not going to sit here and ask you to articulate one, but...
You can if you want.
Maybe what were some of the risks that you sought to mitigate when you designed the Phase III?
Yes. Look, I think -- so NIU, noninfectious uveitis is a basket diagnosis for inflammations of the eye that are not caused by an infection. It's a heterogeneous patient population. It has not been an area of very active clinical development and has stymied a lot of others who have tried to develop there. It's a bad disease. And ophthalmologists tolerance for eye inflammation is very low because it's actually -- NIU is the third leading cause of blindness in the United States right now. It's like a bad disease and patients really don't want to go blind. And so they're willing to get treatment.
Against that backdrop, the only other sort of approved modern "therapy" for NIU is HUMIRA, which bluntly doesn't work that well, somewhere between 50% and 80% of patients or 50% and 75% of patients fail HUMIRA depending on how you count it, et cetera. And they fail pretty quickly, right? The time treatment failure in the HUMIRA study was like 6 months median. So it's a disease with a lot of unmet need. We ran a study, it was a Phase II study. It was blinded and dose ranging, but it did not have a placebo. And I said HUMIRA's time treatment failing in their Phase III was a little under 6 months. We went over 12 months as median time treatment failure. So with a lot of cushion versus the field, but no placebo.
The blunt level truth in immunology is the placebo response rates have crept up in every indication in history, and we didn't have placebo in our Phase II. And so you asked me what the risks in the trial are. The biggest risk in the trial is whatever, the bear in this clinical trial is placebo, and we have to outrun it. And so I think that's a challenge that we're cognizant of.
How do you do that? First of all, the heterogeneity of the patient population is always an obstacle. I think we've done a very good job with some creative and aggressive strategies to make sure we have the patients we need in the trial, that they are sick in the right way, that they are sick NIU patients. We have specific adjudication criteria for making sure the right patients get into the trial. We have a very aggressive steroid taper.
One of the things we did in the Phase II, the way these trials all work because tolerance for eye inflammation is poor is you can't just bring a patient in and put them on your drug. You have to bring them in, put them on a very high dose of systemic steroids to get the inflammation under control and then taper the steroids and see if you can maintain a response on your drug. And the HUMIRA study used a 12- to 16-week taper, I think, we used a much more aggressive taper than that. And we used in the Phase II in partnership with no placebo, and we want to give ourselves a hard test, but it worked. And so we're using a similarly aggressive taper in the Phase III. I think that will help control placebo response as well.
How much of a headwind do you think the availability of biosimilar HUMIRA is in this market?
Look, 2 things. One is there's about 40,000 patients on TNFs with NIU. And as I said, the treatment failure rate is 50-plus percent, and they tend to fail within 6 months in the clinical trials. Even if at the price points that we have in mind for brepocitinib, we live entirely in a HUMIRA refractory population, it's a blockbuster indication for us. And because ophthalmologists tolerance for eye inflammation is low, if our data are good, I think there will be a strong desire to use us aggressively in early line settings.
And so that will be a question of label. It will be a question of payer dynamics. But mostly, I think there will be a lot of people fighting for early access if our data supports it. And I think we will work with those people to get these patients on drug so they don't go blind.
I had intended to spend a little bit more time on CS and LPP, but maybe let me just ask a broader question of what is your indication selection strategy for brepo? And maybe just hit some of the highlights on CS and LPP.
I could launch into an, I think, interesting thematic history of JAK inhibitors here. But in the interest of parsimony, I won't. Look, I think in 2019, if you had said, by 2026, there will be a large, successful important JAK inhibitor franchise targeting orphan disease, everyone around you would have said, duh. It's obvious, right? In 2019, JAK inhibitors were everywhere. They were going to be the future. And then the black box warning thing happened and everyone kind of backed away.
If in 2019, you said, "Oh, who is going to own that large franchise of JAK inhibitors in orphan disease", everyone would have just looked at you and said, obviously, it's going to be Eli Lilly. It's going to be Sanofi. It's going to be AbbVie. It's going to be any of the companies that like had a place in JAK inhibitors and a place in orphan disease and a right to win there. The fact that approximately random mid-cap biotech company owns that franchise is a combination of cleverness on our part that I'm proud of and random accidents of history that I'm glad to have benefited from.
But as a consequence, we own right now the category of JAK inhibitors in orphan inflammation, and there are many orphan inflammatory diseases. I mean, literally almost any inflammatory disease with, call it, 30,000 to 130,000 patients is a good swim lane for us. And we are looking -- obviously, we're focusing on the diseases where we know the physicians. We're focusing on Th1-mediated disease, the places where JAK1 and TYK2 had benefit for a variety of reasons. But we're looking across that space, and there are quite a lot of indications to go after. And I think even more than DM being an exciting indication, though it is or NIU being an exciting indication, though it is, the breadth of what brepocitinib could do is actually pretty staggering in terms of the number of diseases we could help.
Switching over to mosli, maybe would you like to start with just an overview of the drug and why you're excited about PH-ILD and then we can shift over into expectations for the trial.
And I talked at the beginning of this, you asked about BD around how we bring our drugs in. I didn't mention, we paid $14 million upfront to Pfizer for brepocitinib. We also paid $14 million upfront to Bayer for mosliciguat. Mosli is a drug. It's an inhaled vasodilator, mechanism of this thing called sGC activation. We got it from Bayer a few years ago.
And basically, what happened here was Bayer had a history in this chemistry. They sort of originated the development of drugs in sGC. They were partnered with Merck on respiratory disease around a drug called Adempas that was a commercially successful drug, $2 billion or $3 billion in peak sales, a big drug. And then Bayer and Merck had kind of a messy divorce at the end of that process or at least they split foot ways and each went on down their separate path of developing a successor drug to Adempas. Both of them developed inhaled sGC drugs. Bayer's, in our view, was the better drug. And then Bayer went and did some M&A in the agrochemical space that was complicated. And they had to make difficult choices around their pharma portfolio because Roundup allegedly causes cancer. And so they got out of respiratory disease.
And this was a while ago, and they no longer had a real footprint there, and they weren't sort of doing active research in respiratory disease. And meanwhile, United Therapeutics, one of the forefathers of pulmonary hypertension development and a phenomenal company, sort of whatever, struck gold for a second time. They found pulmonary hypertension from lung disease, PH-ILD as an indication. They got Tyvaso approved there. They launched it commercially, and it has been an enormous commercial success that has engendered an entire field of literal follow-on molecules of other treprostinil similar to Tyvaso from Liquidia, from Insmed that I think are also really exciting drugs.
We went to Bayer at that moment in time, realizing that mosli, which had been developed principally in the more competitive Group 1 pulmonary arterial hypertension should also, in theory, work as an inhaled vasodilator in PH-ILD. And Bayer was not at all really paying attention to the field and certainly wasn't going to run a novel development strategy in lung disease. And so we in-licensed it from them and set on retraining the program towards PH-ILD. And now we are reading out a Phase IIb study later this year, the first basically in a non-treprostinil mechanism of a late-stage study for PH-ILD.
What does the successful Phase II look like for you?
Yes. So in PH-ILD, as with all pulmonary hypertension, the approvable Phase III endpoints are things like 6-minute walk, which, again, because it's a generalist conference, 6-minute walk, first of all, is a widely hated indication widely hated endpoint in biotech. And the reason is because roughly speaking, what happens is you're standing in a doctor's office, picture your doctor's office and the doctor says, how far can you walk in 6 minutes? I'm going to set a stop watch and get out a tape measure and you're going to go.
It turns out conditions vary widely. Are you walking in a hallway? Are you walking in a waiting room? Are you walking in circles on a tile floor? Are you walking on a carpeted floor? And this leads also like did you eat your Wheaties when you woke up in the morning, did you drink a cup of coffee? There's just like a lot of things that make this a variable endpoint. It turns out that it is a relatively well-behaved endpoint in pulmonary hypertension, but it's quite variable. And so in Phase II studies in pulmonary hypertension, including in PH-ILD, the primary endpoint tends to be something called PVR, which is right hearted blood pressure. It is a literal measure of disease activity in that you are measuring the flow of blood through the right ventricle.
The way you measure it is under general anesthesia on an operating table with a catheter. And so it's not something that you can do regularly in very large studies, but it is the primary endpoint of our study. And again, a measure of how sick these patients are as they subject themselves to a clinical trial that requires regular general anesthesia catheterization. So that's the primary endpoint. There has not been across pulmonary hypertension, a mechanism that doesn't -- that delivers 20-plus percent reductions in PVR and has not gone on not just to be clinically successful on 6-minute walk, but to be a multibillion-dollar class.
And so our view is if we can deliver 20-plus benefit on PVR, nothing else really matters. That is almost certainly a good enough indicator that we will be able to deliver clinical benefit in a subsequent Phase III study that we will run the subsequent Phase III study. That said, we are measuring 6-minute walk in the trial. We are measuring other clinical endpoints. And while the study is not powered to deliver p-value statistical significance on those endpoints, it would certainly be helpful to understand the magnitude of effect in those endpoints as well.
With Tyvaso, I think that they had a pretty big gap between peak and trough 6-minute walk. which I think kind of underscores that your daily dosing could be a clinical advantage and not just a convenience advantage. Are you collecting 6-minute walk at different time points post inhalation, either in this or in a future Phase III?
Yes. We are measuring a bunch of different time points. One of the great things about our drug is it is quite stable in the lung. And in fact, in Phase I studies, we have like elevated cardiac output, cGMP production out 48 hours after a single dose. And so I think we do actually get quite a lot of benefit from the time course because it's 48 hours, we will get meaningful stacking over multiple days over multiple dosing. And I think all of those things should contribute to better clinical benefit. And I think we will measure at different time points so that we can begin to sort of dimension out that effect.
How do you envision the commercial opportunity for mosli either as monotherapy or combination? And what kind of evidence would you need to generate to support that?
So this is another thing where we can learn from history. So in PAH, pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is a, I think, $10-plus billion category now, one of the -- what was this first to the pulmonary hypertension is a word to be treated. What happened was actually treprostinils were the first modern drugs approved at prostacyclins. And then a series of successive classes, including systemic sGC stimulators were approved.
And each time a new class entered 2 things happened. One is actually life expectancy for these patients increased by, in some cases, as much as 2 to 3 years. And the other is patients just went on multiple categories of drugs. This is a polypharmacy market. Pulmonary hypertension ultimately often kills you. It's a very bad disease. These patients go on everything they can get. They cycle drugs, they add them on top of each other. And so I think that is exactly what will happen in PH-ILD as well. It will be a polypharmacy market, and we will be used before Tyvaso, after Tyvaso, on top of Tyvaso in every combination and with other mechanisms, hopefully, as well.
Practically, that means from a clinical benefit perspective, worse than Tyvaso, better than Tyvaso, similar to Tyvaso, it doesn't matter that much in the end because most patients will wind up on most drugs. Obviously, the better we are than Tyvaso, the earlier will potentially be used. We have some other advantages where one inhalation once a day versus more for the others, one from the dry powder inhaler once a day. In fact, we don't likely cause cough as an on-target effect with prostacyclin do. There's a variety of reasons why we could be use in an earlier line setting. But mostly, the answer is this is going to be a polypharmacy market, and everyone is going to be on top of everything.
To answer your question about evidence generation, in our Phase III study -- we -- sorry, in a Phase IIb study, we do not allow concurrent Tyvaso use. Tyvaso is only approved in the U.S. It's a global study. It's like slightly complicated. In the Phase III study, we will allow some patients on concurrent Tyvaso precisely because it's important that the label allow for concurrent use. However, it's important, therefore, to know a little bit about what we do together with Tyvaso, especially from a safety perspective, but also to get some sense of efficacy. So we are currently, in addition to the main Phase IIb running an open-label combo study with Tyvaso that has just started. So we don't have any data from it right now, but that will help inform things like stratification in the Phase III.
Question on the iPad. What other indications in PH could you look at? And like when would you consider starting those?
Yes. Perfect. So look, I think the history of this is helpful, too. Most -- locally administered vasodilators are effective in pulmonary hypertension. We probably work in PAH. We have good Phase I data there. It's competitive, but we could go there eventually. I think PH-COPD is an interesting indication, although local vasodilation in lung disease patients with emphysema is a more complicated proposition, and there's more emphysema in the PH-COPD population. So that, for that reason, requires some more careful thought.
Recently, though, we've also seen the prostacyclin and treprostinil Tyvaso specifically be successful, for example, in IPF. And that is absolutely high on our list of things that we are excited to think about. Ultimately, we're going to learn a fair amount about all of that from this Phase IIb later this year. We're measuring FVC in IPF patients. We'll have a sense for how we did there, albeit in a small subset. I think all of that will inform next steps. PH-ILD is a huge indication, and we wanted to make sure we nailed it, but I think we will be initiating new indications if the Phase IIb data supports it pretty quickly after we get this data.
Switching to Immunovant. Could you start with how 1402 is differentiated from the other FcRns in terms of either product profile or the indications that you're in?
Perfect. So again, I'm sure many people in this room are familiar with FcRns as a mechanism because argenx has been so enormously successful in creating that category. This is sort of a -- whatever, it's like a big moment in immunology in that this is sort of the HUMIRA moment for a new kind of immunology. It's the first time we've had a drug approved that can treat what I'll call B-cell disease, autoantibody-driven disease, much of which isn't even inflammatory. Graves disease isn't really an inflammatory disease at some level. And so it opens up an entire set of new indications, and argenx has done a phenomenal job in MG and in CIDP and other places, creating those markets and showing real benefit for those patients.
VYVGART has some limits. Nipocalimab, the J&J drug has some limits. Among them, as each of them is currently studied practically and in VYVGART's case, probably just like due to biological limitations, they don't suppress IgG more than, call it, 60% or 70%, whereas I believe we will suppress IgG by 80-plus percent with 1402. So I think we can get better efficacy. We are formulated as a simple standard DUPIXENT style auto-injector, which is something that VYVGART is not. VYVGART is a Hytrulo long push with dire injection site reactions and things like that or Halozyme, sorry, or an IV drug. So I think those are all advantages that we have.
And then I think although not as important as being a better molecule, almost as important as being a better molecule, I think we just carved out some really great white space indications for ourselves. We have pioneered modern drug development in Graves' disease where we have an ongoing pair of registrational studies that we hope will be successful and will create the first approved novel therapy in Graves' disease since the 1950s. So that's an indication with millions of total patients, hundreds of thousands of poorly controlled patients. Imitation is the finest form of flattery. We have created a cottage industry of other companies now developing Graves' disease, but they're all years behind us.
And I think we have really built out some expertise and positioning there that's exciting. Just last week, we showed some data in a subsetting of rheumatoid arthritis that was, frankly, more compelling data than we expected it to be and showed a potential role for FcRns in late-line multi-mechanism failure rheumatoid arthritis that I am excited to explore from here. So I think those are both indications where we're way out in front and kind of alone right now, and there's many others that we're pursuing, some of them like MG more competitive and some of them like CLE, less competitive.
That's where I was going to go next was RA. If you want to share some of the highlights of that data and why you think you're able to achieve such higher ACR responses versus nipo?
Yes. So RA, obviously not an orphan disease, many, many patients with RA. It is a disease that is more complicated than Graves' disease and that it is not just an autoantibody disease. It's an inflammatory disease. It's an autoantibody disease in some patients. It's a -- there's different etiologies. It comes from different places. It's a complicated disease. The idea that FcRns could work in RA is not an idea of our own invention. And we know that some of the disease is autoantibody driven.
In fact, one of the exciting things about FcRns there is unlike all of the other drugs basically in RA, it's not an anti-inflammatory. And so it might work differently on a different axis and therefore, work in combo or in later line settings where antiinflammatories failed. This was the idea with which they had been studied historically. J&J has run 2 studies in RA. One was effectively a monotherapy study across a variety of lines of therapy across a variety of different patients. And they showed fine responses. Nothing -- they showed clear benefit, but nothing that was like getting people out of bed.
The 2 exciting sort of indicators in the data that were interesting. One, almost all of their responses came from the subset of patients that tested positive for autoantibodies. And so that was like a clear way to enrich on a biomarker. And then two, their efficacy appeared to be preserved irrespective of line of therapy. And so you look at that and you're like, okay, maybe there's something here in late line. And in fact, even though their efficacy was kind of middling in late-line multi-mechanism failure patients, it was potentially good enough to have a commercial plan.
So then we and J&J after seeing that monotherapy data, each then plowed on with different strategies. J&J said, okay, we're going to run a combo study in early line patients combo with a TNF and that was a study they ran. And we were like, we're going to focus on the late-line multi-mechanism failure population and run the study that we ran, which was in patients who effectively failed everything they can. They failed at least 2 of TNF, IL-6 and JAKs. A majority of them, as we now said, have failed TNFs and JAKs. These are like late-line patients without other options.
The confusing thing is J&J's combo therapy pretty spectacularly didn't work. They basically didn't separate from the TNF. That was always a hard study to run. You're putting patients on a TNF for the first time. They're going to benefit significantly from the TNF. And so you have to kind of demonstrate benefit on top of something that's already helping them. But still, the level of separation was disconcertingly poor. And so I think like that confused us when we saw it.
Then our study read out, and it showed something sort of surprising in the opposite direction, meaningfully better responses than either of the other 2 studies. The data that we've produced so far is data from an open-label run-in period to a randomized withdrawal trial. It is nuanced data across multiple axes. And certainly, one of the reasons it looks as good as it did. We showed ACR 70s in the high 30s, which is as good as anyone ever shows basically. It's close to JAK-like in its efficacy, which in a JAK failure population is extraordinary, especially for mechanism that's pretty safe like an FcRn.
Part of the quality of that data has to be due to the fact that it's an open-label setting. There's some rising tide effect here, but you just don't spontaneously have an ACR70 response. Those are pretty big improvements in sick patients who have failed a lot of other drugs. So I think there's like -- our belief is there's clearly something real happening. The other 2 things, I think, that are relevant. One is we did a pretty good job selecting for an autoantibody positive population. The J&J combo study with Cimzia was autoantibody selected, but not they allowed rheumatoid factor patients, for example, is not as rigorously specifically focused on ACPA as ours. I think we generated some benefit there.
And then I sort of have to believe, although I don't yet have the evidence to back this up, but the other thing that happened for us is it turns out that when you filter out patients who have failed, remember, failed is an important word here, JAK inhibitors and TNFs, that those patients have tried anti-inflammatory mechanisms that are very effective for treating their RA and have not succeeded that it must, at some level be that we are enriching for a population whose disease is causally driven by autoantibodies in a way that even we didn't totally anticipate. But ultimately, we'll find out.
Period 2 of this study is going to be harder now because we have to generate meaningful reversion in patients that have benefited a lot clinically from being on drug. And so we might not even a p-value in period 2. We're going to really study the patient level data here and try and understand what's happening and then work with FDA on a trial design for a subsequent study that I hope will be tractable and lead to a lot of benefit for these patients.
Getting some more questions on the iPad, and this is more of a big picture thing, but the cash balance, you've got $4 billion, you'll be getting more from Moderna. What are your plans for that considering that you have not spent that -- you've not spent a lot of money on transactions historically?
Yes. Look, I think one of the things about Roivant is we are sort of culturally built to be good stewards of capital. It's just sort of part of who we were to begin with. And it's led to some puzzling decisions over time. Look, I think like biotech companies historically haven't bought back stock. That's changed a little bit, but like we bought back $1.5 billion of stock at $10 a share because we had too much cash. That turned out to be a good investment over time. We continue to buy back stock now as we're bringing more money from Moderna.
What we said lost in history at this point is that we bought a drug from Pfizer a while ago and then sold it to Roche for a lot of money. And so we had a lot of cash on our balance sheet. That's -- that plus the Sumitomo deal is how we wound up sort of highly capitalized. And I think what we said all along is if we can't do it with $4 billion, we probably can't do it with $6 billion. That is like there's an amount of money beyond which it just like isn't required to build the kind of business we're building. And frankly, the kind of BD that we've done historically has been pretty capital efficient on the upfront, expensive clinical development, pretty capital efficient on the upfront.
So look, I think as cash comes in above and beyond current levels, we will continue to be pretty aggressive about returning it to shareholders just because I think balance sheet leanness is something we believe in. But we have still a lot of cash even absent that, and we'll spend a fair amount of it on breadth of development for the existing pipeline. We will add indications for brepo. We will add indications for FcRn. We will add indications for mosli, and we'll be active on the BD side. And I really hope we bring programs in with expensive Phase III trials. Those tend to be big indications. The tend to be exciting. They tend to be the kinds of things we can make a difference at. So I hope we spend a fair amount of our money on that.
AI has been a big theme for this conference. What are your expectations for how that impacts drug development and over time? And what is Roivant doing today?
At the current moment at a generalist conference, I think what I'm supposed to say here is we're an AI-native AI-first company building data centers in space. We're not building data centers in space. I don't know how. But I think that's what we're supposed to say. Look, I am -- there is a lot of talk about AI in biopharma. And a lot of that talk centers on novel uses of AI in drug discovery, on medicinal chemistry, on biology. And I think that stuff is super interesting. We have invested in it. We have built a company that is successfully using AI to model protein-protein interactions that we have a big stake in that I think could be.
Look, I think it could be a company that invents designed molecular glues in a way that wasn't possible for AI. There's like cool things that are going to happen here. That said, those are the apples at the very top of the tree. Those are the hardest of the hard problems to improve with AI in biopharma. And while we and others will work on them, I don't know how quickly we're going to revolutionize drug discovery. If quickly, that will be great for us. There will be many more drugs to put into clinical development, and we are very good clinical developers. If slowly, that's okay, too.
That said, in clinical development, what is clinical development really in addition to a science problem. It is a massive logistical coordination exercise where you're reading hundreds or thousands of patients' medical charts coming through them literally as human beings, like trying to figure out which of these patients are good for your trial. You're trying to turn around legal documents like site agreements and IRBs and better B agreements and protocols quickly there all similar to each other, but different in little ways. These are all things that like the AI of today, the Claude that is on all of our desks is really good at.
And so like our ability to prosecute large trials at scale is dramatically better than it was a year ago, and we are coming to terms with that. And I'll say like, look, I think we made a concerted effort to get these tools out and available to everybody, and we are building tools every day to make ourselves better at this. But again, if I were to try and defend ourselves as like an AI-first company, those are things I would talk about. But also, it's just been this incredible Darwinian process. You put cloud on the desk of a smart person running a clinical trial, and they're like, "Oh, my life is easier now. Here are the 7 ways my life is easier now. So I think a lot of what we're doing is just putting the right people in the right seats with the right tools, and it turns out that's making us better.
One more question to close this out. If we fast forward 2 to 3 years, what has to be true for Roivant to be a $50 billion market cap company?
Look, I think some of our launches have to go well. I think that's true. I don't think DM has to be an $8 billion indication. I think DM has to be a $1.5 billion indication in people's minds. NIU -- look, if DM is a $1 billion or $1.5 billion indication, NIU is a $1.5 billion indication in CS and LPP are $1 billion or $1.5 billion indications and FcRn in total is $3 billion or $4 billion, we're there easily, right? We're on our path to being -- I don't mean that literally in 3 or 4 years. People have to believe those things in 3 or 4 years or 2 or 3 years for us to achieve that kind of scale.
So I think we have to do reasonably well commercially somewhere, and we have to keep stacking indications. And to be honest, I think that's about it there. I think if you asked me how we become a $150 billion company. There's a lot we have to do between here and there. But I think the path to $40 billion or $50 billion or $60 billion is good execution on what we've got now.
Great. Let's leave it there. Thank you, Matt.
If you take nothing away from this conference, just remember, we are an AI-first company building data centers in space.
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Roivant Sciences — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Roivant Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would like now to turn the conference over to Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review business updates from Roivant's fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant; and Drew Fromkin, CEO of Pulmovant.
For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I'd like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we have filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you, everyone, for dialing in this morning. I'm glad we're talking. We had an unexpectedly busy agenda with a bunch of topics. I'm looking forward to going through all of it, including, obviously, what we announced this morning, which is the preliminary open-label period data from the 1402 study in D2T RA as well as a planned spotlight we've been planning to do for a while on mosliciguat getting into that data, which Drew will take us through and some smaller updates on the brepocitinib program, although exciting. So a lot to cover.
I want to -- before I get into all that, there's one small bit of executive privilege and wish my father, Jerry, a happy 75th birthday. Today is his 75th birthday. So happy birthday dad. He sometimes listen in on these calls. I don't know if he's listening in now. If not, he'll catch it on the replay.
Okay. Into the important topics now, starting on important business topics now. Starting on Slide 5. Look, this has been a pretty wild 12 months for Roivant, and we continue to see just tremendous execution momentum across our development portfolio. An update that will get drowned in some of the other things for today, but it's actually pretty great is that brepocitinib was awarded breakthrough designation and break therapy designation for cutaneous sarcoidosis, which just underscores indication selection and development there in terms of what that could mean for those patients.
Obviously, also in this quarter, we announced LPP as an indication for brepo, and that study is already enrolling, and we're excited about how that's going. And then a ton of work ongoing in commercial prep for the launch in DM, which assuming FDA goes as we expect it to, we'll launch by the end of September.
Obviously, the biggest data update for today in the FcRn franchise is what I mentioned earlier, which is that 1402 showed, we think, clinically meaningful, pretty exciting ACR response rates across ACR 20, 50 and 70 in D2T RA study in the open-label portion, we'll talk more about that, but that's obviously encouraging data that we're looking forward to spending some time on.
We're also fully enrolled on CLE, with top line data expected in that study in the second half. And earlier in this quarter, we announced the failure of the batoclimab studies in TED, but also the hyperthyroid patients showed normalization, which was supportive of our Graves studies, which are ongoing and continue to enroll well also.
And then finally, hard to believe it was this quarter, but earlier this quarter, we also announced our $2.25 billion settlement with Moderna, and we expect to receive the first portion of that payment, the $950 million upfront in July. So just an incredibly busy quarter of execution for us and an incredibly busy fiscal year for us. It's really hard to believe how much has changed in year for Roivant.
None of that, though, is to say on Slide 6 that we're done. And the next 12 months are also incredibly exciting. Obviously, one of the most important things going on, we will hopefully be launching brepocitinib in dermatomyositis by the end of September. The Phase III study in cutaneous sarcoidosis, we expect to begin this year as well, and we expect the NIU Phase III top line data in the back half of this year. So a transformative year for brepo as all of that comes around. We'll spend time on this today, but the mosliciguat PH-ILD Phase IIb top line data is expected in the second half. That also will potentially underscore that as a really important program. And hopefully, look forward to that data and just talk more about it.
Obviously, D2T RA, some of the data is around today, but we're looking forward to providing a pretty significant update later this year with a little bit more data as well as detailed analysis we're doing at a patient level and hopefully, with some feedback from FDA on a go-forward plan given what we've now seen. And then obviously, we'll get the CLE PoC top line data as well. And then next year is a huge year with 1402 data in Graves and MG coming in. So a ton to look forward to and frankly, as much in the windshield as in the rearview mirror. I think I've got the car analogy right there.
Great. Okay. I'm going to go in now without spending more time on the preamble and talk a little bit about this D2T RA data, which I would call surprisingly good. We were pretty excited to see what we saw here is slowly been a little bit hard to process just how exciting this data is. And so we're still doing a lot of work on it.
As a reminder on Slide 8 of what we're talking about today, this was a unique study designed in a few ways. First of all, as I think everyone is aware, this was a study in heavily refractory patients. Every patient in this study in addition to failing steroids and DMARDs, also had to fail at least 2 advanced lines of therapy. So most commonly, that's 2 of, for example, TNFs, JAKs and IL-6s. And we'll talk a little bit about that. There's obviously some other things that could be in that bucket as well.
The study also had a pretty strict entry criteria on autoantibody positivity. We had a criteria on ACPA positive above a certain level, and that was also specific to the study and design. And then the other way, which the study was unique because it was a randomized withdrawal study with 2 periods. First, an open-label active treatment period of 16 weeks of high-dose 1402, 600 milligrams, followed by a period 2, 12-week rerandomization where ACR 20 responders at week 14 and 16, both are rerandomized into a 12-week randomized withdrawal period, where some of them stay at 600, some go down to 300 and some go down to placebo.
What we have to share today is preliminary data. We're still actually cleaning and finalizing it all, but it shouldn't move very much from here. On the top line treatment effect from period 1. Period 2 is still ongoing with more than half of patients still being dosed in the study, but we don't have any data or information about period 2 to share today. And then even for period 1, there's a whole bunch of data like IgG, for example, that we haven't analyzed fully and are not ready to share. So nothing to say about it other than that we're going to be sharing a pretty limited subset of this data today.
On Slide 9, you can see baseline characteristics for the patients in the study. We got over 165 evaluable patients. I'm not going to go through all of this in detail other than to say this is quite a sick patient population. Obviously, by design, it's refractory, and we'll talk more about that in a second. But for example, if you look at the DAS28 CRP score of 6.1, that's quite high for a study like this. There's a bunch of measures on here that suggest a quite sick population, which was the goal, right? This is the population that we set out to enroll. And so we feel good about who's in the study.
On prior lines of therapy, specifically on 10, so you can see on the right-hand side, we succeeded with our entry criteria that is basically all of these patients have failed more than 2 advanced therapy mechanisms. And that's very different than either the NIPO study or really any of the later line RA studies that have been run. And actually, one thing that we're highlighting today which I think is interesting, 65% of these patients roughly have failed specifically JAK inhibitors. And notably, we'll highlight this elsewhere as well. Basically, every single one of the patients who failed a JAK inhibitor also failed a TNF. So this is a TNF and JAK refractory patient population that we're focused on.
So look, Slide 11 is the headline here. And the headline is with all of the appropriate caveats for an open-label study, these numbers are high. We saw 73% of patients roughly with ACR 20 responses. And not just that, but we saw quite deep responses. We saw over half of patients with an ACR 50 and over 1/3 of patients with an ACR 70. And notably, once you get onto the deeper end of that with ACR 50s and ACR 70s, you just don't see a lot of placebo response in that level of responder analysis. And so it feels to us like looking at this data, there's something going on that's meaningful and interesting with this drug and something that merits enthusiasm and a lot of further investigation, and we're certainly doing all that work now as we get ready to take the program forward.
I'll highlight on Slide 12, the one other bit of interesting data from the study that we're able to present today, which is we pulled out the subset of patients who are JAK experienced. Remember, those patients, 107 of them are both JAK and TNF experienced all of them. Some of them have also failed something else as well. And one of the things that I think is maybe most exciting about this data is it's basically fully preserved in that subset.
And so as you think about that opportunity where these patients have really failed all of the most advanced options available to them, we're able to deliver in an open-label setting, pretty exciting response rates for those patients, which I think bodes well for the exact biological thesis with which we ran the study to begin with that autoantibody positivity is an orthogonal mechanism, some of the other anti-inflammatory options. And then for ACPA positive patients, this could be an effective treatment option.
So look, I think on Slide 13, just to reiterate what we're showing here, look, these are sick patients, a difficult-to-treat patient population who have failed a lot or all of the available options and come in with highly active disease. We showed really great response rates in the data that we're excited to see how they evolve through the rest of the study and on deeper patient-level analysis. And also notably, this is the largest patient population dosed with IMVT-1402 to date. It was safe and well tolerated in the study, nothing new drug-related from a safety signal perspective identified. So a clean data set overall and further underscoring what we think we've got with 1402.
Path forward from here, obviously, you look at this data and you feel pretty good about what this could be, significant potential benefit, a differentiated mechanism, a difficult-to-treat population with not a lot of options. So we're actively working right now to get ready to talk to FDA about this data and plan a path forward. The data is encouraging. I'll make one comment about it, which is the depth of responses is exactly what's exciting about the data set. It's exactly what makes us believe there is something beyond placebo happening in the data set.
But as you'll recall, the randomized withdrawal period, the primary endpoint of period 2 is do patients taken off drug lose their ACR 20 response in 12 weeks, which was a relatively short period to begin with and almost certainly would have been fine if we had seen more marginal benefit on ACR 20. But the truth is once you're looking at ACR 50 and 70 responders, I think the bar has actually gotten a fair amount higher for period 2. And so paradoxically, I think we still have a good shot of success there. But in some ways, period 2 is less meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And I think there are plenty of scenarios where we don't see a p-value in period 2 and continue forward with the drug given the overall quality of this data.
And conversely, depending on FDA's feedback, potentially situations where we do see a p-value in period 2 and just need to make sure we're comfortable with the plan forward. So I think much more interesting than the period 2 data at this point is more patient level analysis as well as a result of those FDA discussions, and we expect to share all of that in the second half of this year. We're working on it right now. And my hope, given the quality of the data that we'll be coming back to you with an enthusiastic update about next steps here that lay the groundwork for just a really big opportunity.
Remember, we presented some data at our Investor Day suggesting this is at least a 70,000 patient population and some more specific revised commercial analysis that Immunovant has now done that looks like that number could be 85,000 or higher. It's a big patient population in need. And I think underscoring that the speed with which this trial enrolled, the enthusiasm that physicians have for putting patients on study is just further evidence that there's really something interesting here.
And with that, actually, I just want to also just give a shout out to the Immunovant team who have continued to execute really well. Obviously, the data itself is strong, but also the speed of enrollment, the speed with which we're moving through the study, the full enrollment on CLE. And I think that spans all of our programs. I think we're excited about what -- obviously, what Priovant has been able to do with brepocitinib from a clinical enrollment perspective. We're excited about the speed of enrollment for mosliciguat. Obviously, the quality of that data we'll find out soon. But look, we're really excited about what we've been able to do across the portfolio of clinical execution. So much appreciation for the enormous number of people who are working towards those goals.
Cool. I'm going to pivot now to mosliciguat and do a little bit of a data preview there because the next time we get together, that data could potentially be very close in front of us. And so we wanted to get out ahead of that and give people a chance to just ground themselves in what's coming as we did last year around this time or a little later for brepo in dermatomyositis.
Look, I'll do a little bit of an introduction here. And then you all heard from Drew back at Investor Day in December. He's in the room with me and he's going to talk through a little bit more about the program. Look, intense unmet medical need. These patients, in the extreme, a significant proportion of them die. They're very sick. There's currently only one approved mechanism with 2 therapies, and we think there's probably 200,000 patients across the U.S. and Europe. And that one mechanism for treprostinil is underscoring multiple really great launches at this point. So we're excited to see the commercial enthusiasm and excited to see these patients have access to something that provides real benefit already, and we're hoping to add to that.
Mosliciguat has a completely differentiated mechanism of action for the disease. It's an sGC activator. It's an inhaled sGC activator. It's potentially the first non-treprostinil that could be available for these patients. We expect this to be a polypharmacy combination therapy market as PAH has been. And we think mosliciguat has a chance to be -- first line has a chance to be a major part of the treatment paradigm, and we're just looking forward to getting this data moving forward there.
In our Phase I data across healthy volunteers of pulmonary hypertension patients, and Drew will remind us of this data specifically, we saw among the best PVR reductions to date. And one thing we're going to remind people of today is that although we saw a 38% PVR reduction in some of those patients, that basically anything that has ever showed 20-plus percent PVR reductions has been able to deliver clinically meaningful benefit. I think it's true that there has not been any class of drug showing a 20-plus percent PVR reduction that has not gone on to be a commercially successful class of drugs. And then finally, as a reminder, unsurprisingly, the top line data from that study is on track, and we expect to get it in the second half of 2026. It's a 135-patient study.
So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Drew, who's going to take you through the next handful of slides here on the program, and then I'll come back for a little summary at the end and the rest of the presentation. Drew?
That's great. Thanks a million, Matt. And I can tell you there's a lot of excitement about mosliciguat. Mosli is an inhaled sGC activator that's delivered directly to the lungs to activate sGC and restore impaired sGC function. sGC is a key enzyme in the NO-sGC-cGMP pathway. And in oxidative stress environments like PH-ILD, nitric oxide may be reduced and the sGC binding site can become impaired, leading to sGC dysfunction.
Now typically, sGC is activated when nitric oxide engages sGC in the presence of heme and cGMP is then produced. Unlike cGMP sGC stimulators, that requires nitric oxide and heme to activate the sGC. Inhaled mosliciguat binds to the heme pocket independent of the need for NO and heme, producing cGMP, which results in vasodilation of pulmonary arteries and potential reduction of fibrosis and inflammation of the lung tissue.
Next slide. So we know many pulmonary diseases are heterogeneous in nature, and that fact can make patient treatment complex. To start, there's disease of the pulmonary vasculature and disease of the lung parenchyma. The combination of these 2 disorders is embodied in pulmonary hypertension with interstitial lung disease, which is the first indication we're exploring in our Phase II FOCUS study. We believe mosli has the potential to address both the pulmonary vascular and the lung parenchymal diseases experienced with patients with PH-ILD.
Mosli, next slide. I want to make sure that...
Let me just call out the slide numbers for everyone...
Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I just want to make sure we're advancing.
Mosli's preclinical properties led Bayer to take mosliciguat into Phase I trials in a total of 170 patients, including healthy volunteers and patients with group 1 PAH and Group 4 CTEPH. In the Phase I study, Bayer studied mosliciguat in 132 healthy volunteers and 38 PAH patients. The healthy volunteers underwent studies with single and multiple dose formats and mosli proved to be well tolerated, active and have an extended half-life of approximately 40 hours. And in the Phase Ib ATMOS study, 38 patients with PH were dosed in a single ascending dose format and mosli again proved to be very active, producing deep PVR reductions and was very well tolerated.
On to Slide 20. So given mosliciguat's mechanism of action and inhaled route of administration, one would expect to see notable reductions in pulmonary vascular resistance associated with hemodynamic changes. And with one dose of mosli in PH patients, that's exactly what we saw. A single dose of mosliciguat reduced PVR in these patients early and sustained through the 3-hour observation period with a mean PVR reduction of greater than 30% and a mean peak PVR reduction of approximately 38%. This places mosli's PVR reductions amongst the highest reductions seen in single and multi-dose trials in PAH treatment space.
With one dose of mosliciguat, we also saw cGMP levels rise as measured in plasma with no associated clinically meaningful systemic side effects, including systemic blood pressure and heart rate. We also observed the desired impact on other hemodynamic measures, including mean reduction in mPAP of up to 20% and mean increase in cardiac output of up to 25%.
Slide 21. Mosliciguat was also well tolerated in Phase I patients in healthy volunteers and patients with PAH, with treatment-emergent adverse events being mild to moderate in intensity across both groups. And all doses were well tolerated, and we did not see significant cough, which is often exacerbated by inhaled treprostinils, and we did not see clinically relevant systemic side effects, which we believe in great part was due to the inhaled direct delivery of mosli to the lungs and the limited bioavailability of mosli in circulation.
Slide 22. So with mosli's Phase I tolerability and clinical profile, we look to take mosli into Phase II development, an indication where there exists a major unmet medical need. And we felt that PH-ILD was an exciting opportunity for development. Given the primary site of PH-ILD, it's in the lungs involving the pulmonary vasculature and the lung parenchyma and the currently approved treprostinil treatments have high treatment burden as well as tolerability challenges with highly variable efficacy. And so mosli lines up really nicely in this moment. Since it was delivered directly to the lungs as a once-daily dosing, that's been very well tolerated and produced limited incremental cough and systemic side effects in Phase I and has the potential to address both the pulmonary vascular and lung parenchymal diseases.
Slide 23. So to go a little deeper into PH-ILD patient populations and the opportunity, PH-ILD represents a large and underserved market where new drugs are sorely needed for these patients. There are up to approximately 200,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe, likely underdiagnosed given the lack of treatment options in particular. And this is a sick population and severe subgroup of PH, less than a 5-year median survival and the combination of PH and ILD represents an increasingly poor prognosis compared to each alone. And I mentioned previously the lack of treatment as there are currently only 2 approved FDA treprostinil drugs, leaving room for significant improvement.
Slide 24. Now the core field of drugs in development for the treatment of PH-ILD is rather sparse. There are 3 companies, all with treprostinil treatments in different formulations and all of these treprostinil treatments continue to have a range of challenges. Seralutinib with its different mechanism has also run into recent challenges as Gossamer's Phase III PROSERA trial in PAH did not meet its primary endpoints, coming off challenges in Phase II as well. And the result of the recent PROSERA trial outcome, Gossamer has paused its planned studies in PH-ILD.
So mosli, on the other hand, with its first-in-class opportunity as an inhaled sGC activator has once-daily dosing, positive tolerability and positive activity in its profile from Phase I studies, and this really positions mosli to be a leader in the treatment of patients with PH-ILD upon its approval.
I also wanted to share about -- and this is Slide 25. I also wanted to share our thoughts about how we see PH-ILD and the market and how it's going to develop. We actually think the PAH market provides a likely road map for that development. In the early days, supportive care was the only option for patients with PAH. And this is what we currently see, and that's the reality of PH-ILD patients in most regions outside of the U.S. where there are limited treatment options.
Over time, drugs with newer mechanisms were approved and combination therapy involving multiple mechanisms of action became more common as the median survival of these PAH patients has also steadily increased as time went on from 2.5 years to where they are today at 12 to 15 years and treatment guidelines evolved alongside the data, which reinforce the evolution of the treatment paradigm.
Today, revenue in the PAH market has really reached a stellar level at $100 billion in aggregate sales and a robust $7 billion per year with 15 drugs approved, and there remains a good pricing environment and commercial opportunity for these newer therapies because this is driven by the complex nature of PAH.
And finally, a key takeaway is that today, over 40% of patients with PAH initiate their treatment with dual therapy and 15% of these patients will add a third therapy by the end of the year. This combo therapy, as Matt said, is really the norm. And so we are currently deep into our Phase II study exploring mosliciguat in our blinded Phase II placebo-controlled and randomized study in adults in PH-ILD. The study is a multicenter study across the globe. We're targeting 120 patients. We ended enrollment with 135 patients.
During the screening period, the investigators look hard to find patients to confirm ILD, elevated baseline PVR indicative of PH and limits on the level of fibrosis and emphysema as determined by CAT scan. If eligible for the study, the patients then randomized 2:1 placebo -- drug to placebo and then they go through a rapid up titration, and that moves from 1 milligram to 2 milligrams to 4 milligrams. And Matt may have spoken about it, but we've seen really great progress there with the vast majority, over 95% of our patients achieving that 4-milligram dose and sustaining on well through the week 16 period. So that's been very attractive and positive.
And at week 16, the primary endpoint is change from baseline PVR, and that's determined at 16 weeks alongside the secondary endpoint of change from baseline of 6-minute walk and change from baseline NT-proBNP. And then the patient moved on to week 24, secondary and exploratory endpoints, and then they all go on drug if they weren't on drug into the long-term extension.
Slide 27. So very importantly, and as we get closer to data in the second half of this year, we focused very heavily in designing our Phase II study and defining our patient population. And we carefully designed around the Seventh World Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension, and these guidelines are crucial for PH-ILD patient selection. We targeted patients with worsening symptoms of PH, mild-to-moderate impaired lung function based on pulmonary functional testing, elevated PVR and mean pulmonary arterial pressures were crucial. And also, we excluded severe emphysema to ensure a cleaner ILD population. The result is that the study population closely mirrors the recommended guidelines and more severe patients.
And on Slide 28, as you can see, this effort is reflected in our baseline data in FOCUS. Our mean PVR came in at 7.1 wood units, so very elevated. Mean pulmonary arterial pressures of 39.3, consistent with our desired thresholds and confirming we enrolled patients with significant hemodynamic involvement.
The lung disease mix also looks well balanced, and we protected for emphysema, both in number of patients and level of severity as determined by the CAT scan. And this was very important from all of those learnings. And we also explored background therapy, including exploring PDE5s on background, and this is also consistent with real-world practice. So this careful patient selection and enrichment gives us confidence we've enrolled the right population to detect meaningful treatment effect and are very much looking forward to our Phase II data in the second half of this year.
Matt, back to you.
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Drew. So look, a lot to be excited about on the program here. I just want to -- a couple of quick reminders and a summary on Slide 22 and 23 here -- on Slide 22. So Drew talked about this in detail, but just as a reminder, the primary endpoint of this study is PVR. That is the same as the primary endpoint for the Phase II programs across a variety of other PH-ILD studies or mechanisms or drugs. And so we're doing the same thing following a well-trodden path there.
We will then, in Phase III, move to 6-minute walk and other clinically relevant endpoints as the way that the trial is measured. I want to remind everybody, this study is not powered to achieve a p-value on 6-minute walk. We may or may not achieve a p-value. And what we're really looking for is affirmation of dosing, affirmation of safety, affirmation of PVR in this patient population. And we will obviously look for interesting trends and patient level data on 6-minute walk. But I want to make sure we've been clear ahead of time. This is not a study designed to achieve a p-value on 6-minute walk, and that's not what we're looking for as our own criteria to go from here. That's the point I wanted to highlight. I want to highlight it now while having not seen any of that data so that I can't possibly be telegraphing anything about the study other than how it was designed.
On Slide 23, just to recap what Drew has said here. First of all, again, with appreciation of the Pulmovant team. This study enrolled very quickly with all the patients enrolled within 12 months of the first patient being dosed. Early discontinuation rates compare favorably to what we've seen in previous PH-ILD studies. Look, with this and $20, you can buy 2 pizzas at Domino's, but our investigators are enthusiastic about the program. They're excited. The feedback is good. I think we're feeling great about how the study is being run.
And then -- and this is a great thing for safety. It's a great thing for the opportunity. As Drew said, 95% of the participants reached the maximum dose during their titration and all of the blinded safety reviews and the ongoing assessments by the DMC have continued to affirm the safety of the program and allow people to run the study. Obviously, there's lots of things that don't get revealed until the data is unblinded, but it certainly gives us comfort that the patients are achieving a high dose and the things are moving as they should be. So again, thank you to Drew. Happy to provide this update now ahead of that data. I'm really looking forward to seeing the outcome from this program in just a few short months at this point. So looking forward to it.
Lastly, in terms of the pipeline updates today, I'm just going to give a brief recap of where we are on brepo. Brepo has been the focus of so much of our conversation for the past 10 months. It's less of a focus today as we're in execution mode there. But just as a reminder, on Slide 25 here -- sorry, that's -- I'm looking at the wrong slide numbers. As a reminder on the next slide, on the first slide of the brepo section, it's Slide 32, sorry. Look, this is a huge opportunity for us. There's possibly close to 300,000 patients addressable by the existing indications and just a ton of data coming over the next 12 to 24 months between the potential approval, obviously, in dermatomyositis, but also the NIU data, the potential for the NIU launch, the ongoing program that we'll start enrolling soon in cutaneous sarcoid, the currently enrolling study at LPP and potentially more indications to come. So just a lot of great stuff coming for brepo and a really exciting moment from here.
On Slide 33, we've put this up a few times, but just to remind people, first of all, these are sick patients. And there are really very few options for them in dermatomyositis. As a reminder, 75% of these patients are on principally steroids and in many cases, on very high doses of steroids, over 10 milligrams a day for a good portion of the year. And beyond that, it's a combination of IVIG, which, as a reminder, the sort of established treatment paradigm for IVIG in dermatomyositis is somewhere between 4 and 5 days a month consecutive in an infusion center. So a really arduous path. And then other than that, it's off-label stuff, much of what has not been successful in studies, but is used because there's no other options. So we feel really great looking forward here to our ability to bring a new option to these patients.
And on Slide 34, further underscoring -- and again, this is not new. We presented this before, further underscoring the need here. These patients are treated -- as with PAH for that matter, with polypharmacy on multiple lines of therapy, they're bouncing around. They have accumulated organ damage with high systemic corticosteroid exposures. It's just a tough experience for these patients, and we think a new option is going to go far.
We're not saying a lot on Slide 35 about our commercial progress. First of all, it is and will become a more competitive field. And second of all, where mosli just head down in execution mode. But I'll just say, suffice to say, we're doing all the things that you would expect us to be doing at this stage. We're in the thick of payer engagement. We're working with the physician community. We're partnering with specialty pharmacies to make sure distribution is effective for these patients.
We've built a strong commercial team that we're really excited about, and we continue to do unbranded patient engagement. We talked about dermatomyositis.com when we got together in December. And I'm super pleased with the work that team is doing. I think they are executing on the commercial side with the same vigor that they executed on the clinical side, and I'm excited to see what we're able to do there later this year and beyond.
We have also been moving along on the scientific and medical side. As you look at Slide 36, this is a small subset of the presentations that have been made of this data, but this data has been presented all over at this point and continues to be presented all over, both at the major medical meetings as well as at a whole host of regional myositis meetings and rheumatology meetings. And notably, in March, the Phase III data was published in NEJM, which is a testament to how exciting the data is, a testament to the importance of the study, the quality of the study, and we couldn't be more excited for that publication as well.
Finally, just a super quick recap on LPP, which we announced just about 1.5 months ago. A fourth indication for brepocitinib. It's a highly morbid disorder with no FDA-approved therapies. These patients are miserable. They are in a ton of pain. It's a really tough disease that in addition to pain causes itch, burning, redness, scaling, generally irreversible hair loss. There's probably 100,000 or so such patients in the U.S. It's been growing in prevalence over time, and there's nothing approved. So we have an opportunity to do something really interesting for these patients.
Our trial design on Slide 38, we talked about when we first unveiled the program is a sort of continuous enrolling Phase IIb/III pivotal that's designed to give us endpoint validation and is going to get us into hopefully registration there. So we're really looking forward to that.
And there's just a ton of reasons to be excited about the program on Slide 39, the high unmet need in LPP, the mechanistic rationale for brepo is strong. It's a Th1-dominant disease, where dual JAK1/TYK2 inhibition should work specifically well. We think we've got the right trial design, and there's obviously some overlapping prescriber base and KOL community with our existing indications. So it all sort of fits together, and we're excited to see how that program continues from here.
Great. Okay. I'm going to wrap up quickly with the financial update, and then we'll get to Q&A. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this. Financial quarter was relatively straightforward. We continue to be in a strong position from a cash perspective, $4.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of 3/31 before the Moderna settlement, no debt. We continue to retire shares, repurchased a fair amount in this quarter. We continue to have an active program. And spend continues to be sort of as it has been. Over time, R&D has grown a bit and the scope of the programs have increased, but that's all for the good and looking forward to the future.
There is a couple of slides in here that I'm not going to talk to now, but we've gotten a few questions on accounting treatment as the launch gets closer. And so there's some good reference material in here on Slides 44 and 45 if you're trying to build models and understand our financial statements in the future. And look, I've talked about this a fair amount already, but on Slide 46 and 47, we just have a great run ahead of us here. We've got a lot to do. Obviously, we've been fortunate and have had high-quality execution so far with the quality of our data. It sets a high bar for the stuff coming next, which I couldn't be more excited for. So a lot of really great data coming in our existing programs and new programs and looking forward to sharing all of it in the period to come as well as obviously getting back on the commercial arena and watching all of that play through.
So with that, I'm going to say thank you again. I'm going to say thank you to, obviously, all of you for listening. Thank you to all of our teams, Pulmovant, Priovant and Immunovant for continuing to run high-quality studies, executing well, generating quality data, couldn't ask more of these drugs, couldn't ask more of these teams. And obviously, a great thank you to the investigators and the patients who work with us and make this happen. So thank you to everybody who makes this work. And I'm going to pass it over to the operator for Q&A so that we can get to it.
[Operator Instructions] And our first question is going to come from Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
2. Question Answer
Happy birthday to Papa Gline as well. Maybe you could just contextualize the ACR responses you saw here at 16 weeks first. I think more kind of typical in later-stage studies, there's a 24-week reporting time line. And how would you expect those responses to trend with more time on therapy with kind of implications then towards the randomized withdrawal phase?
Yes. Perfect. Appreciate it. Look, I think the first answer to that question is we don't know. This is the first time patients have been treated with this drug and the first time this patient population has been studied this way in detail. Sicker people tend to need more time to get better in general, and that's why I made the comments I made about the Phase II sort of randomized withdrawal period. But in terms of week 16 versus week 24, I don't know. I'll say I don't think there was anything specific about the data leading into week 16 that suggested we were done. And I think there's certainly a possibility for continued improvement with therapy over time. But we'll find out as we look at that part of the patient population. Thanks, Corinne, I appreciate the question.
And the next question is going to come from Yasmeen Rahimi with Piper Sandler.
Congrats team and congrats to Papa Gline for also achieving a major milestone of 75 years. So happy birthday to him as well. Quick question on mosli. Congrats, we're very much looking forward to the data. You've been very granular on sort of the baseline as well as what you're seeing of up titration and safety. Have you been able to look at whether your assumptions for standard deviation in PVR and 6-minute are sort of tracking in alignment with what you're seeing? And I'll jump back in the queue?
Yes. Thanks. I appreciate it. So look, I think the short answer to that question is we are largely blinded to all of that data and we don't have a lot of information about it. So it's hard to say. But I think given the patient population we enrolled, we feel pretty good about where the study is headed. And we think we've got an efficacious drug. But we don't have a lot of information about sort of ongoing distributions because the way the study has been blinded. Thank you.
And the next question will come from Andy Chen with Wolfe Research.
So Matt, I'm aware that you said with Immunovant, you haven't analyzed IgG reduction, but that's still my biggest question. So other FcRn drugs, they don't seem to be able to achieve this level of efficacy in RA and people blame it on fab glycosylation. Do you somehow have ACPA antibody reduction data? Or will we see that data before you unblind the period 2 data? And do you expect ACPA reduction to be less than IgG reduction?
Look, I don't have that data now, as I said, so I can't answer the question. We know from our Phase I studies that IMVT-1402 suppresses IgG quite deeply relative to other drugs. And given the quality of the clinical data we've seen on ACR, I think it's certainly a thing to speculate on that the overall profile of 1402 is part of what's contributing to our ability to deliver this data. Obviously, it's also a different patient population that has been studied, and it could also be partially patient selection. And I think that could certainly be playing a role here. So I think those are both important.
Look, I think we will continue to analyze this data. I don't know at this stage exactly when we're going to present what data. So I don't have a good answer to like what you're going to see before or after the period 2 is unblinded. I think we will provide more information about what we've seen, about what our analysis looks like when we're sort of prepared to talk about the full future of the program. I'll say, I think mosli, this has been a blessing but also its curse. We've been -- wonder if this data is going to also establish a leadership role for us along the lines of which others may follow. So I do think we're going to be a little bit conservative on what exactly we say from a competitive perspective. But overall, I think the data are starting to speak for themselves here in terms of the quality of what we're able to do, and I hope we are continuing to able to see that as the data mature. Thank you, Andy.
And our next question will come from David Risinger with Leerink Partners.
So congrats on the phenomenal data this morning. My question is on mosli. So if the Phase II FOCUS study surprisingly shows a statistically significant benefit on 6-minute walk, could it represent a pivotal study? And what would the requirements be in that scenario for a future NDA filing? And then just one other on mosli. Is the company considering development of mosli in any additional indications?
Thanks, Dave. On stat sig of 6-minute walk, I think it's impossible to say exactly what we would do until we saw the data. And so if the data look good enough to support a productive conversation with FDA, I think we would have a conversation with FDA and the FDA has been aggressive lately on conversations about single pivotal designs. So never say never is the answer. I want to be clear, it's not the base case expectation and the study is not powered to show a benefit on 6-minute walk. So we'll see what we see. But look, I think given where we're at, we'll certainly take that as we go.
And in other indications, I'll say, every sign around mosli is pointing to an effective exciting agent with a lot of things we could do with it as we watch the field around us. Others are showing us good ideas all the time in terms of how these mechanisms might work. And we have some of our own that others haven't shown us yet. And so I think there are absolutely opportunities for indication expansion. Although I remember we got this question about 40 times when we first unveiled mosli and our comment then, which is still our comment now is, man, PH-ILD is an area with a lot of unmet need. And even if it were the only thing we ever did with mosli, it's a big opportunity with a lot of value to deliver to patients. So I think there's a lot of different ways to go there.
And our next question will come from Yaron Werber with TD Cowen.
Great. And also congrats on the difficult to treat RA study. So a question actually about that. Is there any chance you can amend that protocol and essentially run period 1 and then sort of get new patients completely into period 2. So you're not going to have that step-down issue? And then secondly, based on our analysis, we think that about 75% of patients are ACPA positive. Is that still kind of what you think the data shows?
Yes. Thanks, Yaron. Look, I think on your first question, there's a lot of things you could imagine doing. I think the truth is between this data and detailed patient level analysis of this data plus the period 2 data, we're going to have a pretty good sense for what we've got and a pretty good sense for what we need to do going forward. And so I don't know that we would gain that much from dragging this study out given the quality of the data we're seeing here. So I think we're going to do that analysis in detail. I think we're going to have the conversation with FDA, and I think we're going to plot a course forward. But I think we'll have a pretty clear sense. And then look, we've done some commercial analysis of the market in various settings. There's an updated version of analysis actually in Immunovant's 10-K that was filed today. I think your number is within the range of what we have seen in the literature for ACPA-positive patients generally. Thank you, Yaron.
And our next question comes from Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
In this RA EXPLORE trial, since there's no washout period between period 1 and 2, I'm curious if you have some thought around the tail of the efficacy from dose going from drug to placebo. You said that period 2 might be less meaningful. Are you saying that 12 week may not be enough to fully drive the separation?
Yes. I appreciate the question, Brian. And just to reiterate, I just like -- look, I think, first of all, it's hard to know exactly what the tail will be at the end of dosing at the end of week 16. So that's like one piece of this. Obviously, period 2 is blinded, so we don't know now anything about what's in there. So that's all sort of a part of that.
Look, I'll say the other thing is, and just to reiterate what I said earlier, I think given that the period 2 primary endpoint is losing an ACR 20 response, if you imagine a patient who has achieved an ACR 50 or an ACR 70 response, even if they start worsening on the first day of period 2, it just takes some time to give up that level of response. And so that's where I'd say like the quality of the data in period 2 is -- the quality of the data in period 1 is it's always counting against period 2, irrespective of the pharmacokinetic effects of withdrawal of the drug. So I think it's -- remember, every ACR 70 responder is an ACR 50 responder is an ACR 20 responder. So it just takes time to come off that hill. We have people who've achieved a lot of benefit. So that's that. Thank you.
And our next question will come from Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
For PH-ILD, I'm curious what are your thoughts around the Phase Ib data and the interpretability of that data in the small number of patients. Specifically, why did the 4-milligram cohort outperform so much relative to the 2-milligram dose on cGMP and also cardiac output?
And I wonder if you're expecting -- if you should expect a big increase in cardiac output since mosliciguat is locally delivered to the lungs and it's not really a systemic.
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate the question. Look, I think -- the first answer is 4 is twice 2. So there's just a lot more drug being delivered. The second point I'll make is, remember, there are 170 patients across the Healthy Volunteers program. And so while the specific study that you're referring to may have had a smaller patients, we have a large body of evidence at this point across mosliciguat being administered in a lot of different settings.
And I'd say the dose-dependent improvements in cGMP were broadly consistent across all of that data. The dose-dependent improvements in PVR were broadly consistent across all of that data. So I think we like generally think we know what we've got.
I think with a single dose, you saw a real robust growth and immediately right away in cGMP. I think the thing that was exciting for us is it demonstrated that the inhaled approach was really buffering us from a systemic result. and that was really important for us. And I think we'll see that as we go forward.
This inhaled approach is so important because you can get the drug to the well-ventilated parts of the lung without worrying about those systemic effects. And so I think that's the biggest takeaway was we saw cardiac output, we saw mPAP reductions. These are the things you want to see, but these were single-dose studies. So now we'll see them much more robust fashion in our Phase II.
Thanks, Drew. Yes, the other thing I'll say, it just occurred to me as Drew was answering that question is, look, I think one of the things that makes PH-ILD exciting as a commercial opportunity is it really requires inhaled therapy precisely because of this effect.
And so the competitive landscape will be thinner and the ability to develop drugs for this market will be more challenging because you need to sort of thread the needle on systemic vasodilation. And so we feel that gives us an advantage as well and frankly increases the level of need for the patients. So look, I think it is all setting up in that way. Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate the question.
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Derek Archila with Wells Fargo.
This is Jacob on for Derek. Congrats on the 1402 data. So real quick on safety. I just want to clarify, and confirm there were no LDL changes or other events of interest observed, right?
And then secondly, on the -- given the strong activity in period 1, how does this informing your trial design strategy in the future? I know you mentioned that this is likely one of a couple of registrational trials, but do you think this data changes that?
Thanks, Derek. Great questions, both, although I'll remind politely for the other analysts we're trying to keep to one given the number in the queue. But I appreciate both questions and I'll take both of them.
First of all, on safety, in fact, what I can say here is not just in this study, but across now hundreds of patients dosed across 1402 studies the DMC has been watching that issue, and we have seen no impact on albumin or LDL across the hundreds of patients dosed with 1402. So while I don't have the very specific data to share for this study numerically, I think the answer is we've seen literally nothing on albumin or LDL from 1402.
And then, look, given the level of activity in period 1 on trial design, I think the answer is we're going to have to take this data when we get it. We're going to have to look closely at it, and we're going to have to have a conversation with FDA about where we stand and what we need to do. Obviously, the stronger the data from the first study or from this study overall, the more compelling that conversation is. And that’s why I think we're excited about this data.
Our belief is that we should be able to run a lean program from here, given the patient population we're focused on, given the level of need in this patient population. But that's a conversation we're going to have together with FDA in the months to come. Thanks for the question.
And our next question comes from Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
Congratulations on the data this morning and all the progress. Now that you have this first data in RA for 1402, I'm wondering also how we should be thinking about the CLE data coming up in the second half. Will that readout include the entire 52-week study? Or will that just be the 12-week randomized portion? And what magnitude of treatment effect do you think would be meaningful here?
On the first question -- thank you. I appreciate the questions. On the data, that will just be the 12-week period. That's what we'll have by then. So that's what we'll be able to share. And in terms of what treatment effect will be meaningful, I'll say two things. One is we will have an opportunity to continue to talk about what we expect to see from that study over time, and we'll probably do a little preview of that data before it comes. Secondly, CLE is a little bit different than some of these other indications in that it is commercially more competitive and there's other mechanisms coming.
And so I think the bar for us is not just sort of per se clinical meaningful. I think the bar is like do we think our data is good enough to support a program in the face of where the landscape is headed. And so we're going to look closely at that data. We're going to look at what we see, and we're going to make a decision based on the totality of the data. But I think the bar there is pretty high, and I think we knew that going in. Thanks for the question.
And our next question is going to come from Thomas Smith with Leering Partners.
Congrats on the really stellar RA data here for 1402. Just wanted to ask one, if I could, on the pivotal Graves' program. Any updates you can share with respect to patient enrollment?
I think you were initially kind of gating some of the scale-up activities and trying to get a sense for how the early enrollment trends were going. But just wondering if there's anything that you could share there in terms of pace, cadence and maybe patients being enrolled, anything differing from initial expectations?
Thank you. Yes, it's a great question. Look, I think the short answer is we had a pretty high bar for ourselves when we started the study, and we didn't exactly know because there hadn't been a lot of development in Graves' disease. I think we can now say enrollment's going great. We're on track. We'll have the data in '27, as we previously discussed and a lot of enthusiasm and a growing amount of enthusiasm as we continue to add sites, as docs continue to get comfortable with the study.
So I think overall, really happy with how that program is evolving. And I'll again take the opportunity to say, I think all of our main teams at this point are executing at a really high level from a clinical enrollment perspective, and I think that's been a real driver of value for us. Thank you.
And our next question is going to come from Alex Thompson with Stifel.
Congrats on the data. This is Patrick Colton on for Alex. I guess just kind of building on the path forward here in RA. Looking at period 2, I guess your 300-milligram arm performs just as well as 600 milligram, how are you guys thinking about your dosing strategy going forward in Phase III?
I -- it's fun to sit here and think about like what happens if in the Phase II study we see as good. First of all, it's a randomized withdrawal study. So I was trying to figure out exactly what it would look like for the 300 and 600 to perform equivalently. But look, I think overall, it's just too early to say. We've got to look at the data. This is a patient population with extremely significant unmet need. And without -- I mean, to say without a lot in development is an understatement. I think like basically, we are plowing a new course with this patient population.
So I think we've really got to look at that data and get an outcome from it. I think the inclusion of 300 and 600 in the study was important because FDA, especially in new indications -- especially in indications like RA, is likely to want some dose-ranging information. But I think we're going to have some flexibility, and we're going to get to see.
Historically, there has been separation in IgG reduction, obviously, between 300 and 600. So we'll see how that translates in this population. But I think we got a lot of options here. Thanks for the question. I appreciate it.
And the next question comes from Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Congrats on the impressive data. So maybe on the RA front, given the sample size is quite large, but ultimately, this trial was open label and some of the ACR responses can be susceptible to open-label nature of the trial. So maybe just if you can expand if you have any data on some of the secondary endpoints, which might be less susceptible to open-label design of the trial? And what give -- how much efficacy degradation would you assume as you move from an open label to more of a placebo-controlled trial in a registration trial?
Yes, thanks. This is -- look, it's a great question. It's obviously what was on our mind from the day we first saw the data. I think it is certainly helpful that we're talking about ACR 50 and ACR 70 responses and ACR 20 responses.
I think once you get to that level, sort of spontaneous placebo-style remissions of those kinds are less frequent. We don't have any of the secondaries or additional markers to share. We've been looking at that data hard, and we feel excited about the data based on what we've seen in terms of everything hanging together. But that's about all we're able to say at this point because that's about all we know at this point.
One other thing is we have -- the way the study is designed, the people doing the joint assessments are blinded. So they are doing the assessments without knowing anything about the study, what patients are on, or where in the study they are, or whether they're on drug or placebo. That's obviously only one component of the total here, but it is one way for us to get a little bit of objectivity into a study that is otherwise at this stage, open label, and that is helpful and pretty objective. Thank you.
And our next question comes from William Pickering with Bernstein.
Congrats on the updates. On mosliciguat, you also have a Phase II open label with patients on background treprostinil. What are you hoping to see in that study? And then how are you thinking about broader evidence generation strategy to support reimbursement of mosliciguat in combination with treprostinil?
Yes. So I think in the combo study, we have patients on background treprostinil. Obviously, in the main Phase IIb, we don't have patients on background treprostinil. And the reason we set this up this way is because we know that polypharmacy is going to be a part of the landscape. And so the -- in the subsequent study that we run, we're likely to have some proportion of patients on background treprostinil as well. And it felt like going into that state study with no experience treating patients on both drugs was, for a variety of pretty obvious reasons, a liability.
And so I think the combo study is in part really a safety study. It's just designed to make sure these things can be administered safely together. We will learn from it the information that will help us design the stratification rules, help us understand better who's going to be on what in the subsequent study. But I think beyond that, it's hard to say at this point. And that's -- the combo study is still in pretty early days, so we don't have much to say about it. But Drew, anything you'd add to that?
I think that's exactly the case. We decided not to go on top of inhaled treprostinil in the first FOCUS study. We were initially looking at our drug in single-agent activity in PH-ILD, and we wanted to have some time to understand that population, understand mosliciguat. Also, as you know, treprostinils do have a sticky issue with cough, and we wanted to make sure that our drug would have a clear path to be able to demonstrate its tolerability profile, which I think has been relatively impressive.
So with that, in the later days, we decided with the team to go a little deeper and look at mosliciguat on top of inhaled treprostinil, given the confidence we had in mosliciguat after seeing it in our FOCUS study, of course, in an aggregated setting. So with that as a backdrop, as Matt said, we're early in the days, but we actually don't expect there to be much of an issue there, but we definitely want to understand that from a dosing and safety perspective.
And the next question is going to come from Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainright.
Congrats on the data progress. Matt, I'm just curious, in terms of the RA data, if you've had a chance to sort of talk with some of the key KOLs and clinicians on the data. I'm just curious what their sort of feedback is on, and if they were more focused on the depth of response than you saw, or the breadth of response. And obviously you’ve kind of had both, so you don't necessarily have to choose. But if there's anything that was striking to them from the initial data set?
Thanks, Doug. So look, we have obviously a bunch of KOLs involved with the study. Therefore, we have those conversations continuously and with some of the important ones for the field who have been on multiple of these studies as well. I think in general, the answer is they're super impressed. I think one KOL told our team roughly as a quote, "You can't fake ACR70s like this." That's the opinion of one physician. I think it's true at some level, but ultimately, we'll have to see what the rest of the studies show.
But look, I think docs are excited. They're excited about the depth of responses. They're excited about what this could mean. And look, I think the most important thing is these are physicians, who -- they're treating these patients. They have no options. Many of these patients are very uncomfortable and in a lot of pain. I think they see a new option for this population, and they were hoping for something that worked even a little. And obviously, this is beating that bar handily. So I think there's a lot of enthusiasm. Thanks, Doug.
And our next question will come from Dina Ramadane with Bank of America Securities.
Congrats on the data this morning. Just a quick one from us. On the nonresponders, could you provide maybe more color on these nonresponders in Period 1? Was there anything you can maybe point to, such as prior lines of failed therapy or baseline characteristics, such as maybe antibody levels that were the reason for not responding to 1402?
Yes. So we're looking at that in detail now just to try and get some further comfort and understanding about what's going on. I don't have anything to say about it now. But that's exactly the kind of analysis that we're running. And you said nonresponders, just a reminder, 72% or 73% were ACR 20 responders. So we're also looking at some of whom got to the 20, but not 50, just like trying to get a better sense of what happened there. Thank you.
Our next question will come from Iris Gao with Guggenheim.
This is Iris on for Yatin. Congratulations on the data, and happy birthday to Matt's father. My question is also on IMVT-1402. Are there any more colors on what proportion of patients were refractory to rituximab and maybe anti-IL-6? Since these MOAs are relevant in seropositive patients, so would like to check with you. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks. I don't have that in front of me. It's a good question. We have cleaned some of that data. We had a bunch of IL-6 refractory patients but rituximab, I don't know. And so look, overall, we don't have that share right now. But I think the answer is that the population is consistent with a heavily pretreated population. They've been on multiple lines of therapy. Many of them have failed things in addition to JAK and TNF. So all of those different mechanisms are in. We may eventually share more data on sort of what those different subsets look like, but I think we're particularly enthusiastic about the JAK and TNF combined failures. Remember that over 10% of these patients had failed more than three lines of these advanced therapies. Thank you.
And our next question will come from Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital.
This is Kate on for Sam. So I know the strength of Period 1 data has made Period 2 all the more challenging, particularly on ACR 20. But looking to period 2, is there a delta versus placebo potentially on other endpoints that would excite you commercially?
I don't think Phase II was really about commercial value at this point. I think Phase II is about better understanding the characteristics of the patients, seeing erosion of efficacy, starting to understand to separate out drug effect from other things. So I think it's not so much that we're looking for some commercial bar in Phase II. I think the quality of this headline data is such that even if it degrades, we're happy with it. And I think even in subsequent studies, I don't know that we're like shooting for this bar per se. This is just a great foundation from which to build something pretty exciting in RA.
Thank you. And that will conclude today's Q&A session, and I will now turn the call back over to Matthew Gline for closing remarks.
Great. Look, thank you, everybody, again. Appreciate it. There were a lot of questions there. So I appreciate everyone's forbearance in helping us get through it all, and in limiting the number of questions, which is a great favor to the people lower in the queue who need to come up with questions if theirs has already been asked.
So thank you again to everybody for playing along with that. An exciting day for us, and exciting data to be able to put out. So thank you again to everybody who makes that happen from the Vant and Roivant teams to the patients and investigators. It takes a village and it's a great outcome and something that we can really build from here. And once again, happy birthday to my dad. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and we'll talk again soon. Have a good day.
This concludes the conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
Roivant Sciences — Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the BofA Healthcare Conferences. My name is Chi Fong, I have [ Dina Ramadane ] with me today, we are both from the U.S. Bio-pharmaceutical Health Care Team here, Bank of America. I cover Roivant, she covers Immunovant. We are glad to be co-hosting CEO of Roivant, Matthew Gline today. Thanks for joining us, Matt.
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
Okay. Great. Maybe start with some high-level questions, if we may, before we dive into some of the deeper product level questions.
And so as you know, Roivant has gone through several distinct areas, you have the initial [ Myovant days ] through the value realizing exits like TL1A to now you're building franchises like brepo and Immunovant 1402 as multi-indication franchises. So curious, which parts of the original Roivant model have proven durable? And what have you potentially want to move away from us to company matures?
Yes. Look, a great question. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. I can't see that well because the lights are, but I think thanks for being in the room. And thank you for your great coverage of Immunovant.
So Roivant, actually, we celebrated our 12-year anniversary last week. And we've done a lot of things in our history. And I think like it's hard, biotech is such a path-dependent industry. It's hard to say that like any of it was wrong. But we've built a successive -- a group of successive pipelines. First, the sort of more spec pharma pipeline you referred to in women's health and urology, and then we had the TL1A briefly as a short era and then now with this immunology pipeline -- immunology, pulmonology pipeline that I think is the best we've ever had. I think one of the things that's always been core to our model is, I think we're pretty thoughtful about how we bring drugs in.
And one thing that's become more and more true about I think we're pretty thoughtful about how we develop them. I think we've become quite good at indication selection and aggressive clinical development. I think that's something we've developed as a core competence over the past handful of years, gotten better and better at. And I think it's enabled some of the multi-indication franchises you referred to. I think it's enabled some of the data we've been able to generate. So that's been sort of a new add.
BD remains core to the model. We're always out looking for new programs. Obviously, at our current scale, the things we need to do to matter are different than some of things that could have worked for us a smaller companies. So I think that's shifted over time. But in general, we remain opportunistic. We remain aggressive.
I was talking to someone yesterday, I feel like there are CEOs who are sort of whatever, they're very like long-term narrative-driven CEOs. They have like a big vision. And I feel like Roivant's more of a mark-off chain. It's about like what the next thing we can build is on the thing that we've got now and sort of keep continuing to add that on over time. I think it served us well, and I'm excited to see where it takes us next.
Is the business model still primarily optimizing for optionality where, say, if we have a great asset, potentially if you can find an extra strategy for it, you contemplate that? Or are you starting to think about underwriting Roivant more of a stand-alone commercial biotech company?
Yes, look, we're not dogmatic. And so I think we remain open and flexible in the literal sense of that word. I think we are acutely aware and have been since the very beginning of the company, that the way you build -- at this scale, the way that you deliver shareholder value, the way that you grow as a business, the way that you become a $50 billion, $60 billion, $80 billion, $100 billion company over time. There are no $100 billion like VC companies or whatever, like in our industry, the way you build a company that size is you commercialize products and you generate revenues and you become profitable. And I think that's always been sort of our expectation for where we would land eventually.
And I think it's been true that with each successive exit from a capital and portfolio perspective, we wound up in a stronger position in the next time to do it again. I think you would be hard-pressed to describe a pipeline of portfolio of drugs more exciting to commercialize than the one we have now, nor a pipeline or portfolio of drugs more aligned with where biotech has been successful at commercializing drugs than the one we have now. And so I think it's highly likely we're going to commercialize this portfolio of drugs.
Great. Great. curious on our capital allocation. After the TL1A divestiture, you were able to balance between reinvesting in the company as well as returning capital to shareholders. If additional LNP proceeds were to materialize, how would you rank about priorities on capital allocation strategy?
Yes. One of the things that has been always true about Roivant and particularly true about us since the TL1A is we've been spoiled from a capitalization perspective. We're a well-capitalized business. We always have been. And I think on the back of the TL1A, we sort of said at the time, we had roughly $6 billion in cash, and we sort of said we're going to return 1/3 of it to shareholders roughly, we're going to sort of save 1/3 of it for like new stuff, and we're going to spend 1/3 of it, making sure we do right by the existing pipeline. I think we've been executing along that plan.
If we are taking in money from this Moderna settlement as soon as this summer, we've already accelerated our share buyback on the basis of that cash coming in. The truth is, it's hard to look at our pipeline and opportunity set and say if someone handed me another $1 billion or $2 billion tomorrow. That we would do anything materially different from what we're doing now. And so I think up to a point, I think we'd be pretty aggressive about continuing to return capital to shareholders. But we are constantly evaluating the opportunity set and looking at bigger things, different things, different opportunities.
Obviously, we'll have a better sense of what our own commercial P&L looks like as we get launched, hopefully, later this year. And so I think all of those things will factor into capital allocation decisions. But I think the base case though here is we have the cash to do the things we need to do. And if we have more, we'll be thoughtful about returning it.
And share buybacks are judged in hindsight, which always makes them nerve wracking to do as a company. But we bought back $1.5 billion of stock at $10 a share, which looks pretty good now.
All right. Great. I guess on business development, where do you feel externally sourced assets could add the most value versus, say, what you're already developing internally?
Yes. Again, we're spoiled not to have to choose between those things and that we have plenty of capital to add indications for our existing programs. I think it is clear that both brepo and 1402 are phenomenal drugs that work well at impacting important systems that have a lot of biology associated with them. And I think we have lots of ideas beyond what we are currently doing in both of those spaces. And for the moment, are not capital constrained on those ideas. It's just about making sure the execution remains at high quality. And I think we will continue to add indications to both programs.
You talked about you're not capital constrained, but you have frequently described Roivant R&D culture as ruthlessly economic. I have repeatedly. So I'm curious, as the company scales and begins to generate revenue, improving cash flow, does standard loosen ups allowing for bigger and longer-dated investments?
I don't think being ruthlessly economic precludes bigger or longer-dated investments. I just think it stipulates a standard for the quality of those investments that I hope we never stop holding ourselves to.
Look, I think one of the reasons -- this is like a philosophical comment, I think one of the reasons Roivant exists as a company is because the investor landscape as pertains large pharma companies, forces large pharma companies to do unnatural things to try and make choppy businesses with highs and lows related to patent costs and R&D cycles look more like NVIDIA or Google because the marginal investor in Pfizer or Eli Lilly right now isn't deciding mostly between Pfizer and Eli Lilly, they're deciding between Pfizer and NVIDIA.
And I think the truth of the physics of our industry is the return on capital can be amazing, but it's fixed life and these programs have ebbs and flows and the unnatural things you have to do to make yourself look different than you are, are costly.
And so my hope, at least for the foreseeable future is that we can avoid those pitfalls, and we can run ourselves in a ruthlessly economic way and making decisions about capital based on what is right for the capital and not based on trying to attract the attention of specific investor.
Great. Maybe we'll jump to brepo is your next drug coming up that has a PDUFA in 3Q and launch follow after and so is for initial indication is for dermatomyositis. And so you talked about building a targeted and specialized field force focused on academic testing physician community. So I'm curious how concentrated is the DM patient population among physicians that you are targeting? And what proportion of that patients represent out of the 40,000 treated patients right now?
So about half of the in-treatment dermatomyositis patients in the U.S. right now are treated at specialty myositis referral centers, mostly academic in nature, and there are about 200 of those referral centers.
On our those referral centers are not single physicians. It's like Mayo Rochester is a referral center, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins. And so there are often multiple physicians involved, but we will target all 200 of those centers and most of the Docs at those 200 centers at launch and more Docs, community Rheumatologist, community Dermatologists who treat a larger number of dermatitis patients but aren't like at an academic referral center. And the truth of the matter is when you're talking about 200 centers or even 2,000 physicians, it's like not that difficult to build the field force to cover that size of operation.
And so I think, to be honest, our principal focus right now, we want to make sure we have a large enough operation. We want to make sure we're able to cover those Docs, able to cover them often, get-in those offices and make sure they're getting what they need from a support perspective, getting what they need from a touch point perspective but also -- we're very focused on field force quality and on making sure that the people we're sending into these academic referral centers can go toe to toe with the highly experienced academic physicians to treat these myositis patients. So like one of our field medical person, one of our -- exactly a sales rep, like one of our field commercial personnel when she's out in the field is a myositis KOL who spent a career treating myositis patients. And then decided she really liked our drug and wanted to do something different and came in-house. And I meant if we could fill our field force with people like that, it would be enormously impactful.
You described the expectation for the brepo launch as slow and steady. So I'm curious, what do you think is the biggest unknown when it comes to the pace of the early adoption or the kinetics of the launch curve?
Yes. I mean, there hasn't been a drug launched in dermatomyositis ever at some level. The only like dermatomyositis specific approval of like a "branded therapy" is an IVIG. And so I think the truth is like at some level, everything is unknown. I think how these -- we practices treat other patients like how these individual myositis referral centers embrace a new drug, how they decide which patients to put on how we work with them to get used to the coverage dynamics of drugs like this, which are complicated and well sorted at this point.
Obviously, Argenx and Madrigal and Verona and Horizon and a bunch of other companies have like figured this out. But like working with the physicians to make sure we're getting what we need there is important in getting sites up and running and building a repeatable process, I think like all of that is specific to the physicians, specific to patient, specific stuff [Audio Gap] to declare itself and it's the uncertainty around every single one of those elements that makes it harder to call ramp than peak.
There's a huge opportunity here. There's no question. But how do you get there and how long it takes -- it's just a question. I'll also say you watch companies launching drugs very successfully. And it's not clear to me that anybody is really benefiting from giving guidance these days.
Fair. I won't ask that question.
No, it's fine. I just like were sitting around thinking, I wish I had given more guidance.
In terms of payments -- patient segmentation in the early phase, which one do you think is the early adopters, do you think it's going to be treatment-naive, patients who are looking to roll off steroids or patients looking to formalize from an off-label JAK than on label treatment.
My honest view is it's going to vary by physician and by patient experience and there will be some patients who hate IVIG and use it because the only thing that works, and they'll be eager to get off IVIG, and some patients who are at practices that have like off-label JAK use is like not that common in DM and it's like pretty concentrated. It's like there's some Docs who use a lot of tofacitinib. And those Docs tell us. They want to get patients on a better branded drug that has better access and better patient support and all those things. So like those physicians, I think, will like potentially reach relatively quickly to those patients as they come in. I think it will depend on the center, it will depend on the patient. And I think it's going to be a little bit of a mixture of all of the above.
Okay. Great. I want to give it to Dina to ask about Immunovant questions. Dina, go ahead.
So you could talk for hours on just the 1402 pipeline. You guys have over 10 potentially registrational trials ongoing for across five to six or more indications. Maybe can you level set investors on where you think FcRn has the most value across these programs? Where you're prioritizing capital, what you're more most excited about? And how do you kind of think about balancing these higher-risk white spaces with large TAMs, right, versus this follow-on approach in certain indications that are a little bit crowded or there's first-to-market FcRn is already approved.
Yes. I mean, look, I think FcRn have declared themselves to be a pretty great category. And I think in some ways, one of the most remarkable -- it's a new axis of biology, it can treat a whole bunch of diseases that were roughly unaddressable with modern therapies before. But it's always, I think, one of the most exciting things about the FcRn class is that they've been able to do that while being like relatively easy to use, safe, well tolerated, no like major complicated issues, and that has meant quite like a lot of Doc enthusiasm uptake, right? Like you talk to MG Docs, and they're like excited to use VYVGART because it's a good drug for their patients and because they just like they put patients on it and the patients improve and don't complain, which I think is like the dream for an indication like MG.
And so I think we're trying to lean into all of the great opportunities that are sort of presented in the FcRn field. I think it won't come as a huge surprise. The thing that we are probably like most excited about is Grave's, which has good in our view, biological validation at this point with our own Phase II work, a relatively straightforward mechanistic rationale and just like an unfathomably large unmet medical need, like so many patients who are walking around poorly treated on current therapy, that it feels like -- and I'm immensely proud of our getting there first at some level, like just like a huge opportunity to define that category.
In a way that's similar to what Argenx has been able to do with MG, where they've defined a category that has been enormously successful, except for a patient population that is 3 to 6 larger than the MG patient population in total. And so I think it's like -- it's just an unfathomably large opportunity for us to get right.
I think like then we're doing -- and look, certainly, there's like risk anytime you run the first Phase III program in any indication. So there's risk to the Grave's program, it's not 0 risk. But like it's relatively lower risk compared with something like D2T RA, where the biological translation is more complicated the evidence we have from nipocalimab is more mixed. Obviously, also if you can get there in late line RA, a huge opportunity from a patient population perspective, but you've got a clear scientific bar but I think is like relatively high.
I think that's kind of the bookends on the white space in terms of like do some things that are higher risk, a big opportunity, like obviously, any time you're facing an opportunity like Grave's where you can do something that is like relatively lower risk and that big, it's going to be sort of top of mind.
Then you get indications like MG, where, look, the truth is, are we going to take a ton of share in MG. I believe that our drug will ultimately, in the fullness of time, be viewed as a more efficacious therapy than VYVGART. I think deeper IgG suppression will matter for these patients.
And I think you look at the other FcRns on the market -- and even without a ton of obvious differentiation, a little label difference and things like that, they're like, doing okay, like they're getting patients, just like Docs are using FcRns because they have them.
I think the MG study is obviously incredibly low risk. MG has been valuating FcRn over and over again. It's not a very expensive study. It will be a decent indication for us. Is it going to be a huge indication for us? That's an uphill battle, but it will be a decent indication for us, and it's obviously worth the effort given the risk.
Great. I want to dive a little bit deeper maybe into Grave's and D2T RA. So I guess maybe top of mind here is the recent Phase III data you guys presented last month. Maybe can you just outline what your takeaways were from this study? How that maybe shapes your strategy for the Grave's indication?
Yes. I mean, first of all, A lot of people have followed us into Grave's, and that's great. I think it will actually, in the fullness of time to be good for us to have a more robust set of companies out marketing because it's a lot of endocrinologists -- it's not like I said. There's a lot of people treating Grave's patients. The more mind share you can get, the more of these docs are used to new therapies, the more likely they are to reach for any of them. I think it's good.
That said, we have learned an enormous amount by being years ahead of everybody in terms of actually treating Grave's patients. And I think we're trying to stay like relatively careful about how much of those learnings we share. But yes, look, I think the hyperthyroid subset of patients in the TED study effectively doubled the number of hyperthyroid patients that we have treated with an FcRn and that's informative. And they are different patients. They are less hyperthyroid. They are on higher doses of ATDs, they are kept on stable ATDs during the course of therapy instead of being titrated. And I think like looking at that patient population, I'm still seeing a very similar consistent treatment benefit is super encouraging in terms of what we think it means for the translation of the biology, to the clinical benefit of FcRns and Grave's disease.
Do you think there's opportunity to capture overlapping patient population with both TED and Grave's, is there an opportunity to maybe kind of factor that into your current Grave's study?
Yes. I believe based on the data we've seen in the TED study, based on the data we saw in our own Phase II study, based on the data, we saw our Grave's study, that especially for like early onset of TED, FcRns are benefiting these patients. They are slowing proptosis, they are resulting in proptosis improvements. The benefits are not as pronounced as you see with the best of the IGF-1R class, which makes sense biologically. And I think that makes TED, in and of itself, a relatively difficult commercial market.
But I think for Grave's patients, one of the many things that Grave's patients struggle with -- and you see it if you go to like Grave's, patient support groups or Internet or whatever is like one of the most common posts in those groups is like someone takes a picture of their face and they're like, do I have bulging eyes, do I have at the beginning of TED? Do I need to get treated for this? I think it's like something that like in an already stressful situation where you've be told you have a chronic illness that requires treatment, you're also wondering how it's going to affect your appearance. People get really, really focused on that.
And I think being able to tell those patients we can slow this down. We can catch it early. You may never need to treat the TED because you're going to get the Grave's under control. Now I think it's a super powerful message. And I think we are gathering data in the Phase III studies for Grave's that hopefully will allow us to tell that story.
Great. So you're looking ahead to when we kind of see that pivotal data from the Grave's trial, and I believe it's 2027?
Next Year.
What's kind of giving you confidence? You shared Phase II data, but what gives you confidence that we'll be able to replicate that high 75% to 80% responder rate that we saw? And what kind of degree of maybe potential data erosion would still be considered commercially compelling? What would you consider to be a win to position FcRn as a potential replacement for ATD and avoidance of the latest therapy in this patient population.
I'll say a few things. One is in terms of like what gives us biological confidence, the but think about Grave's disease is not that complicated, actually. Like we know how the biology of Graves' works and FcRn seems to be able to treat it consistently. So I'm pretty confident in our ability to deliver a biological clinical benefit to these patients.
The endpoints in the Phase III are like a little bit different to the endpoints in the Phase II. And the truth is like we're exploring a whole bunch of different endpoints, some of which will be more important from a regulatory and scientific perspective, some of which more important from a commercial perspective. And I think it's like very hard to say with the small group of Phase II patients we have, like which of those endpoints are going to matter most in the clinical setting.
I think remission is going to matter. That is, I think, the ability to preserve off-drug effects is something that physicians will look to in the commercial data set. You see it in Argenx study, you see it in our study. I think that is something that will be important commercially.
In terms of like the numerical values of endpoints, my answer first of all, again, the definition of the primary in the Phase III is like actually a bit different than the definition of the primary in Phase II, and I would not expect an identical number. I think looking like-for-like to the Phase II endpoint. I think we'll see high response rates. But I think there will be a variety of different data to show. And one of the important things here is we're going to generate that data. And not only is that going to matter for like -- the Street's expectations around what Grave's looks like. But more importantly, it will really be the first time a drug company is presenting data on the benefit of treating Grave's patients with a novel therapy in decades.
And so I think like even more than I'm focused on like how did the data look relative to the Phase II study? Or what is it going to mean for the Street? Or how are they going to compare us to some other company. I'm focused on like how do we present that data initially in a way that maximally sort of lands with the physician population who hasn't had a new drug for these patients in a long time, and that's really where our focus lies not on the numerical benefit in Phase II versus a numerical benefit in Phase III.
The other thing that I think we've learned is like an important thing to acknowledge is because, in part, there has been no novel development in Grave's disease for such a long time, the treatment of graves patients globally into the United States is pretty heterogeneous. You can easily imagine the same patient biologically, like if you took a patient off all drug and you watch them, the lab values would be the same, the extent to which they were sick, their symptoms will be the same that, that patient in two different physicians' offices might be treated very differently today.
In one physician's office, the physician office, they might be on and off 25 milligrams of the methimazole and relatively well treated for graves, but going through long periods of time where they were unhappy about the side effects of the methimazole. And you can imagine the doc office for that patient is perpetually on 5 or 7.5 milligrams with methimazole. And like is fine with the methimazole side of it, but it is like constantly complaining about symptoms of Grave's disease.
They are the same patient, they're just being treated differently. And once you add things like ATD titration endpoints, like the way those patients present in clinical trials looks pretty different. So I think that's all the stuff that we have learned an enormous amount about being out in the field. and stuff that is driving how we run our study and how I expect we're going to present the data on the drug.
Great. And just mindful of time here. I wanted to ask on the RA program, we're going to see data in the second half of this year. Can you just speak to maybe general rationale for studying 1402 in RA, some people may argue that J&J nipo's data, kind of raise some questions in regards to the efficiency of an IgG lowering approach. What are you doing differently from nipo's studies that will set you up for success?
I 100% agree that nipo's data raises questions about the sufficiency of an IgG approach, and I think we're going to learn that in our study. But I want to feel like I think that is -- especially the second nipo study, the sort of TNF combo study. If that study had shown anything instead of basically nothing, I think like you would feel differently about risk in our Phase IIb.
Look, the monotherapy nipo study that they ran first, like the -- that study looked interesting. It showed dose dependence, it showed higher responses in ACPA-positive patients it seemed to preserve benefit in later lines of therapy, which are all things that like biologically you would expect from an FcRn, but like seeing it play out coherently in that data set, I think, is what got us excited.
And then our view was like, okay, how do you isolate a patient population where you were, A, maximize the benefit you see according to the data we've now seen from J&J. And B, you like carved out a commercial opportunity in RA, which is obviously in the earlier lines of therapy complicated based on the number of great drugs approved.
So we focused on those questions in the design of our study, and we're studying late-line patients who have experience with TNF and JAKs and IL-6 is in various proportions and who don't have other treatment options, really. And we enriched for a population that is highly autoantibody positive. And my hope is that those things combined will put us in a better position than either of the J&J studies were.
The J&J combo study with Cimzia was an interesting study. I think it is hard to study the effect of any drug together with a new onset TNF because TNF just works so well in RA.
I think we're out of time. So I just appreciate you taking the time to be here with us today. Matt, and thank you for the thoughtful discussion.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and welcome to the Brepocitinib Program Expansion and Batoclimab update. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review Brepocitinib Program Expansion and an Update on Batoclimab. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant.
Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant, and Ben Zimmer, CEO of Priovant.
For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I'd like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Good morning, and thank you, everybody. Thank you, Steph, thanks for dialing in on short notice, as always, with these things. We have 2 agenda items today. We had originally intended to schedule a call right around now, to take you through our new indication of Priovant like [indiscernible], and we're going to do that and excited about that. I think that's going to be a really great addition. And then just because it happened to lineup timing-wise that we just got the Phase III data in tandem batoclimab, we put out a press release on that this morning, and we'll cover it for just a few minutes at the end of the call and take questions on both.
So I'm going to kick it off on Slide 4, starting with LPP. So look, I think it will come as no surprise to any of you that we are, at this point, super excited about what brepocitinib could be and frankly, proceeding with urgency around the idea that it's going to be a large opportunity to expand across multiple indications and to build -- I don't love the phrase pipeline and a product generally. I think it's overused, but a pipeline and a product. We -- so far on Slide 4, look, we've set some criteria for ourselves for the things that we really care about in terms of what indications are going to work well. Starting with the sort of orphan immunology space where we're looking at indications that have, call it, mid-tens to very low hundreds of thousands of patients, with a lot of morbidity and sort of severe disease with a lot of unmet need.
We're also looking for indications where the pathobiology aligns with our specific unique mechanism hitting both JAK1 and TYK2 and ideally, where there's some proof-of-concept data highlighting the potential benefit of either JAK1s or TYK2s or both, and we have something specifically useful on that here.
And finally, we're looking at indications with high unmet need where there's really not much approved right now. So I think everyone is familiar with the sort of first three indications in our portfolio there. Obviously, dermatomyositis, first of them with the PDUFA date in the third quarter, NIU with Phase III top line data coming in the back half of this year and cutaneous sarcoidosis with Phase III study starting in the second half of this year. And I'm pleased to announce that there's another one now lichen planopilaris. We'll talk more about the disease in a moment, where we're beginning an effectively direct to registrational combined Phase IIb/III program. In fact, began, I would say, last month. And so that study is now underway and represents a fourth leg to the stool here, that we are really excited about.
So LPP on Slide 5, and then I'm going to hand it over to Ben to talk a little bit more about the indication and sort of why we're excited about it. Look, this is a severe and deeply unpleasant disease. It's a highly morbid inflammatory scalp disorder. There's nothing approved for it now. And it localized -- it's really -- it's an inflammatory scalp where the inflammation localizes to the permanent part of the hair follicle, which first of all, leads to generally irreversible hair loss, but it's also scarring can be permanently disfiguring and in many cases, is intensely painful, has a lot of itch, burning, redness, scaling. This is a really, really tough disease for these patients. When you see the sort of polypharmacy and some of the other things we'll talk about later in the call, these patients require a lot of medical care and have bad comorbidities.
There are no FDA-approved therapies for LPP, and these patients require chronic aggressive multimodal therapy and are largely poorly responsive to first-line therapy like steroids and ISTs, hence the polypharmacy, hence, the pain management. This is not a well-controlled disease at all. And it's a fairly prevalent disease. It's got sort of a large orphan size. It's -- I'd call it DM-like in population size with probably up to 100,000 U.S. patients and the [ leaders ] are indicating the prevalence and diagnosis is increasing over time. So we think this is just right in the center of the bull's eye for us. It's the kind of disease. You'll hear more about our understanding for why our mechanism is good for it, but the kind of disease with high unmet need and a lot of severity that we think brepocitinib is exactly the right kind of drug for.
So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Ben, starting on Slide 6, just to talk through what the experience of these patients is like and a little bit more about why we're excited about it. Ben, take it away.
Great. Thanks, Matt. So as Matt mentioned, an indication with very high patient burden. A lot of that is the direct symptoms and manifestations of the disease, as Matt walked through. Also on Slide 6, you can see LPP is associated with an increased risk of many severe comorbidities, including both skin cancer and other autoimmune diseases. And as Matt mentioned, no FDA-approved therapies given the severity, a lot of different drugs are attempted off-label, but generally with limited efficacy and high rates of discontinuation based on tolerability and efficacy issues. So really an area of very high unmet need, very high sense of urgency to treat quickly and with efficacious therapies, and we think there's really a significant opportunity for a new efficacious drug.
And turning to Slide 7, we're optimistic that brepocitinib can be that drug. Like cutaneous sarcoidosis, LPP is a disease-driven primarily by Th1-polarized T-cell aberrant behavior. And this is a category of indication where the biology really aligns with TYK2/JAK1 inhibition, interferon gamma and IL-12 are two of the critical cytokine -- signaling cytokines within the Th1 pathway and a JAK1/TYK2 inhibitor is distinctively able to suppress signaling of both of those cytokines. And then I bring up cutaneous sarcoidosis because through that study and other Phase II studies, we've really seen that play-out in the clinic with excellent data from brepocitinib in indications with similar biology. And so mechanistically, we really feel this fits into the sweet spot of where brepo can be a potentially highly efficacious treatment.
In addition to brepo specifically, there's a large number of case reports and investigator-initiated trials of both JAK1 and TYK2 inhibitors that generally establish clinical validation for this mechanism and gives us the excitement around moving quickly and rapidly into a potentially pivotal program.
And turning to Slide 8. One of these is actually in brepocitinib itself. This was a small investigator-initiated trial conducted at Mount Sinai. Unlike many of the other investigator-initiated trials, this one was placebo-controlled. There was only 3 patients in the placebo arm. It was also using the LPPAI, which is a generally noisy instrument that is actually not that preferred by clinicians. And so in our program, we're using different endpoints. So small study really not to be overread into in terms of the specific data. But big picture, you see the brepo treatment arm clearly getting better over time and really overall amidst the totality of other data furthers our confidence around the POC for this drug and moving quickly into a potentially pivotal program.
And before Matt walks through the design of our trial, I would also just note on Slide 9 that although the clinical data with a small study in the LPP AI is, I think, around a somewhat noisy endpoint, they're still persuasive. Actually, what I think is probably most powerful about this study result is the biomarker data, which is on Slide 9, where you see a very clear and convincing effect of brepocitinib on multiple markers of Th1-driven disease activity, including both interferon-gamma and IL-12 themselves as well as other important chemokines that are markers of Th1-driven inflammation like CCL5. So I think all of this together sets the foundation for what we view as a high probability of success study in an indication with very high unmet need, and we're really excited to be moving very quickly into a potentially pivotal program that should hopefully deliver some excellent data.
So with that, I'll hand it back to Matt.
Thanks, Ben. Appreciate it. So on Slide 10, you can see the trial design that we're -- that we've initiated for brepo and LPP. And this is really designed to function like a single straight to registrational trial, except -- and this is sort of the -- there are many benefits to pioneering new clinical development areas. One, cost to pioneering new clinical development areas is there's some work you generally have to do from a regulatory perspective. And so this set up effectively as a sort of combined Phase IIb/III, where we have a 72-patient Phase IIb portion of the study. And then immediately at the end of that, we will just go straight into enrolling patients in effectively the same study into a Phase III pivotal Part 2, where we expect the end to be approximately 270, although we'll do a sample size re-estimation after the Phase IIb. And that will allow us to go through sort of proper endpoint validation and to get the data we need once we ultimately do read out the Phase IIb portion to finalize the regulatory work and read out the Phase III. So this should be -- we're not ready to guide today on enrollment. Obviously, we've gotten a lot of enthusiasm from the investigator and patient communities as we've gotten the program up and running. Ben and the team have been engaging super actively with this population of physicians. We're not ready to guide today on time line, but the plan here is for this to function like straight to registrational program, and we're excited for what that means for time lines and what that means for our opportunity to get a new option to patients quickly. So we're looking forward to playing that through.
Look, on Slide 11, just to summarize, and I think we hit these points all pretty clearly here. First of all, this is a disease with tremendous high unmet need. I'm confident as the investor community does work on it, talks to physicians, talk to patients, you'll see a disease with a high burden and a lot of unmet need. These patients are very uncomfortable. We have a drug that is distinctly suited mechanistically to LPP. LPP has a Th1-dominant immunophenotype. It's really exactly down the fairway of where we've succeeded elsewhere. We think we've got a creative, aggressive development strategy that will get us to market hopefully quite quickly. And we think we've got good synergy from a commercial perspective in the sense, not just in the sort of literal cost perspective, meaning, but we know these docs, we know these centers, we know this community. Priovant has done a phenomenal job and the team of building relationships at tertiary medical derm centers in some of these other indications, and we think we're really going to be able to leverage those relationships. In fact, they were some of the very same relationships that help us sort of key in on LPP as a desired indication to begin with. So really looking forward to that, super appreciative of all the work the Priovant team has done and excited to announce that trial is now up and running. And so I look forward to sharing more updates and answering questions about it today and in the future.
Before we go to Q&A, I just want to turn quickly to the next topic, which is the Phase III study results in TED. So as I'm sure many of you saw Immunovant announced this morning, turn to Slide 13 that our Phase III TED study had failed to meet the primary endpoint for batoclimab. As a reminder, I think everyone is clear on this, batoclimab is the first-generation anti-FcRn antibody at Immunovant. The subject of the vast majority of our future -- all of our future development at this point is IMVT-1402. So this was effectively the last study to read out from the first-generation program. And it was not a focus area for us, for that reason, as we've said in other context. Obviously, disappointing to see the study failed to meet the primary endpoint. Batoclimab had succeeded, as you may remember, in an earlier Phase II study in TED. Ultimately, in the long-mark of our future, I suspect the meaning of TED for us is largely going to be that it was what guided us to Graves' disease and got that program up and running, and we'll talk more about some of the data we generated there. But first, just really quickly on what we saw in the study. So as a reminder, this study was actually designed pretty similarly to our Phase II study in Graves. It had a 12-week period of high-dose batoclimab designed to get IgG as low as any FcRn can take it, followed by a 12-week period of lower dose batoclimab, which suppresses IgG in general, more like what we see in some of the other FcRns currently on the market, and we actually have that number later in the deck in terms of what we saw in that period, at least in a subset of patients. The primary endpoint of the study was 2 millimeter -- greater than 2-millimeter proptosis responder rate, and that's the endpoint that we failed to meet. We measured some secondaries as well. What we said in the press release, and I just want to reiterate here, again, not trying to dress up a failed study. This is not a study that supports sort of further progress in TED. But in terms of things that we were looking for, there were probably two key things we were looking for in this study other than success. One was continued evidence that our deeper IgG suppression matters. And I think there's like a few ways to read that in this study. But I'll say, first of all, consistently across everything we looked at in the study, patients did better in the first 12-week period broadly than in the second 12-week period. Again, it was a relatively noisy study in terms of some of the endpoints, but there's a lot of different data points pointing in that direction. We take a lot of signal from that, including, frankly, the fact that at least one other FcRn inhibitor failed on futility in TED, and we would not have failed on futility. We saw separation in a positive direction, in multiple endpoints, and we'll talk more about that in a second. And then the other thing we were looking for is evidence of read-through to Graves' disease and trying to understand as this -- although it was not a study focused hyperthyroidism, in fact, very hyperthyroid patients were not allowed into the study, there were nonetheless a relatively small proportion, but large in the context of studying hyperthyroid patients with FcRns of hyperthyroid patients. So we wanted to continue to confirm our hypothesis there. And I think we've had some good outcomes there, too.
On Slide 14, there are a lot of different data points we could have shown in terms of like the benefit in the study. And I think anyone who's familiar with TED will look at these numbers and agree. Numerically in the context of treating TED patients, these are not like super exciting proptosis improvements. But we did see meaningful numerical separation from placebo on, for example, change in proptosis at week-12. In fact, when you pull the two studies together, that was sort of nominally significant in a post-hoc statistical analysis. Again, with that $20, you can buy a sandwich. But I think it is evidence that the drug was, in our view, doing something and that we were seeing a benefit for these patients. Probably most importantly, these numbers all got worse, and I don't have that slide in here, but these numbers all got worse as you went from week 12 to week 24. So as you step down FcRn dose and saw lower IgG, the level -- the amount of proptosis improvement degraded, which I think is an important point. And I think also, as we think about this patient population, this was an active TED patient population that has sort of later stage, more advanced TED, the kind of populations that have been studied in other TED programs, by the way, many of which have, I'd say, underperformed recently as I think the disease landscape of TED has changed a little bit. But there is plenty of evidence in this data set, including the slide you're looking at on Slide 14, that suggests that we will improved proptosis and potentially delay proptosis development in Graves patients. And I think that is important to us as we continue to measure all of those things in the ongoing Graves disease program for 1402. And I think the study does broadly support that we should be able to deliver a benefit of that kind in our Graves program.
And then the last thing, which is probably the single most important thing to come out of this data set in terms of readthrough Immunovant prospects here is on Slide 15, which this is -- on the left-hand side, the pooled results across the 2 studies, and they're pooled simply because the ends are small overall of the hyperthyroid patients in the program. Again, the study didn't allow very hyperthyroid patients. But within the boundaries of what we permitted, there were about 20 hyperthyroid patients between the two active treatment arms of the studies. And what you see here is in those two studies as pooled, there was a 75% mean IgG reduction. So batoclimab did consistently what it has done in all of these studies from an IgG supression perspective. And actually, what we saw was an 80% responder rate using the same responder definition, normal T3 or T4, at least T3, T4 below the upper limit of normal with no increase in ATD doses. And again, the same definition we used in the Phase II. And we said 80% responder rate, which was just bang on the same at the end of week 12, as the responder rate we saw in the more severe Graves population in the Phase II study for batoclimab. And one thing that's comforting is this was a very different patient population, a very different study design. Remember, a very different study sort of structure. The Phase II was a single-site study with no placebo, whereas this was a placebo-controlled study with many patients across many different centers and a different hyperthyroid population. So you see that consistent effect, especially at the high dose is helpful. I also think it's notable, as with the Phase II study, we saw a lower responder rate after the 24-week, after the second 12-week period as we reduced IgG suppression. And in fact, nicely, although I can't claim given the end that it's like a perfect correlation, the IgG suppression wound up a little bit lower in that population and the responder rate wound up a little bit correspondingly lower in that population. And I think that just further underscores that in a disease like Graves' disease, the deeper you can get IgG lowered, the better you're going to do with these patients. So I think that is also, again, a helpful outcome from an otherwise disappointing study. So look, again, there was a lot of debate here about how much to say about this given the outcome, which is disappointing for these patients. I want to say, as I'll say again at the end of this, thank you to the investigators, to the patients to the Immunovant team. These studies are hard to run whether they work or not and everyone trusts us with their care. And I'll say, I think the useful scientific evidence that came out of this, on supporting our thesis around treating proptosis via Graves and on deeper IgG suppression mattering and being able to Graves patients will certainly help inform our plans. Notably, we're only sharing a relatively small amount of this data now. I think that we've said consistently is that we think there is important and useful information in this study, that informs how we are managing the Graves study super actively. And so I expect we will share more of this over time. But for now, we're being relatively quiet in terms of the breadth of what we're sharing. Happy to take questions broadly, though.
Look to wrap up for the day before we open it up to Q&A on Slide 16. Our pipeline to me looks better and more mature every time we get on the phone. I'm really excited about the addition of LPP here. Brepo is really shaping up to be a broad franchise opportunity across multiple indications. And I think there are potentially many more lines to add to this graph as we think about where we're working right now and the Priovant team has done an awesome job of executing thus far on clinical programs and excited to see the outcomes from this study and more. I'm really happy with where the FcRn franchise looks. Obviously, IMVT-1402, firmly the drug to beat there and excited about the data coming later this year, both in D2T RA and in CLE and excited for 2027, which is one of the, if not the most important years, at least in Immunovant's history and potentially Roivant between the breath of launch and the Graves' disease data that's coming.
Not to mention, which won't be subject to this call, mostly signal-out with the Phase IIb data in PH-ILD coming in the second half of this year. So a rich catalyst calendar on Slide 17, a bunch of stuff upcoming that we're excited to talk about, just a huge year for us and disappointed about the outcome on TED, but otherwise, just really excited about what we're doing here. So I'm going to stop there. I'm going to open it up for Q&A. Excited to take questions on LPP. Obviously, also happy to take some questions on the TED study as well as I'm sure people have them.
And so with that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from David Risinger with Leerink Partners.
2. Question Answer
So I have two questions. First, for LPP, Slide 8, I don't know if you have these details, but could you talk about background therapy in the 13 brepo patients and the 3 placebo arm patients and whether that might have impacted the results of that study that was shown on Slide 8?
And then I know that Graves' disease is actually a comorbidity in a meaningful percentage of LPP patients. which obviously is a positive indicator for potential success of your new program given the Graves' disease results that you've previously disclosed. But could you talk about that and any other comorbidities that we should be aware of with respect to LPP? And then actually, I have one more after that, if that's okay.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate the questions. So the first one for -- the tangible answer to that question is that meds were washed out pre-baseline in that IIT. That said, in general, I want to highlight LPP patients are polypharmacy patients who are on a whole host of background meds. And one of the things the Priovant team has thought very carefully about is management of, call it, polypharmacy background and concomitant meds in the Phase IIb/III program simply because these are very sick patients and poorly managed. There are a ton of comorbidities with LPP. These patients are sick in a variety of ways, including with Graves. As a reminder, the Graves study was obviously on the FcRn side and the study is with brepocitinib JAK1/TYK2. So I think the ability to effectively access and treat Graves patients is probably a useful indicator of a sick patient population. But obviously, in terms of the actual pathobiology, probably not as much direct read-through. But nonetheless, look, I think excited about what we're going to be able to do for these patients. And frankly, look, I think brepo is a great drug for patients with a lot of comorbidities because of the broad anti-inflammatory activity.
David you said, you have one more question?
Yes. Thank you. So obviously disclosed that the subset of hyperthyroid patients in the TED study showed similar response rates of thyroid hormone normalization to those seen in the batoclimab Phase II in Graves. So how did batoclimab performed in thyroid eye disease in that subgroup relative to the rest of the study participants?
Yes. I think the answer to that question is somewhat better in the hyperthyroid population in general. And we saw the most recent cut-off that I looked at in detail was in only one of the studies. So I don't have the full pool data on the top of my head. But in general, the answer is we did better in hyperthyroid patients than in the general population on proptosis.
Our next question comes from Yasmeen Rahimi with Piper Sandler.
This is Liam on for Yas. So I guess just in regard to the TED study, do you think there's an opportunity to transition any of the TED sites to the ongoing Graves pivotal program? And then if you could just provide an update on how enrollment is progressing across those 2 trials as well?
Yes. So first of all, specifically in the Graves program, we're focused on Graves patients, and we've excluded the more moderate and severe TED patients. And many of the sites in the TED study were more Opto-focused sites and sort of TED-focused sites, whereas obviously, we're focused on endos and the sort of Graves III physicians. That said, I'll say also, we are not particularly thirsty for more sites in Graves right now just because enrollment is generally going well. We're reaching as many docs as we can, and we will certainly increase site numbers over time in studies. But in general, I'd say we're happy with how enrollment is going in Graves and seeing a really enthusiastic reaction from the doc community there. Again, we expect both Graves studies to read out next year.
Our next question comes from Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital.
This is Kate on for Sam. Yes, we were curious just regarding the TED study, how much of a difference in proptosis response was there in the first 12 weeks versus the final 12 weeks? And I guess, did you see any similar numerically better trends on the secondary endpoints? And I also have a follow-up.
Yes, great. So -- I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow the first question. I think it was -- the difference between first and second -- first 12-week and second 12 weeks. I didn't quite catch if you asked on the primary or on the endpoint that we showed in the deck. The answer in either case is there was degradation in both numbers as between the first 12-weeks and the second 12-weeks. The proptosis responder rates, like I think in one of the -- in the blended across 2 studies, the proptosis responder rates in treatment arm were like low- to mid-20s, maybe low 20 precent, and the placebo arm was sort of high teens. And so there was some degradation, but the numbers are relatively -- the numbers of responders were relatively small. In general, we saw trends supporting better performance in the first 12-weeks and the second 12-weeks. I think the proptosis -- like the proptosis improvement measure that we showed was something like -- I'm trying to do math at the top of my head, which is always dangerous, but like 20% to 30% better at the end of week-12 than at the end of week-24. But did we get the exact number with a better thing. And the answer is yes, it was consistent across both the primary and multiple secondary endpoints that people perform better at week-12 than at week-24.
Okay. Great. And if you don't mind if I squeeze one more in. For the subset of hyperthyroid patients, any anecdotes of how they're doing off treatment and whether they're remaining in thyroid?
It is a great question. I don't have any anecdotes from that population right now, but it's a good question. And honestly, I hadn't thought to ask in the last couple of days, but we'll take a look.
Our next question comes from Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
Just catching up on your comments around LPP AI being noisy. How should we think about the correlation of the endpoints that you have mentioned on the slide here and also the primary endpoint that you'll be using for the Phase IIb/III? And then I have a follow-up.
It's a great question. IGA-01 is generally just a much higher bar than LPP AI. But Ben, do you want to talk a little bit about endpoints and where we're at?
Yes. The LPP AI, it's a composite endpoint that includes a bunch of different symptoms. Some are physician assessed like erythema and scale and some are patient reported. The biggest problem with the endpoint in addition to just combining all of those, like all composite endpoints can have noise is that there's no definitions in the LPP AI. Each of the symptoms is rated 0 to 3 with no guidance or definition for the raters on what would be a 0, 1, 2 or 3. So generally, just like a highly noisy measurement. What we've done instead is really try to break it up into much more precise measurements. So our IgA measures erythema and scale with clear definitions consistent with the rigor that goes into an FDA supported IgA. And then through different secondary endpoints, we'll be assessing each of the different other burdensome symptoms for patients like pain, itch, et cetera, through, generally speaking, NRS scales. So I think, in our view, a more kind of less noisy and more clinically meaningful to physicians and patients' way to assess benefits.
Great. And maybe just a follow-up on the TED data that you presented today. Can you also give us some color on the proptosis improvement that you saw once you step down to the 340 mg second portion? Particularly was the proptosis impact quick to see deterioration once you pull back on the dose? And how does that proptosis reduction change once the IgG also start to see lowering once you switch to the step-down dosage?
Yes, thanks. Look, I think the answer -- and I don't have the number in front of me. I've seen it in the last couple of days, but the answer is the proptosis improvement that we showed in the deck gets worse at week-24. And I think it's about 20% to 30% worse at the end of week-24 relative to at the end of week-12. So that's about what it looked like, specifically on the improvement. So that's -- yes. And I don't have a time scale of like how quickly it degraded. But in general, IgG falls over a period of a couple of weeks to the lower level. And so I think -- and then proptosis obviously lags further. So I think it takes some time to get worse roughly. Yes.
Our next question comes from William Pickering with Bernstein.
So on LPP, can you just confirm that the primary endpoint for the Phase III portion is IGA-01 responder rate? And kind of what are your expectations for effect size there? And then could you talk about how you're going to be handling background therapies in the study?
Yes. Great question. First of all, I'll just say, and I'll hand it over then to Ben. I think, first of all, the primary of the Phase IIb portion is IGA-01. I think part of the reason the study is designed this way is to make sure that we're aligned with the FDA on the Phase III primary. And so I think our hope and expectation is that there'll be identical endpoints in the Phase III. But obviously, until we've finished the Phase IIb and had a conversation with FDA, we probably don't know 100% for sure. And in terms of background meds as well is just to confirm my understanding there and anything else. Ben, do you want to answer those questions?
The general approach is going to be to wash patients out of background meds ahead of the enrollment quite aggressively, which is consistent with how we've approached a number of other trials like cutaneous sarcoidosis and things should set it up for success. And yes, I think our base case is that the primary endpoint in the Phase III will be the IGA-01 with 2-point reduction. That's obviously generally the gold standard derm endpoint for inflammatory conditions. But as Matt noted, part of the, point of the -- this is an endpoint that's never been actually used before. So part of the value of the Phase II portion is to get a sense of the behavior of the endpoint, including even just on a blinded pooled basis before we read out the Phase IIb just to confirm that thinking ahead of starting the Phase III.
And if I could just squeeze in a follow-up. What do we know about the efficacy of off-label JAK use in this indication?
Yes. I mean, look, I think -- among the things we know about the efficacy of the use of JAKs and drugs like ours, obviously, is what we showed for the [ IIT ] for the use of brepocitinib. There's a lot of case reports as well. I think in general, you'd see across the board, like broad support for mechanisms like these JAK inhibitors, TYK2s and certainly JAK1s and TYK2s combined in improving these patients. I think they're not like -- in my sense, not like super widely used off-label, but they seem to work based on case reports.
Our next question comes from Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
Two for me. Just another on the IGA-01 endpoint. I think, Ben, you mentioned that this was -- this will be the first time you're using this endpoint in LPP. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the powering assumptions in the Phase IIb and what kind of placebo response you're sort of expecting to see or designed maybe around to see?
And then, Matt, you outlined in the start of the call some criteria for assessing indications for brepo. Just wondering what your capacity is for nominating even more indications going forward? And is it reasonable to think that you might stick within the rheum-derm sort of inflammatory space for those additional indications?
I'll take the second question because I can answer on Ben's behalf and put pressure on Ben, which is, look, I think we are almost endlessly enthusiastic for the breadth of opportunity for brepo. I think there's a lot of value to the relationships we've built in the rheum-derm context and frankly, a long list of indications in the rheum-derm context that we like. So I think that you will see us do more there. I also think we are excited about indications that go beyond that context, and you may very well see us go kind of outside of that area as well. And I think we want the Priovant team to succeed in everything it's doing. But certainly, this will be the second additional pivotal study we're starting this year in addition to the cutaneous sarcoid one. So we're looking at now, assuming everything succeeds at least 4 launches over the next couple of years, and I hope we can add to that list.
Ben, do you want to take the question on IGA-01 powering?
Yes. So as a general matter, we've looked at the kind of precedents we've used, if you look at kind of how these instruments work in general, the IgAs, particularly those that are developed in partnership with the FDA and used for registrational programs, the placebo rate in general across them tends to be extremely low. We saw that in our own Phase II sarcoid study recently, particularly requiring not just a 2-point reduction, but 2-point reduction, [ 2.01 ] tends to be a very high bar for placebo. So our general ingoing assumption is that we would hypothesize the placebo rate would not be high, but we'll have to see what the actual results are. We think that on the basis of looking at effective therapies in other inflammatory skin disorders and kind of how the IgAs there have behaved that this Phase IIb portion should be very well-powered to detect the difference. But again, ultimately, to Matt's point in the opening, from a clinical confidence perspective, I think we would have been happy to just go straight into a Phase III program without doing a Phase II piece. But I think that just given we're pioneering a new indication here, part of the point of the Phase II program is really to learn more and inform the Phase III and ultimately, we'll see the results of the Phase II and use that to repower the Phase III if needed, which is what will ultimately be the portion of the study that we rely on to support potential registration.
Our next question comes from Yaron Werber with TD Cowen.
This is Sarah on for Yaron. Just two quick questions from us. So on the brepo study, which of the 7 other successful Phase II studies give you conviction in LPP, mainly on the -- beyond IgA-01, which I know you've just discussed a bunch and maybe on the secondary endpoints? And then just a follow-up beyond that.
Yes. Perfect. Look, obviously, alopecia and CS, which we highlighted in this deck are both sort of very much the same phenotype from an inflammatory perspective, they're both sort of really sort of Th1-driven diseases. I'll say personally, I also just take a lot of comfort from the overall breadth of clinical evidence at this point in inflammatory disease across -- you look at the interferon drivers of LPP, et cetera, like I just think like it's pretty clear, and you can see it in the IIT on the sort of biomarker data. It's pretty clear that we sort of hit a lot of the right biology here. And I think that gives us some comfort. And then there's many of the other indications, significant components of these same inflammatory drivers. And so I think almost all of our studies contribute, probably the ones with skin components most of all, but not uniquely, but alopecia and CS are probably the two most important ones.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And then on the TED study, are you also taking forward the 680 mg and 340 mg dosing in the Graves study? And maybe just if you could just provide a little bit more color on what read-through that might have on the trial design for the Graves study?
Got it. And as a reminder, so the equivalent doses of [ 1402 ]. So the TED study we were out here was in batoclimab, which is not the drug we're studying in Graves disease. We're studying 1402 in Graves. The equivalent doses in Graves are 300 milligram and 600 milligram versus 340 milligram 680 milligram. Our Graves programs have both 300 milligram and 600-milligram dosing arms as between the 2 studies, and we're carrying forward both of those. As a reminder, based on our Phase I work, our expectation would be that 300-milligram would have competitor-like suppression of IgG and 600-milligram would have IgG suppression that is similar to what we saw at 680 milligrams in the batoclimab study. And I think all of the data we have is small end, et cetera. But the short answer is that our best expectation is that the Phase III data is heavily informed by what we saw in the Phase II, which is to say the high-dose arm outperforms the low-dose arm and that we see sort of adjusted for differences in endpoints and populations and other things, similar results at the high-dose arm in the Phase III to what we saw here.
As a specific reminder, the longer 52-week 2502 study is 600-milligrams only and then the shorter 2503 study, the 24-week study is 600 milligram versus 300 milligram versus placebo. So that's the difference.
Our next question comes from Thomas Smith with Leerink Partners.
First on the TED results, did you comment on what you observed on the TRAb levels in the study over time and how those compared to the Graves' disease data set? And then can you clarify, were the hyperthyroid patients in this study committed to titrate or ATD dose? And if so, did you have any patients that were able to down titrate or discontinue their ATDs entirely either over the course of the 12-weeks or the 24-weeks? And then I have a quick follow-up, if I could.
Yes. So -- on the TRAb levels question, I guess like the first thing I'd say is like on -- the data was just like unsurprising and matched what you would expect from these studies. So I'd say, yes, that's probably the best thing to say about TRAbs. On ATDs, the answer to your question is no. In fact, they were not permitted to titrate ATD. So these patients were required to stay on a stable ATD dose for the duration of the TED study. So unfortunately, we don't have evidence of clinical practice around ATD titration here. In fact, not only they were -- they effectively weren't permitted to titrate ATD. So we don't even get a look at what they would have done organically with these patients. Now as a reminder, and I think in some ways, the following is comforting and helpful. These were different hyperthyroid patients than in the Phase II Graves study and the criteria required patients to be relatively close to hyperthyroid. And so these patients were less sick hyperthyroid patients than the hyperthyroid patients in the Phase II. And I think the fact that they continue to respond at a similar rate is encouraging in so far as it highlights our ability to treat a pretty broad range of Graves patients at this point.
Got it. That makes sense. And then just one quick follow-up, if I could, on -- looking forward to the D2T RA results later this year. Just wondering if you could provide any updated expectations for that readout? And also any clarity on whether you expect to report both the Part A open-label and the Part-B randomized withdrawal portion simultaneously or if you're thinking that will be more of a staggered approach?
I don't have updated guidance to give on either of those questions right now. We're still working through our analysis of the sort of best criteria to run the Phase III. And so I say that work is happening actively, and we'll share our thoughts on it as soon as we're ready. But we're excited about it, too.
Our next question comes from Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
This is Anthea on for Dennis. We have two. First, the investigator study looked at other scarring alopecia like FSA and CCCA. It seems like there were promising signals there, but curious what your interpretation of that data is and why you chose to go into LPP specifically?
And then second, on LPP specifically, how does disease activity fluctuate over time? And how are you planning to capture brepo's efficacy within 24-weeks? And if there are any sorts of enrichment that you plan to do?
Yes. Thanks. I appreciate both questions. On the first one in terms of breadth of indication, first of all, both across subtype -- other like inflamous-related diseases as well as other potential scarring alopecias. There's lots of interesting data available across different studies, et cetera, that suggest opportunity, including in the IIT, as you mentioned. LPP was pretty clearly to us the initial greatest unmet need and a well-circumscribed orphan population that, among other things, the regulators were excited about as well. So it just felt like a nice clean opportunity all around. But if your question is, are there even more indications in which brepo might work based on the IIT and otherwise? You're never going to get an objection to that question from me. And over time, there's a lot of different things we could study.
LPP tends to have a fairly steady unremitting course. These patients -- look, the disease is ultimately irreversible in a lot of the ways it affects people. And so these patients just get worse. And so there's a high desire to treat quickly, which is something that's sort of interesting about the disease, again, because it's sort of -- it's effectively viewed as an emergency. It's an urgent condition, and it tends to be irreversible.
Our next question comes from Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
This is Erik on for Corinne Johnson. We have one question regarding TED. So how should we think about the implications this clinical failure has on how physicians and payers think about utilizing 1402 in Graves' given the overlap in this indication and that TED is downstream of Graves' disease?
Yes, it's a good question. Look, I think the easy answer for me to give is, overall, I think there's going to be a lot of excitement for Graves. And I think the data that this study showed on improvement in proptosis as well as the data that this study suggests to me we will show on the same in the Graves study, I think will ultimately be encouraging for the use of these drugs in Graves. And as I think the limitations of using FcRns in TED, mostly stemmed from catching the patients too late at a time where FcRn therapy is simply not sufficient to treat the -- at that point, presentation of the disease. But I think there's plenty of evidence in this data to suggest we're going to be able to benefit proptosis in Graves patients and catch it early. Look, obviously, at some level, if this study had been extraordinary, I would be here telling you how great the read-through was to doc enthusiasm for Graves. And so yes, I think it probably would have been even better if this study had shown better proptosis response rates. But I think in terms of our ability to improve proptosis in Graves patients, overall, I would call the evidence from this study net encouraging. And I think in the fullness of time, docs will see it as such.
Our next question comes from [ Dina Makadi ] with Guggenheim.
So on LPP, you described it as a strategic fit with dermatomyositis given the overlapping prescriber basis. Can you quantify the extent of that overlap between rheumatologists and dermatologists treating DM versus those treating LPP? And how does that inform your commercial infrastructure build-out?
Yes. Great question. Yes. So look, I think the short answer is LPP is mostly treated by derms and especially hair loss and scalp experts. But there's a lot of overlap at the centers. So many of the centers that are sort of big myositis treatment centers are also big centers treating LPP. I'll tell you, and Ben should feel free to add anything to this than he has.
Our focus on commercial build-out right now is succeeding in dermatomyositis and making sure that we have enough breadth and enough coverage and enough relationships to succeed there. I don't think we are changing anything about our DM commercial strategy in anticipation of CS or LPP or anything else. I think in the fullness of time, the relationships that we have at these tertiary centers will definitely be helpful with the subsequent build-outs for the other indications treated at overlapping centers. But we're going to take each of these launches as the opportunity that it is to make sure we invest fully in it. Ben, anything you'd add there?
I'd just add on DM specifically, there's a combination of rheum derms and neuromuscular specialists who all will be potential prescribers, and we're focused on all three of those groups as appropriate. As Matt mentioned, I think there's overlap. Obviously, the clearest overlap is in the derm subset of that DM prescriber base, but also even a lot of the rheums and neuromuscular physicians, not all of them, but many are at tertiary centers of excellence where there's often multidisciplinary myositis clinics and myositis specialists, especially in the rheum derm space, but also involving neuromuscular experts. And so I think there's, in addition to specific prescriber overlap, the overlap in terms of overall institutional engagement and collaboration that is important.
Got it. That's very helpful. And maybe if I may, another question on the -- whats your -- on the LPP, what's the internal bar for success in Phase IIb to progress to Phase III?
Yes. So the short answer to that question is we are going to enroll patients in the Phase III before we read out the Phase IIb. So we're really not viewing this as a -- like run the Phase IIb, get the answer, run the Phase III. We're really [indiscernible] this like a continuous study. And I think the reason for that is, as Ben said, clinically, I think we have plenty of confidence to go directly into a registrational program. We're just making sure we have all the information we need from a regulatory and process perspective as well as to get the right powering assumptions and so on for the Phase III portion of the study.
Our next question comes from Alex Thompson with Stifel.
Appreciate the update. I guess for batoclimab, I think, Matt, you alluded to maybe sharing some more data from the study in the future. I was curious if you could elaborate on to whether we should expect to see more data from MG or CIDP in particular in the future?
And then as a follow-up to that, curious about your thinking on whether MG and CIDP data or even some of this TED data could help support ultimate 1402 filings in the future?
Look, I think never say never in terms of publishing MG or CIDP or other data. I mean we have an interesting treasure trove of things there. That said, like the 1402 MG program, for example, reads out next year. And I think at that point, everyone is going to be much more interested in the ins and outs of that data set than anything about what we saw in the batoclimab study. CIDP, there's a little bit more time between now and when the studies come out, and there might be interesting things to say there. So it's certainly possible. We're obviously principally focused on 1402. I don't think we will need any of the MG or the CIDP data to support the regulatory filings. I think the 1402 data will be sort of sufficient in and of itself. Obviously, the FDA is aware of all these studies, has seen safety data and everything else from these studies. And although I'm not sure the FDA would like publicly declare that they take great comfort in sort of cross-mechanism comparisons of things, obviously, the body of evidence suggesting safety and efficacy for FcRns in those diseases is helpful to us in our interactions with the agency, and I suspect helpful to the agency in making approval decisions. Obviously, the CIDP trial design is different for 1402 than the Phase IIb was. So that's something to take into consideration.
Our next question comes from Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright.
I'm just trying to understand the sequencing on the LPP Phase III study. It sounds like this is going to be sort of continuous enrollment from Phase II to Phase III. I guess I'm just trying to understand at what point you are going to validate the data and engage with the agency just in terms of finalization on the primary endpoint?
Yes. After we've read out the Phase IIb when we have the data to share with them is the answer to that question. Probably along the way as well after we read out the Phase IIb.
Okay. And so there will be patients who, I guess, you'll just be insured or just in terms of making sure you're collecting everything that is necessarily needed to input into some kind of composite endpoint if some kind of change or tweak is needed?
Yes. The short answer to that question is, yes. I don't think we are anticipating like major changes to the way the endpoints are structured and things like that. Obviously, there's a fair amount of knowledge about this going in. It's mostly about sort of validating assumptions that we're going in with.
Our next question comes from Dina Ramadane with Bank of America.
First is maybe to clarify an earlier point. Given there's considerable overlap between the TED and Graves populations, and it looks like you guys had a strong responder signal in TED patients with elevated thyroid levels. How do you plan to apply these learnings to your pivotal Graves program? Just curious what your thoughts are on how you're thinking about the inclusion of patients with ocular symptoms and if you think there's still an opportunity in the Graves program to show a benefit on proptosis and maybe a subgroup population?
And then just on the subgroup data you presented in TED patients that were hyperthyroid at baseline, could you provide just some additional color on how this patient population compares to the Phase II Graves in terms of kind of disease characteristics that define severity, maybe baseline T3, T4 levels or length of time uncontrolled or hyperthyroid on ATD?
Yes. These are all great questions. Thank you. Look, I think the first answer is, although this comment may read as glib, the quality of the response in hyperthyroid patients in the TED study mostly just validates our view of where we're at in Graves that this is across multiple sites, a broader population in some ways, like continuing to show like very strong performance in treating hyperthyroidism in these patients. But the Graves -- TED study was designed to exclude severely hyperthyroid patients. And so the reason that only 20 out of the 100-some-odd patients in the overall combined program on drug had sort of hyperthyroidism is because mostly the patients who came in were controlled. Now many of them were controlled on moderate doses of ATDs and things like that. But nonetheless, like these were mostly not hyperthyroid patients at baseline. So I think like from that perspective, they were less sick than the patients in the Phase II study. I think we expect to show benefit in the Graves study on ocular symptoms, and we think it will be incrementally helpful. But it's not obviously the focus of the Graves program. And the Graves program excludes moderate to severe TED patients who've already progressed to more significant ocular symptoms.
And our next question comes from Chi Fong with Bank of America.
I just have a quick follow-up on brepo. So given the integrated trial design and you mentioned parallel enrollment as well earlier in the call, how do you plan to handle the Phase IIb results once you have those on hand? Could you or do you plan to top line or publish the Phase IIb results? Or would the disclosure be more go or no go, or tweak or no tweak? And ultimately, the Phase IIb data would be kept in-house until you have unblinded the Phase III data?
I don't know that we have a super well-formed view on what we'll say publicly about that data. I think our pretty strong expectation -- at some level, the biggest possible version of the impact of that data is like some kind of futility analysis basically, where like, obviously, if we saw something super unexpected, it could cause us to like change our conviction. I think that would be pretty surprising given what we know. And so I think that's sort of the sort of basics, whether we will say something about it once we have it or not, I just -- to be totally honest, I just haven't thought that much about it.
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call over to Matt Gline for closing remarks.
Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Thank you, everybody, for dialing-in. Obviously, a lot of good questions on both LPP and on Graves' and TED. I'm sorry if we missed anyone in the queue. Look, I want to say thank you again, first of all, to the Immunovant team, to the patients and the investigators in this TED study. Obviously, always disappointing when a study doesn't work out. I hope one of the things you walk away from this call with is we learned a lot from that study that has been helpful. We learned even more that we haven't shared today because it's competitively valuable and will set us up to win in Graves. So we're excited for all of those learnings. And it's just a herculean effort to get these things across the line. And then excited in advance from the same commitment that we're going to get from the LPP community who are deeply in need of new therapies and really excited about the possibility of something new. I have great confidence in the Priovant team to run a good study there and to take advantage of all the relationships we've built and the work that we've done and excited to just continue to add big bricks in the wall that is the brepo opportunity. So looking forward to having a call similar to this one again in the not-too-distant future to talk more about new indications for brepo, at least on that side of it. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for joining this morning, and we'll talk again soon.
Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kernaussage: Priovant hat ein direkt registratorisches kombiniertes Phase IIb/III‑Programm für Lichen planopilaris (LPP) mit Brepocitinib gestartet; das Wirkprinzip (JAK1/TYK2) passt zur Th1‑getriebenen Pathobiologie.
- Batoclimab‑Update: Phase‑III in Thyroid Eye Disease (TED) verfehlte das primäre Endpunkt, zeigte aber starke IgG‑Senkung und eine überzeugende Thyroid‑Normalisierungsrate in hyperthyroiden Subgruppen; IMVT‑1402 bleibt Fokus für Graves.
⚡ Strategische Highlights
- Programmstruktur: LPP‑Studie startet als kombinierte Phase IIb/III (72 Patienten Phase IIb, anschließende Erweiterung auf ~270 mit Sample‑Size‑Re‑estimation) — Ziel: zügige Registrierung.
- Mechanistische Belege: Biomarker‑Daten (Interferon‑gamma, IL‑12, CCL5) zeigen klare Th1‑Modulation durch Brepocitinib und stützen Proof‑of‑Concept.
- Portfolio‑Priorität: Batoclimab‑TED ist ein negatives Ergebnis für das erste FcRn‑Programm, 1402 (IMVT‑1402) ist strategisch und klinisch Priorität für Graves und zukünftige Zulassungen.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Studienstart: Direkt‑zu‑registrierend gestartetes Phase IIb/III‑Programm in LPP (Beginn: letzten Monat) mit klarer Ausrichtung auf IGA‑01 (Investigator Global Assessment)‑Endpoint.
- Batoclimab‑Erkenntnis: Primärer Proptosis‑Endpunkt in TED nicht erreicht; trotzdem tiefere IgG‑Suppression korreliert mit besserer Wirksamkeit und 80% Responder‑Rate bei hyperthyroiden Patienten in einer gepoolten Analyse.
- Dosisplanung: Für 1402 werden äquivalente Dosisarme (300/600 mg) in den Graves‑Studien weiterverfolgt; Graves‑Enrollment läuft gut.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Endpoints & Power: Kritik an LPP AI (noisy) — Management erklärt Wahl von IGA‑01 mit definierten Kriterien, aggressive Washout‑Strategie und Möglichkeit zur Re‑Powering nach Phase IIb.
- TED→Graves‑Read‑through: Fragen zu Proptosis‑Verschlechterung nach Dosisreduktion; Antwort: sichtbare Verschlechterung in Woche‑24 vs Woche‑12 (~20–30% weniger Verbesserung), aber hyperthyrode Subgruppe zeigt konsistenten hormonellen Nutzen.
- Konkomitante Therapie: Analysen zu Polypharmazie bei LPP; Management plant strenge Washouts und aktive Begleitung von Begleitmedikationen in der Studie.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit für Aktionäre: Brepocitinib‑Franchise gewinnt mit dem LPP‑Start einen qualifizierten Orphan‑Runway; biomarker‑gestützte POC erhöht Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit. Negatives TED‑Resultat für Batoclimab ist ein Rückschlag, liefert aber verwertbare Erkenntnisse (IgG‑Tiefe, Graves‑Read‑through). Risiko bleibt in Endpunkt‑validierung und regulatorischer Bestätigung; entscheidende Katalysatoren: Phase IIb‑Readout LPP und Graves‑Daten für 1402.
Roivant Sciences — Leerink Global Healthcare Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Hi, everybody. So my name is Dave Risinger. On behalf of Leerink Partners. I just wanted to thank you for joining our conference. It's very much my pleasure to introduce Matt Gline, the CEO of Roivant. He's just putting a little sugar in his coffee and then we'll get started. But really appreciate you being here and his team members Richard and Keyur are in the audience as well.
So I thought it would be great for you to just maybe kick off, Matt, with some opening comments on the business prospects. You've had a tremendous run of good news and hoping for good -- for more good news ahead, but I would love you to start with some opening comments.
Yes. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having us. It's obviously it's a great venue for a conference. I think the best in Miami at present. So thanks, Dave. Thanks for having us.
Look, it's been -- I don't know it's hard looking out over the room to know exactly who's got what level of familiarity, but it's been a really transformative period for us. And I think in some ways, we've been built for a long time to find drugs that matter, develop them in creative ways. I think we've done a phenomenal job in indication selection and sort of building a pipeline. And at this point, I feel like the fruits of that labor have like finally come together.
And so as many of you may know, mid last year, we got data in a registrational program in dermatomyositis that sets us up now, our NDA was just accepted last week with priority review. So we'll now be, knock wood, launching that product in this year, by the end of September. And that sets us up for this incredible period ahead with the stacked series of data and commercial launches, starting with dermatomyositis launch, but also with data coming in multiple other registrational programs in NIU later this year in Graves' disease for our FcRn next year.
On top of that, we have Phase IIb data from mosliciguat in PH-ILD. I'm sure we'll talk about all these different programs. But just -- it's a period of true business transformation for us where we're standing at the cusp of becoming as daunting as it sounds, a real company, the kind of business that has to generate sales and make quarters and be profitable and all that good stuff. And so I think it's an exciting moment to stand at the doorstep of that, and I'm excited to talk more about everything that's going on.
Phenomenal. So before we go into the details, maybe you could step back. Obviously, you had an analyst meeting in December in New York, but just highlight sort of your vision and where you want to take the company?
Yes. Look, I think it's sort of funny in biotech where -- so when I first got started, I had all these friends in tech, and I was like new to biotech and someone I cannot remember who gave me this piece of advice. And they said, "Oh, the difference between tech and biotech is that in tech, all the ideas sound stupid and some of them turn out to be really good. And in biotech, every idea sounds amazing and most of them don't work." And just like I thought a lot about that as our business has matured.
But one thing about it is like you say, what do you want to be? And the answer is like I want to be what everybody else wants to be. I want to be a successful therapeutics company that deliver drugs that matter to patients that need them. And that's sort of -- like from a vision perspective, it's not more complicated at some level than that. I think what I think we are really good at, in particular, obviously, is we don't do a lot of basic bent science. So most of our pipeline is in-licensed partnered, et cetera. And we're good at finding real value in the world and in particular, in seeing creative ways to build partnerships around drug development, indication selection, good clinical execution.
And I hope that as we become a commercial pharma company, first of all, we can bring some of that energy to launching a dermatomyositis, our orphan JAK/TYK franchise that I think should be a really important franchise. And then into the FcRn programs, we can bring some of that energy to the commercial field. But also, I hope that it serves us well in -- I think the next -- I think whatever -- one of the things about biotech is every marathon ends with another marathon. And I think our next marathon is both about commercial success, but also, I mean, how many quarters into our launch are you going to turn to me and ask me what's next? It's not going to be very many. And I think one of the great things about the business we're building is I hope that we're capable of continuing to deliver on an R&D base layer that allows us to stack and compound. And I think that is a big part of what we're building from here.
Yes. Well, you've certainly demonstrated to date that the ROI in your business model with your leadership team and the structure of the company is extremely high. But just provide a little bit more color on that. So what makes Roivant so special?
Yes. I mean, look, I think there's a few things. One is we've just always been of the belief that bringing people together of different backgrounds and phenotypes can make a difference in how drugs are developed in the industry. And so we have a leadership team that comprises career drug developers, but also, frankly, a lot of former buy-side people who think about the world like investors do. And I think that's just been a very potent combination for us in designing an R&D portfolio and thinking about ROI and thinking about the ways of investing to generate maximum value from the next data set.
I think sometimes we've made decisions that have initially because I think they don't necessarily rhyme with the decisions of other biotech companies been a little bit head scratchers. And I think it's always been in service of sort of ruthlessly economic thinking about R&D that is like how do you drive value by making every dollar and every inch count in a clinical trial. And I'm proud of where we are right now on the back of that, but it wasn't always easy.
Yes. Excellent. So why don't we turn to brepocitinib with the launch plan for the end of the third quarter. How do you expect brepocitinib to be taken up? Could you just kind of contextualize the opportunity and describe your launch plans?
My handlers are in the room, and I'm talking through a sell-side analyst. So the answer is slow and steady, Dave, slow and steady. Look, I -- the truth is there has not been a modern therapy developed in dermatomyositis basically ever. I mean, IVIg is approved, but has been used off-label for a long time. And it's a physician and patient community that on the one hand, is desperate for new options. These are very sick patients. And if you talk to the doc community, I think you'll find a lot of enthusiasm for our drug.
But on the other hand, it's steep and unknowns. It's very hard to tell exactly how early adoption will work. It's very hard to tell exactly which patients will come. We have theories about all of these things, and I'm excited about the work that we're doing to identify these patients ahead of time to work with the referral centers that treat a lot of them to make sure the docs are familiar with our data and how to think about what our drug might be capable of.
But ultimately, we won't know about what the next step looks like until we reach the next step. So we're doing all the prep work that we can. We're building our patient support org so that we're going to be able to get patients on drug and covered. We're building a field force of incredibly qualified sort of high degree of medical expertise, a lot of advanced degrees to make sure that -- again, it's a pretty academic treating physician community, so to make sure we're sort of steeped in that community and working with all the right people. But ultimately, it's going to come down to execution, and we're going to have to see when we see.
Excellent. Well, the KOLs with whom we've spoken are obviously quite excited about brepocitinib given the oral administration and the efficacy and safety profile you detailed, particularly relative to IVIg for those patients that are not in a crisis at this very moment. But could you just talk about the 40,000 U.S. patient opportunity, including what percentage have both skin and muscle involvement?
So taking a tiny step back, dermatomyositis is -- and the whole of the idea behind our development plan for brepocitinib is to take the most potent anti-inflammatory mechanisms we've ever developed in JAK and TYK inhibition, especially JAK1 and TYK2 inhibition and turn them on orphan inflammatory disease with high unmet need. And so brepocitinib is like a perfect sort of center of the bull's eye indication for us. These are very sick patients. It's in part an interferon-driven disease. We know the signaling pathways we hit should matter. And there's a lot of need.
So you talked about the number of 40,000. There's probably about epidemiologically, some of our competitors have found sort of 70,000 patients in literature search in terms of total U.S. population. We think about it in terms of treating patients now. And in claims data set, there's about 40,000 patients who show up as an active therapy for dermatomyositis. And it looks very similar to some of the other great orphan indications that people have launched into like myasthenia gravis.
Today, the vast majority of those patients, about 75% of them are on what I would call sort of "first-line therapy," right, older meds, steroids, immunosuppressants, methotrexate, DMARDs, things like that. And then about 25% of the patient population is on later-line meds. About half of that 25% are on IVIg and the other half are on sort of zoology of other anti-inflammatory stuff Remicade and rituximab and off-label JAK inhibitors. And basically, everything in that bucket has failed dermatomyositis studies, but these patients are desperate and they're antinflammatory medicines and so people are trying them. And so that's kind of what the treatment landscape looks like today.
Notably, you mentioned the oral administration. Those 75% of patients that are on corticosteroids that are on methotrexate, obviously, those patients are all on oral regimens now. And so you have someone coming in and offering for that patient population, the sort of uncontrolled patients on, in many cases, like very difficult like regimens, right? Being on high-dose oral prednisone is terrible and yet these patients are consistently on high-dose prednisone because nothing else is really working for them, being able to offer them something that is going to be a real alternative with an improvement in efficacy, being able to reduce that steroid burden, I think it's going to be a really exciting opportunity.
Excellent. And what is the process to be able to garner access? So obviously, these are pretty desperate patients. So payers should allow access quickly. But how do you think about that?
Yes. I mean it's a good question. One of the beautiful things about the current moment in the biotech industry is we would like to be commercial innovators along certain dimensions, but we don't really have to be commercial innovators. That is Horizon and argenx and BridgeBio and Insmed and Madrigal and Verona and a number of other companies have demonstrated what a biotech company can do in a modern commercial launch, especially in sort of orphan-ish indications.
And so I think the first thing is we've learned a lot from that playbook. And part of what's been shown is if you have a patient community, if you have high unmet need and an important medicine that you can get patients and docs to work with payers and you can get patients on drug. And so you wind up building these patient support hubs where the patients and the physicians agree in exchange for a bridge program to really work with you to convince the payers that it's the right thing. And again, in recent memory, that's worked pretty well for biotech companies. And so we're working on that endeavor, and we're building the team out of people who have done that on some of the very same launches I just mentioned.
That's great. So then let's transition to CSU. So congrats on those recent compelling results. How quickly can you get Phase III up and running? And how long will it take to generate Phase III results?
Yes, perfect. So Dave is talking about -- we had another indication for brepocitinib. We were running a small but interesting proof-of-concept study in disease called cutaneous sarcoidosis or CS, which is another devastating orphan inflammatory disease. It's a subcomponent of sarcoidosis generally, which affects multiple organs. Actually, one other form of it is ocular sarcoidosis, which is a subset of non-infectious uveitis, yet another brepocitinib indication.
Anyway, you asked about key sarcoidosis. It's a devastating inflammatory skin disease. It can be permanently disfiguring if left untreated. There's a high desire to treat the symptoms, and it's very uncomfortable. We ran a Phase II study that demonstrated -- so our assessment of the bar for -- the endpoint, the scale of disease activity is called CSAMI. It's one of these skin scales like CDASI and dermatomyositis or EASI in psoriasis or -- sorry, PASI in psoriasis or EASI in atopic dermatitis. And our view was a 5-point improvement in CSAMI was clinically meaningful.
In the study we ran, placebo patients were flat to slightly worse and drug patients on brepocitinib improved by about 20 points. So just blew our own bar for clinical meaningfulness out of the water. To give you a sense, the baseline CSAMI scores were in the 30s, and we were delivering a 20-point improvement. So just a huge benefit to these patients in the Phase II. So there's a lot of excitement for the pivotal program that we're now about to begin.
We said we're going to start the study this year. Basically, the only significant gating item is a discussion with FDA about the Phase II data. And you can imagine we put that data out a few weeks ago. We've been preparing for and lining up for that conversation as quickly as possible. I think once we're done with that, and we've answered a couple of relatively minor in the grand scheme of things questions about how the protocol should be set up for the Phase III, we should be off to the races. And I think this trial will be pretty easy to enroll because the Phase II data was very good, and there's not a lot of other options for these patients. So I think we're excited to see that through. I think it's -- it will be -- we haven't given specific guidance on the time line is the short answer, but a couple of years.
Okay. Great. And before we go on, I just thought it would be helpful for those that aren't familiar for you to just briefly touch on why this is such a safe drug, i.e., and how it will be perceived to be safe in the wake of JAK adoption, particularly RINVOQ despite its label warnings.
Yes. I hate to undercut my own truth, but want to cut my own messaging. Look, brepocitinib is a JAK inhibitor. It hits JAK1 and it hits TYK2, and it will have. It has had in its clinical data, the kinds of safety issues that people talk about with JAK inhibitors, slightly elevated risk of infections, slightly elevated risk of MACE events, et cetera. And that's just a fact of life for these drugs.
Now we in-licensed brepvocitinib from Pfizer in 2021, right around the time that black box warnings were known to be becoming a thing for the class. And at the time, RINVOQ was a $3 billion drug in inflammatory bowel disease and some skin conditions. And I think like the presupposition was that in sort of "mass market indications in places like psoriasis and AD and then in inflammatory bowel disease" that docs would go elsewhere because of these safety concerns. And our view at the time was, okay, we're going to go after severe orphan disease with high unmet need where the cost-benefit trade-off is just different, where people would more comfortably tolerate the kinds of things that JAK inhibitors introduced.
And for example, in dermatomyositis, first of all, dermatomyositis causes elevated risk of MACE events, it causes malignancies. Steroids and methotrexate cause elevated risks of these things. Getting patients properly treated and off steroids is going to provide benefit along the exact same axis that people otherwise worried about with JAK inhibitors. So it felt like the kind of thing where we wouldn't face the same cost risk trade-offs as people might be wondering about in something like IBD.
Now fast forward to 2026, the truth is docs don't seem all that worried about these things in IBD relative to the benefit of a RINVOQ and very few other drugs, if any, have come close to RINVOQ-like benefit in these inflammatory markets. And so RINVOQ is probably going to be a $15-plus billion drug and rheumatologists and other sort of immunologists are very happy to prescribe it. So I do think that the specific concern that we were engineering around may wind up being a little bit different.
But anyway, in these inflammatory diseases, the orphan diseases that we're going after, the feedback we get from physicians is an option that works is going to be incredibly important and people will look past for the most part with education, any of the JAK class sort of safety liabilities that these drugs will have. And I think brepo is a very good JAK inhibitor. It's very sort of specific to JAK1 and TYK2. And I think overall, its safety and tolerability looks to be kind of on the benign end of what you see for the class. But make no mistake, we will have the kinds of things that people see with JAK inhibition.
All right. Very good. That's very helpful context. So let's transition to NIU. Can you talk about those results and the timing for the Phase III readout?
Yes. So this is our next pivotal indication. CS will just start a pivotal program, but dermatomyositis will launch by the end of September. And then in the second half of this year, we will get data for our pivotal program in non-infectious uveitis. So this is a sort of umbrella diagnosis for inflammation of the eye, and in particular, in our case, inflammation of the sort of back or -- back of the eye structures, where these patients generally can't be treated with locally administered steroids, which is the sort of first-line therapy for front of the eye inflammation.
And so standard of care is a combination of high-dose anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids, DMARDs. HUMIRA is approved in the indication, although it doesn't -- it leaves room for improvement from an efficacy perspective. And so we ran a Phase II that read out a couple of years ago at this point that showed really sort of transformatively better data for NIU patients, right? The HUMIRA data, for example, the clinical endpoint is time to treatment failure. And in the HUMIRA study, it was what, about 3.5 months on placebo and just a hair shy of 6 months on drug.
Our Phase II study at the high dose was greater than 12 months. We stopped evaluating patients after a year basically or at least the study concluded at 12 months. And so the median time to treatment failure, most of the patients were still appropriately treated at 12 months. So really, really great data. That then kicked off a pair of pivotal studies that are reading out later this year and an indication that is frankly similar in size and scope to dermatomyositis, but 70,000 to even more potentially patients in claims data sets with non-anterior uveitis who could be good candidates for a good systemic drug and about 47,000-ish uveitis patients on TNF inhibition, many of whom, just given the data I just shared, will fail in a later line option.
Phenomenal. That's great. So let's then turn to potential other indications for brepo.
Yes. Lots of great ideas, some indications that will be proof of concept, some indications that may be straight to pivotal, some of those studies ready to start in the relatively near future and looking forward to talk about them as they get up and running.
But look, our view at this point is, look, we're in the sort of pinch-me position. We have one of the best sort of JAK class drugs ever developed, which is itself one of the best classes ever so far discovered for anti-inflammatory use. And we have carved out with a significant lead orphan inflammatory disease as a swim lane for us. It's an amazing position of privilege to be in. And there are many, many places you could imagine going, right? There's a whole host of inflammatory skin conditions that are orphan and quite severe.
Now that we have good data in cutaneous sarcoidosis and [ orphan ] ocular sarcoidosis, you can imagine thought going into pulmonary sarcoidosis. We get a lot of investor ideas that are good ideas. People suggest systemic sclerosis and things like that. There's a lot of good places to imagine taking the drug. And I think at the moment, we're focused on expanding indication opportunity, doing a good job with it and making sure that we're focused on the right number of things such that we can win and continue to grow the franchise without diluting our efforts. And I think there's -- we're spoiled for choice.
Excellent. So then is there a way for you to contextualize those incremental opportunities for brepo relative to the indications that are currently modeled by -- The Street, whether they're modeled right or wrong, right? When you think about the size of the first 3 potential indications. And then you consider those incremental opportunities that you're going to start to disclose this year. Any way to contextualize that? Are we talking about 50% greater potential, double the potential, 25% more?
Well, I think of the 3 indications that we've now talked about, I think NIU and DM are roughly similar in size. You can imagine puts and takes as the market evolves in terms of which one winds up being bigger than the other, but they're both about the same size. And cutaneous sarcoid is very large. There's about 30,000 or 40,000 patients in cutaneous sarcoid as well. It's probably like a little smaller than a DM or an NIU, but maybe only a little, to be honest.
I think the other indications that we're looking at range in size from sort of CS-ish on the small end to bigger than DM and NIU on the big end by at least a bit. So I think we're looking at indications that are right in the same range. And add legs to the stool that are every bit as large as the other ones that are currently in place.
Excellent. That's great. We look forward to those updates. So let's turn to mosli. Would love to hear you talk about how translatable you think the proof-of-concept data from Group 1 PAH will be to -- and also Group 4 PAH to the Group 3 PH-ILD setting.
Yes. So mosli, again, for those not familiar, it's a drug we in-licensed from Bayer. It is an inhaled activator of sGC. That's a target that's been used successfully in pulmonary hypertension before as a systemic therapy. It's a drug called Adempus, that was -- Adempas that was a Merck Bayer collaboration that did about $2 billion, close to $2 billion in sales in pulmonary arterial hypertension. But in general, systemic vasodilation, which was partly the name of the game in PAH has not been efficacious or safe in PH-ILD, because of this VQ mismatch tissue, basically because if you have a lung that is healthy in parts and disease and other parts that when you systemically vasodilate, as much oxygenation benefit as you get in the healthy lung tissue, you give it right back again in the disease lung tissue.
And so the way the field has gone, obviously, the leaders here have been United Therapeutics with Tyvaso is you administer inhaled vasodilators that sort of only activate the healthy part of the lung, and so you get a more sort of targeted approach. In general, I'll first make broad statements that make the risk seem low. In general, the translatability of inhaled vasodilation has been good from PAH to PH-ILD. And the things that have worked well in PAH and have demonstrated good, for example, PVR reductions, and we have basically the best PVR reductions ever seen in Group 1 have translated to good clinical benefit in PH-ILD.
Now the words in general are doing a lot of work in that comment and that we're talking about a very small end of clinical trials, almost all of them with prostacyclins. And so that's sort of the unknown unknowns here is we know that SGC works and pattern matches really well to what has happened with the prostacyclins with Treprostinil as between Group 1 and Group 3. And I think we have good reason to believe that SGC as a mechanism should be sort of active in Group 3 and PH-ILD. But the risk that we're taking is the unknown unknowns as we see that through.
And there's Phase IIb data, as you know, coming second half of this year that, look, I think if successful, PH-ILD is a market that looks every bit as exciting from an unmet need and opportunity perspective as Group 1 pulmonary arterial hypertension. Tyvaso has been on a rocket ship. And one of the great things about pulmonary hypertension -- great -- one of the terrible things about pulmonary hypertension is a very bad disease. And so these patients wind up using in Group 1, for example, ultimately every option they can get their hands on. It's a polypharmacy market.
And so the goal is not even to like beat Tyvaso. The goal is to deliver another therapeutic option for these patients so that they can get used earlier and the patients that like our profile better later and patients that like Tyvaso better, but sort of used in every combination with all the different prostacyclins and Treprostinil and other things that will come. And I think we should be the first knock wood non-Treprostinil mechanism if we're successful.
Excellent. Okay. That's great. So then could you talk about the primary endpoint and how you'd characterize your base case PVR efficacy expectations?
Yes. So the primary endpoint is PVR is a right hearted blood pressure. It's measured under anesthesia on an operating table with a catheterization. So it's not an easy thing to measure. But again, these are quite sick patients. In our Phase I studies, both in healthies and in PAH patients, for example, we saw, I think, a peak around a 38-point PVR reduction, 38%. I think what it generally seems to take in these indications to deliver a clinical benefit is sort of 20-plus percent PVR reductions. So I think that's kind of the bar for the primary, which is this PVR.
In the study, we'll also be measuring 6-minute walk and other sort of clinical endpoints, which will ultimately be the registrational endpoints of the Phase III program. And I think it's hard to power for those things for those that have followed this field for a long time, 6-minute walk is a notoriously frustrating endpoint. But I think what we're looking for is this, like I said, 20-point PVR benefit and evidence of separation and progress on things like 6-minute walk that help us contextualize for a Phase III.
Excellent. All right. That's great. And then just touch on safety and tolerability for mosli, expectations there.
Yes. In the Phase I program, it was a very well-tolerated drug. Not a lot to speak of mostly sort of on-target related to vasodilation is the kind of stuff you see. And all of that is the same as any vasodilate PD5s or Treprostinils or whatever. One of the nice things about mosli is it's a very well-formulated drug. It's a single puff of a DPI once a day is the formulation we're testing. It's got very long activity. So we have Phase I data that shows enhanced cGMP production out like 2 days from a single administration. So we've got nice long sort of half-life, if you want to call it that, which is super encouraging.
And in general, I think we expect it to be a well-tolerated agent. One of the challenges with these patients is inhaled drugs can cause cough. We don't see a lot of that. And in particular, cough is an on-target, we believe, effect of Treprostinil, and it shouldn't be an on-target effect of sGC activators. So we're hoping not to see significant cough and cough is a meaningful safety side effect in these patients because you're an IPF patient, you already have quite a bad cough and adding on top of it is something we're generally trying to avoid. So I'm hopeful that that's going to be good.
The way the study is designed, it's a dose escalation study where patients start out on a low dose and then are escalated relatively quickly to the highest dose they can tolerate. And from what we've seen so far, and obviously, we don't know who's on drug, who's on placebo. We don't know really anything about the performance of the drug. But what we do know is that a lot of patients have been able to get to the high doses, which is encouraging in terms of tolerability.
Excellent. So any opportunities to go beyond PH-ILD?
Absolutely. Look, I think you could imagine other pulmonary hypertension indications, PAH -- PHP and COPD is like a little bit complicated because emphysematous lung has not generally been great for these mechanisms, but it's something we've thought about, and it's something that Merck has explored with similar related drug I was in the middle of a study for.
Obviously, we've watched with interest the TETON data that showed that Treprostinil works in IPF. And that's definitely an area that we are actively focused on. But PH-ILD is such a big opportunity. We've been pretty head down there until we've gotten to this moment with the Phase IIb and getting ready for the Phase III. But there's a lot of places you can imagine going beyond PH-ILD, and I'm confident we will in time go broader.
Excellent. And what's the patent life?
I was literally answering the question I was just answering and I was like Dave is going to ask me the patent life for this drug. Sorry -- 2042. 2042. And I was like, I don't remember sitting here right now, and I felt like I was caught not having quite studied enough for the test. 2042.
Well, you have all the other answers.
Only to the questions you've asked so far.
All right. So why don't we -- we're running out of time here, but it'd be great for you to talk about the Immunovant readouts we should focus on this year. And then would love to hear about the Graves' disease opportunity for next year.
In a minute, 19 seconds, we'll talk about those things. Look, so Immunovant is developing our franchise of FcRn inhibitors, which are a class that is, at this point, needs no introduction. Argenx has done an amazing job with it. We have 2 data sets coming this year, a small proof-of-concept study in cutaneous lupus where, look, I think we have good evidence of disease activity there. And obviously, J&J's nipocalimab studies have been successful in an encouraging way. The bar there is to make sure we're able to outpace competitive programs that are also looking good in CLE. So we'll have a good look at that data when it comes later this year.
And then the other readout coming this year is in treatment-refractory difficult rheumatoid arthritis where, look, the opportunity is huge. These patients are in bad need. We're looking at patients that have failed some combination of TNF, IL-6 and JAK inhibitors. These are pretty sick patients and not a lot of options. That study has enrolled really nicely. Obviously, there's some data from nipocalimab there as well with mixed results, and we think we've done a nice job on patient selection. We're only looking at autoantibody positive late-line patients. And so we'll know later this year what that looks like, but looking forward to that data as well.
And then you alluded to Graves disease. That reads out next year and is what I would call the lead indication for us. It's an enormous market of patients who are undertreated at present, no good options beyond very old antithyroid drugs. And I feel very proud. I feel like we have pioneered modern Graves disease drug development, which is an indication that, yes, I think there's 330,000 fully treatment refractory Graves patients in America. And if we can get to even a small percentage of those patients with a new option, we have a lot of opportunity ahead. So that registrational program reads out next year and would be probably the first indication commercially for 1402.
Phenomenal. Well, this has been great. We covered a lot of ground. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Thank you, Dave. Really fun.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and welcome to the LNP Litigation Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining today's call to review Genevant and Arbutus' $2.25 billion global settlement with Moderna. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I'd like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you, everybody, for joining on what I'm sure was short notice. I appreciate it. I'm going to go through the presentation here. It should be a relatively quick discussion. I'll take one second at the end to make a comment on the brepo NDA acceptance, then I'll open it up for a brief Q&A as well. I'm sure there are questions.
I'm going to start on Slide 3 in the presentation. Look, before I get to any of the specifics, I just want to acknowledge this is a process that has been years in the making. The litigation itself, we have a time line on here went back to 2022. But actually, this really started truly decades ago when the first predecessors of Genevant got to working on lipid nanoparticles. And it's a momentous day for truly dozens of people who worked on this technology, including the inventors listed at the bottom of the slide, the Genevant team today and lots of iterations of that team over time have contributed here in part because today represents the first real acknowledgment that team and those scientists have gotten that their technology was instrumental in the COVID-19 vaccines or at least the Moderna vaccine as we're announcing today with the settlement.
So I want to acknowledge and appreciate, obviously, all of those scientists, their hard work and obviously, the patients and other scientists and other companies, including Moderna, who were involved in bringing that vaccine to market and did a lot of work on it.
On Slide 4, what we're announcing today is a global $2.25 billion settlement with Moderna that resolves the global patent litigation between us and them on the COVID vaccine. That includes a $950 million upfront payment that will be made to us in July as well as a $1.3 billion payment that is contingent on a narrow legal appeal of one specific question, the applicability of Section 1498. We can talk more about that.
But that, as a reminder, is an issue that the district -- sorry, the district court ruled in our favor of pretrial, but Moderna felt it was important that they have that appeal right. It's an issue that has been resolved in our favor thus far with a few different opportunities for trial. That appeal will proceed from here. And if that appeal is resolved in our favor, they'll make that second $1.3 billion payment. This covers Moderna's global market share of COVID vaccines. That's about 1/3 of the total market. We'll talk a little bit more about what it means sort of from here.
On Slide 5, a couple of key pieces here. Again, I mentioned the $950 million upfront payment that will be made in July. Moderna, in turn, receives a global nonexclusive license to our technology for SM-102-containing mRNA vaccines for infectious disease, and we're agreeing not to sue for certain of our patents on Moderna's products.
The $1.3 billion is a -- $1.3 billion payment is a contingent payment that we get paid on an -- on appellate ruling that 1498 doesn't apply in this case. And then Moderna has the right to appeal solely on that question. They're not allowed to appeal anything other than the specific question of the applicability of 1498. If there is some partial affirmants, if the court rules that it applies on some portion of the doses, they make a partial payment.
That payment -- we received that payment on the first win of an appeal at the Federal Circuit, but would return it to them if it were subsequently overturned, for example, by the Supreme Court. And they are entitled to pursue claims -- sorry, we are entitled to pursue claims in the Court of Federal Claims for any doses that are ultimately not ruled under 1498. So we get to claim this value or what the Court of Federal Claims agrees. Even if we lose this appeal, But again, we're confident in this appeal based on the case so far.
And notably, this agreement includes robust credit protections on that $1.3 billion payment, including minimum cash covenants from Moderna and other protections to make sure that, that is secure from a credit perspective. I am sure that one of the questions I will get is why not more from some people in the world. It's a reasonable question given the wide range of potential outcomes.
So I just want to highlight one brief bit of information on Page -- Slide 6, which is -- this is -- historically for patent cases, this is a very large outcome. It is the -- among cases that have gone to jury, the single largest outcome in a case was Idenix Gilead over hepatitis C programs. That was about a $2.5 billion jury verdict that was subsequently overturned.
The next largest was a Pfizer Teva case that was $2.15 billion that was paid out in the settlement. If we receive the $1.3 billion, we will be right in between those 2. And therefore, we will be, at least among cases that would have gone to a jury, the largest paid out case. And among all of the cases we can find from a patent perspective across all industries, this is the second largest lump sum case that we can find. So it is a large outcome, and it reflects the value of our technology. Obviously, these were also unprecedented circumstances, but I wanted to highlight the historic nature of this outcome if it all comes together as planned.
On Slide 7, just a little bit of backup detail. So $950 million of the settlement proceeds will be paid in July 2026. We expect our effective tax rate on that to be between 10% and 15%. And then 60% to 70% of that is attributable to Roivant and the remainder goes to Arbutus and others. What we intend to do with the settlement proceeds is to continue doing what we've been doing to invest in our current pipeline and upcoming launches that we are excited about to continue to invest in new opportunities, and we are excited about a number of things ahead of us.
And then also, because we've already indicated that we are trying to be capital efficient and have quite a lot of cash in our balance sheet, we are today extending our share buyback program up to $1 billion, and we intend to be fairly aggressive in returning some of this capital starting immediately with that increase in order to continue running in a capital-efficient manner.
Notably, on Page 8, before we wrap up, this is the end of the Moderna process or at least -- the end of the beginning of the Moderna process. There remains this one appeal issue that we'll go through, and that's important. That contingent payment, we'll see it through. I'm sure we'll get some questions about the time line there. The sort of most likely paths to resolution in our view, run from sort of 18 to 36 months or something like that, and we'll start to get information pretty quickly on how the federal thinks about the case.
But as a reminder, that issue was decided in our favor 3 times thus far in the course of the proceeding by 2 different judges. That's -- it's the end of that part of the case, but the Pfizer BioNTech case remains outstanding and following the favorable market ruling early last year.
And as a reminder, on Slide 9, Moderna is about 1/3 of the total global COVID vaccine market. Pfizer has thus far not asserted Section 1498 as a defense. So if you take the total value of this settlement and you impute it, there's quite a lot of value potentially attributable to the Pfizer case and the Pfizer BioNTech case, and we intend to pursue that aggressively as we feel we've contributed there as well. So more to come on that in the upcoming weeks, months and probably a year or two.
The last thing I'll comment on before I open it up for Q&A and wrap up the short call today is a totally unrelated announcement on Slide 11. We announced by press release this morning that brepocitinib's NDA filing was accepted by FDA with priority review. So this is incredibly exciting for us. It puts us on the map for a potential commercial launch of brepocitinib in dermatomyositis this year, bringing that event into 2026 and not even very late in 2026. We said we expect to launch by the end of September, which is really exciting. The Priovant team, Ben and all those folks are incredibly hard at work, taking advantage of this news by working towards that launch date. And we are really looking forward to getting out there and helping those patients.
So more to come on that as well, but it turns 2026 now into an even bigger year for us where we get to start to prove what we can do commercially with the drug that we are very proud to work on.
So I'm going to wrap it up here and open it up for Q&A in a moment. I just want to say thank you again to obviously all of the scientists who have worked on this technology, the large team of people, including many people in the Genevant leadership team, Lindsay and the Arbutus leadership team, the predecessors of both that organization -- both those organizations who have worked on this prior to them taking home in each case.
It truly takes a lot of work to get to this point. And I'm pleased to be able to put this issue behind us. I'm sure Moderna is as well and to be able to turn our attention to lots of other great things to come. So with that, I'll say thank you, and I will hand it over to the operator for any Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
2. Question Answer
Congrats on the news, and I'm really glad things worked out after what seemed like many, many, many years in court. But I have 2 questions for you. On 1498, do you have any factual statistics on the success rate in terms of 1498 decisions being upheld on appeals?
And then number two, can you comment on which patent or argument in the Moderna case that really broke the camel's back. And in the Pfizer case, if we should be focused on a 378 patent because that obviously impacts the amount of COVID-19 revenue that's eligible for a royalty to apply.
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate it. Both great questions. On the first question on 1498, I think the answer is the number of 1498 cases in aggregate that have gone to appeal in the pharmaceutical industry is very low and the facts of our case are specific. So I don't think there's a lot of precedent. I think the best precedential tools that we have to make an analysis here come back to the fact that we have won this issue at several different stages of the proceedings up until now in front of the District Court. And it's a narrow legal argument at this point.
There's no factual dispute in front of the court. It's just a question of the interpretation of the law itself. And obviously, we believe we have the better end of that. I think that's an important thing.
On the Pfizer in terms of which patents applied, I can say there's no last draw to point to. And to be honest, the way settlement discussions work, we don't know exactly what prompted this set of discussions or what Moderna has thought about. But I think overall, we're pleased with the acknowledgment of our contribution that the settlement represents. And obviously, it's helpful that as a part of this judgment of validity or no invalidity has been entered on these patents, which allows us to then use all of them to the extent that we need to in the Pfizer case.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of David Risinger with Leerink Partners.
Let me add my congrats, including for the brepocitinib news this morning. So I have a number of questions, Matt, but they're pretty straightforward. First, when do you expect the appellate court decision on 1498?
Second, Moderna stated in its statement today that the company has concluded that a loss related to the pending 1498 proceedings is not probable, so it's not taking a reserve. Can you comment on that conclusion by Moderna and its legal team? And then third, when do you expect the Pfizer litigation to go to trial?
Yes. Perfect. Thanks, David. Appreciate the congratulations and I appreciate all the good questions, which I'm sure others have in mind as well. On the first question, when do we expect an appellate decision?
Look, it's not totally clear, but the process for filing an appeal is relatively straightforward, and the agreement lays out that everybody is going to move as quickly as they possibly can and not ask for any extensions. So this should move at a good clip. I think 18 to 36 months is a reasonable guess for resolution of the entire thing. Obviously, there's ways it could drag out longer, et cetera, and ways it could be resolved in theory on the fast end of that. But I think that's like a reasonable guess. That appeal should be filed relatively soon.
In terms of the Pfizer litigation, look, we've said it's approximately a year behind the Moderna one. We don't have a trial date yet. There is some overall progress on discovery and other things, and there are obviously also things that can happen that are not sort of publicly visible there. So we are moving forward there, and we'll continue to be aggressive, but I don't have a date to give right now. And then look, I can't comment on what judgment Moderna used to reach the idea that the payment was improbable. What I can say again is during the district court proceeding, this issue has come before the court 3 times. And in all 3 cases, the court has ruled in our favor. So we are optimistic about our prospects there.
[Operator Instructions] That will come from the line of Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
On the settlement. Maybe just first, how much read-through, Matt, do you see to the Pfizer BioNTech case? Does the outcome today put more pressure on Pfizer to come to the settlement table if that is indeed your ultimate goal?
Second, as you noted on the difference in terms of vaccine sales volume between BioNTech versus Moderna, can you remind how much damage are you actively seeking in damage from Pfizer and BioNTech?
And then third, maybe just walk us through the time line here. Did Moderna proactively reach out for settlement? Just curious how the interaction went.
Thanks, Brian. All good questions. On the first question, how much read-through in the Pfizer case? Look, I think some of the facts in the Pfizer case are different. But certainly, what we know from this is that Moderna in deciding whether or not to enter the settlement knew the evidence we had, knew their prospects for validity and invalidity on our patents and decided that this was the better course of action. Again, some of the facts may be different in the Pfizer case, but certainly, my view is it's helpful both to have that having been entered to the court and also just to get the confirmation that somebody else in Moderna in this case, saw the facts similarly to how we did.
But that's about as much as I can say. In terms of whether it adds pressure, that's really a question for Pfizer, not for us. In terms of how much we're seeking in damages from Pfizer, those briefings are not anywhere public at this point. So there's nothing to point to there to say. If at any point, that becomes public, we will let everybody know. And -- on the time line, I think I probably shouldn't comment on the process through which this came together. It was a productive confidential discussion as between us and Moderna.
One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Andy Chen with Wolfe Research.
So here, it looks like if Moderna loses 1498, they will pay $1.3 billion more cash. But it also looks like after that, they can pursue further -- like there are additional avenues of appeal. And just can you maybe remind us like for us who are not litigation experts, how likely are these appeals going to be favorable for Roivant eventually?
Yes. Thanks. It's a good question. And just to be clear, those appeals all specifically relate only to the narrow legal question on Section 1498. And so if they lose at the Federal Circuit, they make the payment to us and then they're allowed to go, for example, seek cert from the Supreme Court to appeal up from there. Look, it's hard to opine on the practical questions.
Obviously, our view as stated is we expect to win on this issue, and we believe we have the right -- with the right side of the law here. And whether the Supreme Court decides to hear a case like this is obviously up to them and difficult to predict. But that's sort of the nature of the appeal. There are other corner cases where the Federal Circuit remains the decision to some other court to answer some other related question. But in general, I think the most linear path here is to the Federal Circuit and then to the Supreme Court and then it wraps up.
And that will come from the line of Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
This is Eric on for Corinne Johnson. I just wanted to double-click a little bit on that last question. And thinking about like assuming the 1498 goes your way and Moderna does pursue an additional appeal, any thoughts on a time line or how long it could potentially take for a definitive resolution and how long it could potentially get drawn out? And given the fact that it could get drawn out, is there any risk to the amount of -- is there any thoughts on the way that you would treat the $1.3 billion payout in terms of the potential for paying that amount back plus interest?
Yes. I appreciate the question. I think I follow. In terms of the time line, the 18- to 36-month estimate I gave was inclusive of some cushion for a straightforward resolution of those appeals. Obviously, there are conceivable scenarios where it takes longer than that, but I think there are many likely scenarios where it's resolved within that time frame to finality, and we'll see.
In terms of the -- if you're asking about sort of accounting for the $1.3 billion, I think the accounting for the $1.3 billion will be -- we're still working through exactly how we're going to account for it if it is paid to us on Federal Circuit, and we'll figure it out between now and the time we receive such a payment. In terms of practically how we'll treat it, I don't have a ton to say other than that I think the period between that initial payment and final resolution is not so long that it's going to be a major issue for us at the time.
[Operator Instructions] and that will come from the line of Yaron Werber with TD Cowen.
Congrats on the amazing news and also on brepo PDUFA that was announced this morning. This is Sarah on for Yaron. Just 2 quick questions from us.
Does today's settlement kind of include the future royalty payments or eliminate them? Or how should we be thinking about those future royalty payments?
And then secondly, on the $1 billion in share buybacks, can you just share a little bit more about the expected timing or cadence that we should be expecting for the buybacks? And I know that includes the $500 million that was already announced in June of last year. So that would be great.
Thank you. I appreciate both the questions. They're good questions. On the first one -- and sorry, your line is a little bit noisy. So if you wouldn't mind going unmute while I'm answering that would be very helpful.
On the first one, this settlement, there's a lump sum that covers everything. So it includes, in essence, any future royalties. It's just -- these 2 numbers are sort of in terms of the way the settlement is structured. And that's how this settlement is arranged. And on the share buyback, look, we have felt for a while that we have excess cash. That was the nature of the extra $500 million authorization. I think we're still working out the details of the exact method, but I think you can expect us to be more aggressive in returning that capital to shareholders than we have been over the last months.
And look, I think we're looking to be capital efficient, and we know at this point that we are overcapitalized relative to even our own lofty expectations as to what we can do with cash in terms of new opportunities. So I think you should expect us to be fairly aggressive from here.
[Operator Instructions] and that will come from the line of Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital.
I appreciate the questions and congrats on the update. Turning to brepocitinib real quick. When considering the timing of the PDUFA, when might you expect to establish reimbursement with payers? And then could you just discuss the work being done on patient identification and physician education going into the launch?
Thanks, Sam. I super appreciate the question, and it's nice to get some on brepo as well. We're obviously super excited about this morning's announcement. Look, on pricing and reimbursement, obviously, ultimately, those final decisions aren't made until there would be approval of the product. But that work had already begun in earnest to the best of our ability prior to having a PDUFA date in terms of evaluating what we could evaluate. And that work is even easier and more of it can be done now.
And so the Priovant team is super hard at work making sure that we make the right decisions there. And I think we are sort of fully on track to have made decisions we feel really good about well before launch at this point other than the final steps that can't take place until after. So feeling overall good about that.
And then the second question on patient identification is, look, I think -- we had said at our Investor Day, some of the things that, that team is working on in terms of getting ready for launch. Among them is a lot of patient education work, the launch of the dermatomyositis.com website, which is a sort of hub for patient engagement and just like a ton of outreach and work with the doc community in DM who are profoundly hungry for new therapies and who are very excited as we get closer to the potential availability of this drug.
So the Priovant team is hard at work at all of that. And obviously, at the heart of those efforts is making sure that we know where these patients are, that we have relationships with their treating physicians and that everybody is set up to take advantage of the drug as best we can ahead of time by the time it's approved in terms of our connectivity. Thanks, really good questions.
[Operator Instructions] that will come from the line of Yatin Suneja with Guggenheim.
Just a quick one. In terms of your share, I think the range that you have said is 60% to 70%. Can you maybe just help us understand that range, maybe narrow that a little bit, like how much is attributable to you versus Arbutus?
And just a quick one on brepo, if I may. I mean we do get a lot of questions around how we should think about pricing. Any sort of a reasonable benchmark for us to think about from a pricing standpoint? I know it's early, but love your comment there.
Yes. Thank you. Both great questions. On the first one, look, I think what I can say is this didn't come together slowly over a long time. It came together quickly. And so I think we just still have a little bit of outstanding work to do on mechanics and distribution questions and things like that. So we will give a more precise answer on the exact flow of funds in every direction between now and July when the money is expected to come in. So that's about what I can say on that now, and there are various sort of puts and takes in some of the mechanics, but that range is a reasonable range.
And then in terms of how we think about pricing on brepo, as I just said in the previous question, we're doing that work now. We don't have a concrete answer. And obviously, you don't set a price until approval. That said, I think what we've said before on this issue is IVIG in DM is a $250,000-ish product. And if FcRn is coming in, efgartigimod is sort of $500 plus in terms of annual price. And I think those bookings set a range for what we think the dermatomyositis market given disease severity and the lack of options and other available treatment options coming, something that, that range is kind of what might be relevant, but we haven't chosen a price within that range or elsewhere.
And that will come from the line of Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
Congrats on the settlement and the brepo NDA acceptance. Just, Matt, you mentioned that this was the largest settlement for a patent case. And given that the Pfizer share of their vaccine is higher than the Moderna vaccine, I'm just wondering how we should think about the magnitude of a potential favorable Pfizer outcome in that litigation.
The regrettable thing about only settling 1 of 2 cases, I still sometimes have to give the following answer to questions, which is that it's difficult to comment on outstanding or pending litigation. So it's hard to say. But we're -- we continue to believe that our technology is used in the Pfizer vaccine that Pfizer BioNTech are infringing on our patents. And while the facts are unique to each case, we're going to continue to pursue our rights there aggressively. So stay tuned.
[Operator Instructions] And that will come from the line of Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Congrats on the news today. So you decided to do a share buyback with most of the Moderna upfront money. As we think about the Pfizer case and in the scenario you get cash settlement there, what will be the capital allocation priorities there in terms of share buyback, investing in the pipeline and the launch and BD?
And secondly, on brepo, given the imminent launch of brepo and DM this year, how should we think about the uptake curve there? And are there any analogs you can point us to for the uptake in dermatomyositis.
Thank you. Those are both great questions. On the first one from a capital allocation perspective, look, I think I hope -- my hope for Roivant is that we can develop and maintain a reputation of being efficient stewards of capital and that we use our cash wisely, both in terms of increasing our ownership by share buybacks, the things we're really excited about, like the dermatomyositis launch, like the [ mosliciguat ] data, like the NIU data, like the Graves' data next year, et cetera. And so obviously, share buybacks help us own more of all of those outcomes going into an event past year. We have a team that has proven over and over again that we can find interesting programs to work on. And if we have more capital, we'll continue to think big about what those opportunities look like.
And obviously, as brepo has continued to declare itself and as I expect 1402 mostly [indiscernible] themselves as amazing programs, there will be more indications, more work to do, more ways to invest in their success. And I think we will continue to invest in all 3 of those things. I think we don't want to run highly overcapitalized. And so I think to the extent that we have excess cash, we're going to continue to be thoughtful and aggressive about returning it to shareholders. I think you can see that with the timing of today's announcement concurrent with the settlement.
So -- but in terms of like how a hypothetical future payment of uncertain amount gets distributed among those buckets, it's a little bit difficult to say on today's facts.
In terms of launch trends for brepocitinib, all I'll say is we are committed to getting that drug to as many patients as possible. We think dermatomyositis is a large market opportunity with lots of unmet need and lots of patients. We've talked about it in other settings. It's hard to say as the first sort of new targeted therapy for dermatomyositis in a very, very long time, exactly what that curve looks like. But I promise that the Priovant team is doing everything they possibly can to maximize the opportunity. And [ Kay ] who is sitting next to me in the room is looking at me and [ mouthing ] the word slow and steady. So I'm also going to add. I think that's like a reasonable way to think about the launch. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions] and that will come from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright. [Operator Instructions] And our next question will come from the line of Chi Fong with Bank of America.
Congrats on the update. And so the first one on today's settlement. As the settlement requires Moderna [indiscernible] for the court to enter judgment of no invalidity. Does this have any legal bearing on the Pfizer case? Or does it prevent Pfizer to pursue any invalidity arguments in their own cases?
And my second question is, given the cash infusion or the expected cash infusions, I'm wondering if you have any updated thoughts on bringing Immunovant fully in-house under the Roivant umbrella?
And then just a quick follow-up on brepo. Can you talk about launch preparation and sales force hiring ahead of the anticipated launch in September?
Thank you. I appreciate the questions. On the settlement, in terms of the judgment of no validity, look, the obvious legal precedent that it sets for the Pfizer case is in the event that we had gone to trial, there was a possibility that Moderna could have invalidated one of our patents. Obviously, we didn't expect that. The judgment of known validity fully takes that off the table and stands in record as a win on a validity challenge. Pfizer is not precluded from making any validity challenge, but they'll have seen the results here, and they'll make their own decision. But this has no sort of binding rule on what they can and cannot pursue in their own alternative.
And in terms of whether this gives us an updated view on Immunovant or anything else, look, we continue to love the Immunovant franchise, the programs there. I'm excited to continue to be a large owner and continue investing in those programs. We continue to think all the time about ways to own more and do more there. And I don't think today's news is any particular change, at least as of now in our view.
And then in terms of the launch for brepo, look, we've talked a lot about this in different settings in terms of getting ready across a bunch of axes. One thing I'll say is I think the Priovant team is actively right now building a really high-quality field force, especially on the medical engagement side, where we can be out there today meeting with physicians, talking about the treatment of dermatomyositis, make sure we build those relationships, understand their practice, talk about published medical data, et cetera. And I think that team is growing and of excellent quality. And I think we're really excited to continue to invest in that as we get closer to the PDUFA date. Thank you. I appreciate the question.
[Operator Instructions] And that will come from the line of Douglas Tsao so with H.C. Wainwright.
I guess, Matt, I'm just curious in terms of how you're thinking about capital allocation. Obviously, you don't want to sort of count your chickens on the Pfizer case in advance. But if we think of sort of the events today certainly being a positive sign towards additional cash coming into the company, should we look at sort of share buybacks as how you're prioritizing it? Or should we think about potential cash coming from the Pfizer cases maybe having alternative uses?
Thanks, Doug. It's a great question. I think you know us well enough to know that our plan is not to buy a jet or a corporate retreat anywhere. Look, I think we want to be viewed as efficient stewards of capital and thoughtful about how we deploy it. We've talked a lot on this call about some of the things we're excited to be deploying capital on. I would not presume from anything we've said here that the Pfizer dollars are in a specific bucket preallocated. Again, we don't know what the outcome of the Pfizer case is going to be. And I think as and when we figure that out, we'll make a decision based on the facts in front of us, but we are spoiled for choice for good places to put capital, including indication expansion for our existing programs, including BD opportunities and that field could look different at any time, including after receiving settlement money in this case or another case.
And so I think we're sort of reserving judgment on all of the great options we've got. And we're going to continue to invest to deliver valuable medicines to patients that need them. And I think that ultimately is the thing that's created the most value for us in our history and the thing that I believe will continue to create the most value for us going forward. Okay. Go ahead.
If I can ask a follow-up, I mean, does your success here change your risk reward in terms of how you approach the Pfizer litigation in any way?
No, I don't think it does. I think the answer is our view is we feel confident of our facts in that case, and we intend to pursue aggressively, and I'm hopeful for a good outcome there as well.
That is all the time we have today for question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Gline for any closing remarks.
Thank you again. Thank you, everybody, for listening today. We're obviously glad to have reached this spot. There's certainly a part of us that would have found it satisfying to see it through to its logical end. But ultimately, this is a good outcome and a great risk-reward trade-off for us to have taken. So we're pleased to be here.
Again, I appreciate everybody listening. I appreciate the enormous contributions of, as I've said many times in this call, an enormous scientific team that dedicated literally their entire careers in cases, some of whom up to and included in recent weeks as they prepared to testify in this case, just to get us to this point. So they truly deserve kudos, applause and recognition for their contribution to the COVID vaccines, which has now been -- which has now been recognized.
So thank you again to everybody for listening. Thank you to the scientists and all the other people who worked around them, supporting them all being worked on this case. And looking forward to catching up again soon with many updates on our business from here and an action back the year ahead. Thank you.
This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — TD Cowen 46th Annual Health Care Conference
1. Question Answer
All right. Well, good morning, everybody, and thank you once again for joining us for the 46th Annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference. I'm Yaron Werber from the biotech team, and it's a great pleasure to moderate the next fireside chat with Roivant with the CEO, really needs no introduction, Matt Gline. Good to see you. Really appreciate you being here.
Thanks for having me. I still don't think it's true that I need no introduction, but I appreciate it.
I think it's safe to say that everybody in this room and in the industry knows who you are.
They came to our room. So..
So you announced today, Keyur and I were going back and forth this morning now that you've announced that there's a PDUFA date. And I basically said, I think we know what month it's going to be. So I'm just going to ask you, is the PDUFA August 1? Second question, is the PDUFA August 2?
The PDUFA date is in the third quarter.
It's in the third quarter. So you filed -- we think you filed late December. I'm not good at math, and you just corrected my math. So 8 months is probably late August is the way we're thinking about it. And I think you said you'll launch in September?
The PDUFA date is in the third quarter, and we said we're going to launch by the end of September.
By the end of September. Okay. So that's terrific. And congrats on that.
Yes, thanks. Look, I think embedded in all of that, we got priority review from FDA, which we thought all along, we absolutely deserve for this therapy given the quality of data, but it wasn't certain. And so that, that was obviously a vote of confidence in what we hope the drug is going to be able to do, and it gets us to patients sooner, which is obviously important.
And it makes -- look, I think with the ordinary course review, this could easily have been a 2027 launch and now it's very much not. So I think Ben and the Priovant team and kudos to them for everything to get us to this point, including the quality of the data, including the priority review itself, I think are waking up to the exciting but cold reality that they have a lot of work to do, most of which to be clear have been working already. But...
So we've been doing a lot of physician checks as many people and including a survey that we'll show here at the dermatology panel as well and then publish it afterwards. There's a lot of excitement among physicians. They're expecting sort of 30s percent share. It's been very consistent. And to be honest, these surveys, I think, have been fairly accurate historically. So I think that's kind of been encouraging as well in terms of calling how drugs are going to do. When you're thinking about the label breadth and then the potential for including a steroid taper in provision in the clinical section, what do you -- what can we expect? Or what are you asking for?
Yes. So look, obviously, labeling is subject to FDA discussion, and I have no idea at this point in the process, what's going to show up on the label. What I can say is, I think our hope and expectation would be a label that says, the study was designed in the patient population we would like to serve. I think this is a drug that could benefit any patient with dermatomyositis. And so I think the hope is the indication statement is dermatomyositis that there's no sort of restriction to some subset of the population. Obviously, in the study, we focused on patients who had both skin and sort of non-skin muscle activation. But I think the hope is that we get to as many of these patients as we can. And obviously, all of that is a discussion to have with FDA.
And then in terms of steroid data, first of all, at least one of the secondary endpoints covered efficacy and steroid taper at once. So at a minimum, you would expect, given that we hit on that secondary that we get to talk about that in the clinical data section. The study conduct included a taper, and I think we are thinking about all kinds of ways to get as much information out there about how to taper steroids and how to reduce steroid burden for patients who are on drug. And that includes to the extent that we're allowed to talk about it in the study conduct piece of the label, great, but it also includes things like publications and academic settings and other places to talk about sort of how we manage steroids, what happened to patients as they reduce steroids because I think it's really important that the docs have as much information as they can about what we were able to do there. And I think that one of the pieces of consistent feedback we've gotten as we've worked with the doc community is just how excited physicians are about a drug that can reduce steroid burden for these patients.
And so where do you think it's ultimately going to fit into the treatment paradigm? I mean the patients are typically starting with steroids, DMARDs, hydroxy and then IVIG. So JAKs have been kind of third line, in some cases, fourth line. It depends. In some cases, they try to move it up for skin. But where do you think this is really going to fit in?
The way the paradigm currently -- the way the treatment landscape currently looks is of the 40,000-ish patients who we track in claims data sets, 75% of them today are managed to varying degrees of success or failure on some combination of DMARDs and oral steroids. And then about 25% are on stuff. The only on-label stuff is IVIg, and that's about half of the 25%. And then the other half is a long tail of off-label JAKs, off-label Remicade and Rituximab, off-label other sort of immunosuppressive agents. And that's what the world looks like now.
I'll say two things. One is, if you had produced an analysis in 2019 of the world of MG patients, it would have looked -- we literally were just looking at this data last week, almost identical, that is 75% of these patients were on old generation, mostly oral meds, some were on IVIg and some were on other immunosuppressive stuff. So I think we are looking at a landscape that is like, frankly, pretty similar to what you saw in myasthenia gravis beforehand. And I think that is among the good recent analogs for how this works.
What I think in practice is we'll get some patients who are on IVIg, but don't like the burden of the routine administration. It's many, many hours a month to be on IVIg. We'll get patients who are on off-label things who are either uncomfortable being on off-label things, just like tired of fighting with payers over it. And then you get a whole lot of patients from that 75% bucket who have high steroid burden, are on DMARDs, are very unhappy about it, are nonetheless not well managed, but weren't willing or able, for whatever reason to either go on an off-label immunosuppressant or weren't willing to take on the burden of IVIg. So I think it really is -- there will be patients from a lot of different buckets.
Obviously, as you talk to individual docs, they have different use cases in mind. So for example, I remember, I don't think it was your call, but someone did a call with a KOL and she had, I think it was 70 patients off-label tofacitinib. And her comment was I will move every off-label Tofacitinib patient to brepo as soon as brepo is approved. So people have like different ideas for how they'll use the drug. But I think in general, you look at this, and it looks a lot like the kind of underdeveloped landscape that we've seen successful launches in elsewhere.
Do you think it's going to get equal use in skin and muscle, or is it going to be a little bit kind of more popular in skin?
Our data showed really good efficacy on both skin and muscle and on the combination of the two. And I think the answer is it will get a lot of use in both settings. Obviously, dermatologists know JAK inhibition as a mechanism, and we know that it works well in skin disease, and so I think there'll be some familiarity from that perspective. That said, muscle disease is a really devastating part of the DM burden. And sometimes these patients can't walk up stairs and they can't do basic activities of living around their house. And I think those patients are desperate for new options.
And one of the really nice things about JAK inhibitors generally, about JAK TYK inhibitors and about brepo is we saw quite fast onset in the data set, I think about 60 days on average to a moderate TIS response. And so I think you look at that and you're like these patients need relief and they're going to go on drug and they're going to feel it quickly, and they're going to feel it across the burden of symptoms from skin to muscle.
Okay. And by the way, if anybody has any questions at any point, just raise your hand. I'm happy to take them.
Maybe a quick question on non-infectious uveitis. The NEPTUNE study showed really nice data in Phase II, just for the audience, had a 29% relapse at the 45-milligram dose, a higher relapse, 44% at 15-milligram. Both were much better than Humira. Humira did 62%, placebo did 82%, by the way, in those studies. So both of them were much better than the current standard. There's two studies, CLARITY 1 and 2, both going to -- they're identical, readout data in the second half of the year. We get a lot of questions whether there's some subtle differences between CLARITY, the Phase III to NEPTUNE the Phase II in trial design. Can you maybe just remind us, the NEPTUNE had the steroid taper between NEPTUNE and CLARITY, how that works?
Identical...
At 6 weeks...
Yes. Identical and more aggressive than the Humira visual study, which, to be honest, we did that in the Phase II because the Phase II was a blinded randomized trial, but had no placebo arm. It was just high dose and low-dose brepocitinib. And we wanted to give ourselves a hard -- we did that because historically, it's been very hard to enroll in NIU studies, and we wanted to make sure we enrolled.
Now it's clear that, that has changed, at least for us, and enrollment has been great in all of these studies. But anyway, we put the hard steroid taper in place for us because we wanted to give ourselves a tough test in an otherwise not placebo-controlled study. But obviously, with the quality of the data, it was good enough that we just -- the spirit underlying the -- are the trial is a different question. We just ported it right over.
Yes. And in terms of baseline criteria, I think in NEPTUNE, about 30% of patients were stable and immunosuppressants at baseline. Does CLARITY have the same sort of population?
I, to be totally honest with you, have not recently looked at the baseline characteristics of the CLARITY population. But I'll tell you that the idea behind the trial design was to get a population that was basically the same as the NEPTUNE population.
And in the study, you don't mandate for a patient to be biologically experienced? So they could be naive as well?
There will be patients in both of those categories in the study. That's right.
So the goal is to have a broad label.
That's right.
How important is...
Having said that, certainly, we're going to treat a patient population with a broad label that would support a broad label. I mean, just to acknowledge the reality of FDA, JAK inhibition, I think in general, in indications where TNF is approved, the FDA stance has been that you exist in a post-TNF setting. Humira, as you pointed out, has some limitations in terms of efficacy and NIU. Physician tolerance for inflammation in eye disease is very low, right? These patients go blind if they have bad disease. And so the physicians are looking to hit hard.
So if there is an indication in which that FDA guidance might be addressable, it certainly feels like NIU is the kind of disease where it might be. But just to be clear, that's in all of the other indications currently where there is both a TNF and a JAK approved, that's the way the FDA has handled it.
But in those studies, did they enroll TNF-naive patients as well?
It varies based on which indication you're talking about. But there definitely are studies, for example, of JAK inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis that include both TNF-naive and TNF-exposed patients.
But in RA that's exactly historically what JAKs showed -- highlighted their tox.
Absolutely.
We've not seen that since then Crohn's...
I totally agree. And I'll say that if you study closely the evolution of class labeling for things with JAK signaling. Even in Crohn's, for example, there has been some softening and change in that language to reflect the fact that bluntly, with the current generation of therapies for Crohn's disease, there's a strong desire by a lot of physicians to use something not a TNF in those patients. And so the label is less prescriptive on sort of how to manage patients from a standard of care perspective, given that not everyone is going to cycle through a TNF in Crohn's these days.
Okay. How important is macular thickness and macular edema? You -- there was a change of 0.1% change in macular thickness and 43% resolution on brepo. How does that compare to Humira?
Yes. I don't remember the exact numbers versus Humira there. I think the truth is that [ adenosine ] fluoroscopy is actually like an increasingly important way that eye docs are managing the disease. And so I think they are looking at that data closely, and care a lot about it.
And in some -- look the primary endpoint in the NIU studies across the world is time-to-treatment failure, which I don't want to call it a dumb endpoint. It's not a dumb endpoint. No endpoint is dumb. But it's not like -- it's like TIS. It's an endpoint that exists in the context of a clinical trial sort of definitionally, right? It's a time to measure that measures a relapse rate. It's good that it measures a relapse rate, like that's a real thing that people care about. But it's not like NIU patients are running around thinking, "Oh, I know my time to treatment failure. It's 3 months". That's just like not the way the world works.
They go to the doctor and their symptoms are managed on an ongoing basis. And so docs know the treatment failure data in the studies because it's the primary endpoint. But actually, the docs are in general looking at things like, they're looking at macular degeneration, they're looking at [indiscernible] fluoroscopy. They're looking at the things that reflect the way they treat these patients. And so I think all of that data in some sense is going to matter commercially because it's how these patients and these physicians think about their disease.
Okay. The BEACON study, that data was really unprecedented, the CSAMI improvement of 22 points against placebo on both doses. This is a 31-patient study, and you're going to start the Phase III in the second half of the year. What's clinically -- the minimal clinically important difference is 5 points. The 22 is really a nice bandwidth to carry into Phase III. Is the Phase III design going to be identical to BEACON with randomization against placebo? Or is there going to be some nuances to it? And do you need one study or two?
Yes, it's a fair question because it has been a full 2 weeks since we put that data out. So we've probably answered all of these questions by now.
Look, first of all, we were tremendously happy with that data. It was really exciting. It was much, much greater than what we think the physician bar for clinical meaningfulness was. It was unambiguous in a population that is pretty sick as evidenced by the fact that placebo saw no improvement at all. So I think great data. I like your use of the word unprecedented. One of the best ways to generate unprecedented data is to study in indications where basically nobody has ever studied before because then all data is unprecedented. But it was phenomenal data, and we are thrilled with it, and we're excited to be developing in cutaneous sarcoidosis, and it has our gears turning on all of the other things we might be able to do, based on that data set.
I think our goal for the Phase III, given how good this data was, will be to do things as similar to the Phase II as we possibly can. There are topics for discussion with FDA, duration of study, what the dosing will look like in the Phase III study, these are all topics that we have had discussions with FDA before the Phase II data set, and we'll continue to have discussions with the FDA to finalize. And I'll say we won't have a final trial design until that's all been worked through. But I think the first principle for us is if it ain't broke, and so I think given the quality of that data set, we're looking to match it.
Yes. In NIU, you're testing 45-milligram. In DM, you were testing 30-milligram and 45-milligram, right?
In DM, we tested 30-milligram and 45-milligram -- sorry, no, -- in DM, we tested 15-milligram and 30-milligram and 15-milligram didn't hit a p-value, which was -- look, the reason we tested 15-milligram and 30-milligram in DM was because we hadn't run a dose-finding Phase II study in DM. So we needed to establish minimally efficacious dose. And I think we're expecting to launch DM and 30-milligram. NIU, we tested 45-milligram. In CS, we tested 30-milligram and 45-milligram. And I think the question -- no, we tested 15-milligram and 45-milligram. And I think the question is whether we will include a low dose in the Phase III in addition to the high dose.
And I think the answer to that question, to be clear, is we will do whatever maximizes the likelihood of an approval and a useful label and all that good stuff because enrollment won't be a problem. The data in the Phase II study was really good. We're alone in the indication, and the incremental cost and time of putting in a low-dose arm is not significant. And so I think the answer is we're going to discuss with FDA, and we're going to do whatever ultimately is right for the outcome for the program.
Do you need two studies because it's going to be a first approval in the first indication? Or you're going to have so much data from other safety that this point is unquestionable. So just one study is sufficient?
I forget what we've guided to, but obviously, this is the kind of indication where even prior to FDA guidance changes, a single study seems like a plausible path and FDA certainly seems like their general posture on those things is shifting in that direction overtime. That said, I think that question is also largely irrelevant to the path forward and that like CLARITY, for example, is technically two studies, but it doesn't really matter. We enrolled them fast, and it's all good.
Okay. Let's move to mosliciguat and I need to learn how to say that faster.
I just say mosli.
Mosli. We actually did a PH-ILD panel yesterday, and we've been doing a lot of checks. It continues to get very high marks by virtue of the SVR data that you showed with a single dose was essentially unprecedented, almost reaching a 32% to 38% peripheral vascular resistant reduction in that Phase Ib ATMOS study. So the Phase IIb FOCUS study will read out data second half this year. And actually, you just started a combo study with Tyvaso, which we'll come back to, in a few minutes. In terms of getting to Phase III readiness, what do you want to see on PVR and 6-minute walk as well?
Yes. So Phase I data, which remember, was in a different patient population. That Phase I data was in Group 1 PAH patients, and we're studying in Phase IIb in Group III PH-ILD patients. And so that's -- it's a different patient population. The study's primary is PVR. Gosh, if we don't hit on PVR, it will be embarrassing at this point. But we'll find out. I mean, like I said, the translation from PAH to PH-ILD is really the whole question of the study. Historically, 20 points of PVR reduction has been a good sort of clinically meaningful bar that has translated to 6-minute walk into other clinically meaningful endpoints. So I think that's a threshold level that's probably reasonable to watch.
In terms of 6-minute walk, first of all, in general, you saw this in the Tyvaso studies, the variability of 6-minute walk in PH-ILD patients is pretty wide. The study is not powered to produce a delta on 6-minute walk. It's powered to give us information about trends and how we're doing. And so I think what we're looking for is, yes, a large PVR benefit, 20 plus, and we're looking to see evidence of trends and everything else on 6-minute walk in time to clinical worsening and the other sort of patient-driven endpoints such that we're confident in a Phase III program, we go when needed.
And what's the baseline 6-minute walk that you typically see in other indications, typically 30-meters is usually considered clinically meaningful?
Yes. So the answer is it's variable, and there isn't really a typical in PH-ILD because there's only been a handful of studies in PH-ILD. So I don't have like a baseline number to throw out there. But Tyvaso worked on 6-minute walk, like you definitely see benefit in these patients when you improve vascular -- when you dilate in the lungs.
Yes. I think United was mentioning recently on their last call that they're going to try to move away from a nebulizer, which is almost 20 times a day to something that I believe is 4 to 6 -- once per day, and it's a few puffs soft mist?
Yes. Tyvaso has that as an approved format. They have a DPI as an approved format already. And I think it's -- sorry, I think they may be trying to move to a soft mist inhaler from the DPI. So basically, in PH-ILD, these patients aren't using the nebulizer. They're using a DPI already, and it's 4 puffs, 4 times a day or something like that.
I think they are trying to move to an even better format than that. I think they're trying to move to that format for a few reasons. One is that treprostinil is in general, prostacyclins probably, but certainly treprostinil, and this is true for the other treprostinil that will come to market in PH-ILD. Cough is an on-target effect for the mechanism. And so these patients who have lung disease and are coughing all the time anyway, are coughing more on these drugs. And obviously, part of a contributor to that could be the form factor. And so I think their view is, any benefit they can take on that is good.
I think the other thing that UTHR is likely dealing with in the UTHR world is their competitors, TPIP at Insmed, the Liquidia program are all less frequent administration or shooting for less frequent administration. And so I think that is something that UTHR is probably like well aware of in terms of their in-class competitors. We are a single-puff of a DPI once a day. That's the format of mosli. So we're already at the sort of best end of that. And we don't -- in none of our existing studies, do we see cough as a tolerability issue associated with the drug. So I wouldn't expect to see it. Again, biology is humbling, but I see no reason to expect it in PH-ILD as an issue associated with mosli. So I think we are already better than competitive on administration and tolerability sort of by right, in PH-LD. Obviously, we'll see on the tolerability side once we get the data.
That having been said, and that was a long preamble to a point that you were getting maybe with Tyvaso combo study as well. PAH is a polypharmacy market. These patients are on everything. And the bar for us is definitely not like -- we have to beat treprostinil, we have to get ahead of them. Obviously, our data could be awesome, and we could be a first-line therapy and that'd be great. But it doesn't really matter is the point.
These patients are really sick in other pulmonary hypertension indications. They go on multiple mechanisms. And whether they start on treprostinil and add an sGC after or whether they start an sGC and add a treprostinil after, that's the way these markets evolve, and that's definitely what we expect in PH-ILD. Now I believe we will be the first non-treprostinil approved in PH-ILD if everything goes well. And so that polypharmacy will be a result of our market entry.
Yes. Okay. So yes, you did answer my next question was whether you think patients ultimately are going to switch, change MOA or just do an add-on?
I mean I think yes and, is the answer to that question. Patients who don't like the cough might try something different. New patients coming in might start on our drug or start on treprostinil. And I think lots of patients who are not fully treated will go on both.
Okay. The data from -- I'm going to switch over to 1402, the FcRn program, data from FORWARD 1 and FORWARD 2 for Graves' are expected next year. You're testing both 300-milligram and 600-milligram. Just remind us, have you commented a little bit more whether it's going to be first half or second half next year?
We have not.
Okay. And the studies are still enrolling?
The studies are still enrolling. That's right. Although remember, the second study there is a 6-month study. So it could be enrolling until midyear and still be early '27.
FORWARD 1 is 12 months?
FORWARD 1 is a 12-month study with a 26-week primary, but we'll need to run the full 52 weeks to get the data. FORWARD 2 is a 26-week study. Sorry, I think I have that right, but I think of them as 2502 and 2503. And so I just need to make sure I'm using the correct public names of those studies.
Yes. The -- and it's positioning sort of as potential replacement for ATD and obviously, avoidance of ablative therapy and looking at potentially time-off therapy as well. What do you think is a win in that data?
There has not been a novel therapy developed in Graves' disease in 70 years, so much so that it's one of these indications where when we first started developing in it, docs were like, why do we need a drug? We can just take out people's thyroids, which is the kind of thing that you hear in markets that have had no new therapeutic agents for a long time. And we get that answer less and less now. And I think that's thanks to us, and I think it's thanks to the fact that there's others in the area as well. And frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of Graves' patients in the world who are uncontrollable on ATDs and they feel sick and they're uncomfortable and they cycle on and off ATDs or are perpetually on high-dose ATDs. They contemplate surgical excision of the thyroid, they contemplate radioiodine.
I think a win is delivering clinical benefit in that refractory patient population. And I think there's a pretty wide range of what good looks like. If you take our Phase II data, in the Phase II setting, we were able to get refractory patients controlled, which even if that was all you could do, even if it was just as an add-on on top of ATDs, you took sick patients and got them to a place where their thyroid hormone levels were controlled, that is a big opportunity that patients would be excited about. We were able in the Phase II setting to get a meaningful proportion of those patients, not just controlled, but controlled off ATDs, which is an even bigger benefit.
First of all, ATDs have safety and tolerability issues of their own. And second of all, patients don't want to be on them. And so if you can get them switched over to a drug, if they go from uncontrolled on one line of therapy to controlled on a monotherapy after, that's great. And then the third opportunity for us is to show that for some of those patients, they won't even need to be on our therapy chronically that once they get reregulated, they'll be able to get off drug and maintain control. So I think all of those three things are different levels of win.
And what I think is we're going to show all of them that is there are some patients who are going to come in with severe enough Graves' disease that we probably won't be able to get them even off ATDs, let alone in remission. There are some patients who will be in a broad middle ground where we are able to get them off ATDs, but they may require some level of FcRn therapy. And then there will be a meaningful proportion of patients who are able to reregulate and get off all drug. What those proportions are, we won't really know until we've seen the data. And my guess is that the proportion will increase over time, we are able to get into each bucket that the 52-week data will look better than the 26-week data as well.
Okay. I think we have maybe 1.5 minutes. Moderna, the trial is expected to start March 9. How long do you normally expect the trial to run? And then how long does it take for the jury to decide?
Yes. So what we said before about the trial is a couple of weeks, plus a relatively short deliberation period thereafter.
Okay. And so the good news is on the section relating to the government involvement, 99% of the liability, so to speak, rests with Moderna. But on the doctrine of equivalence, there, it's going to have to be frank infringement, literal infringement. So is it really going to come down to 0.5% of LNP? Is that sort of what it's really going to come down to?
Look, I think the short answer to this is we're a week out from trial. We feel good about our positioning overall there as we've made public in other cases. And I think at this point, we just got to wait and see where we go.
In the discovery, then we get questions about whether it's going to be a chance for frank infringement with treble damages. In the discovery of Moderna, did you find any evidence to suggest that there was a premeditated effort to try to circumvent the IP?
Yes. So there's a bunch of documents that are public that highlight various parts of that question. And so I can point to those documents, some of the one on the docket in September.
The main thing I'll say though, again, is like, first of all, these processes -- this is just like as a useful fact to remember. The trial is not the end. These processes go through lengthy appeals and like on the 1498 issue, for example, I'm sure Moderna will want to appeal there regardless of how this goes. So I don't think any of these issues are sort of settled until they're settled such as it were. And look, it's -- like I said, at this point, we're in the final innings here. So I think it's probably best to see how things go.
Okay. Excellent, Matt. Good to see you. Really appreciate your being here.
Great. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
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Roivant Sciences — TD Cowen 46th Annual Health Care Conference
Roivant Sciences — Q3 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Roivant Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review positive Phase II results for brepocitinib and cutaneous sarcoidosis and Roivant's financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2025. The I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant; and Ben Zimmer, CEO of Priovant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investors.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I would like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
With that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thanks, Steph, and thanks, everyone, for dialing in and listening this morning. I'm going to start our presentation on Slide 5. I was sitting and talked to the team, it was about a week ago today, looking at a draft of this morning's presentation and thinking it was going to be a pretty boring 10-Q. We had gotten together in December for the Investor Day, we had we've spoken a JPMorgan conference, and it turned out a really busy week. So we have some great updates, obviously, most notably, the Phase II data in brepo and CS, which Ben is going to present on momentarily.
But truth is terrific execution and progress across the board for us this quarter. Obviously, that data is a highlight. But we also can announce today that the NDA for brepo was in dermatomyositis that the Phase IIb study for 1402 D2T RA has fully enrolled that the Phase II study for mostly in PH-ILD has fully enrolled, and obviously, all of the updates that we're known for, including the Immunovant offering earlier that gets us now financed to Graves' launch all behind us. So just a terrific quarter and a terrific set of updates even since early January when we last got together.
On Slide 6, 2026 is, again, a very busy year for us ahead. Obviously, some major events later in the year on the brepo NIU Phase III, the pivotal readout in the second half. We're now going to be starting this year a Phase III study in brepo and cutaneous sarcoidosis. Ben will talk a little bit more about that. It's early days and getting that going, but that will be this year. The Phase IIb data for mostly is expected firmly in the second half of this year. We now know that because the study is fully enrolled, obviously.
Same thing with the D2t RA data where all of that, both the open-label period and the randomized withdrawal period will be done by the second half of this year. We also are getting proof-of-concept data in 1402 and CLE. And finally, we are still on track for the jury trial against Moderna starting on March 9, so just a few weeks away now. So a really, really busy year ahead for Roivant.
And really, if you look at Slide 7, before we get again to the data for CS, just a pipeline we're really proud of that continues to deliver across multiple dimensions would be obviously brepo with now three indications in the pivotal registrational programs, multiple registrational programs for FcRn franchise made, which we've talked about and mostly with top line data coming in the second half.
So really excited about where we are as a business, really excited about the pipeline. I couldn't be more excited for the beginning of 2026 here. Certainly, it's off to a good start. And with that, what I'm going to do is turn to the Phase II data for brepo and sarcoidosis. So I'm just really briefly on Slide 9 of the presentation. I'm just going to walk through a couple of highlights, but mostly, I'm going to hand it over to Ben to take you through the data in detail.
And the short answer, and we keep saying this, it's a tremendous fortunate, I think to be able to say that, this drug has done everything we could have asked for us for it in this -- of it in this study. We had a significant statistically sign. Remember, we had said before the bar for clinical success here, we thought was sort of 5 points of CSAMI was clinically meaningful. We got a placebo-adjusted almost 22 points, 21.6% point delta with a p-value, and again, the study was not powered for efficacy in this endpoint. 100% of patients on brepo 45 equivalent to 14 on placebo had a 10-point improvement. Again, clinically meaningful was 5 points. 100% of patients on our high dose had at least a 10-point improvement. So just a tremendous outcome across the board. There's some great supportive data on some of the other endpoints as well. And with safety and tolerability completely consistent with what we've seen for the compound in the past.
So a really terrific outcome and in a disease that needs it, where there's never been a positive placebo-controlled study in an industry-sponsored study to our knowledge. So really a terrific day for those patients. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Ben to walk you through a little bit about cutaneous sarcoidosis as a reminder. And then on to the study data as well. Ben, take it away.
Great. Thanks so much. Great to be here with everyone. Starting on Slide 10, I just wanted to bring back to what the disease is, walked through this at the Investor Day in December. But cutaneous sarcoidosis is a really debilitating skin disease. And among skin diseases stands out for its rapid progression towards permanent scarring and destruction of tissue as well as its disfiguring nature given the particular prevalence on the face and scalp of the disease.
Turning to Slide 11. I would note that there is no approved therapies, not only for cutaneous sarcoidosis, but for any form of sarcoidosis. And so as we think about our development program in really a great opportunity for brepo to meet this overall unmet need and become the therapy of choice if we're going to be successful in Phase III as we hope and expect we would be on the basis data to really be a promising option for all patients with skin involvement in their sarcoidosis. That would include patients, both with only skin involvement as well as those with other organ involvement as well.
Turning to Slide 12 really just briefly here on the alignment between the pathobiology of the disease and the mechanism. And I think this is important because as Matt alluded to, and I'll walk through in a bit more detail. We really have great data here that we're very excited about. And I think in a small study, the data is very compelling. It's hard to argue it on its own, but it also really aligns with what you would expect to see given the mechanism of this drug, sarcoidosis, all of the forms of sarcoidosis, including cutaneous disease are driven by the polarization and recruitment of effector T cells and particularly Th1 polarized cells and brepo really distinctively inhibits Th1-related pathways by hitting both IL-12 through TYK2 and interferon gamma through JAK1. So really an opportunity here mechanistically to see the benefits of JAK1, TYK2 inhibition specifically. And I think that's really part of what's flowing through to our clinical data that I'll walk through now.
Slide 13, study design, very straightforward, 31 patients in the United States, randomized 3:2:2, the brepo 45 milligrams, 15 milligrams in placebo, a 16-week study evaluated several different efficacy end points that I will walk through.
On the baseline demographics and disease activity, Slide 14. I do want to highlight a few things. First, if you look at the duration of disease and background damage of patients brepo 45 milligrams and placebo are very well balanced between those two arms. But 15 milligrams actually quite a bit lighter on duration of disease and damage, which would mean really a higher bar for both brepo 45 and placebo. And then I would also call attention to the plaque predominant morphology, cutaneous sarcoidosis can present through both plaques and papules. In general, the plaques are viewed as more treatment-resistant. And you see this plaque predominant morphology most pronounced and most common in the brepo 45-milligrams arm followed by 15 milligrams followed by placebo.
So sort of punchline of this is there were some imbalances. Those imbalances actually made it harder for brepo 45 milligrams to demonstrate efficacy, both as compared to placebo and as compared to brepo 15 milligrams, and in spite of that, as I walk through, we really see exceptional data from the brepo 45-milligram dose arm.
So turning to Slide 15 to get into the efficacy results. On the left hand of the slide, you see the mean to CSAMI activity score change from baseline, both doses statistically significant separation from placebo as early as week 4, the first time point evaluated and then sustained at every visit out to week 16 at the end of the trial.
And then on the right here, we see the achievement of investigator global assessment 01 and a 2-point reduction. So as a reminder, this is -- the IGA are a standard FDA supported endpoint for cutaneous disease. This is similar to the is used in other skin indications with from 0 to 4, clear, almost clear, mild, moderate and severe. So to achieve both the 2-point reduction and at 0 or 1 is a very high bar -- and notably, it's a high enough for that 0 placebo patients clear it. So you may be confused where the placebo line, the placebo line and the x-axis line are the same thing on this chart.
And you see here, again, some early progress for both of dose arm at week 4, really significant or substantial improvement at week 8 and then static improvement at week 12 and 16. And then here on this higher bar endpoint, you do start to see brepo 15 milligrams begin to -- sorry, brepo 45 milligrams, begin to separate from the 15-milligram dose arm.
Slide 16 has the CSAMI responder data. Again, really compelling data. I think this chart on the left quite remarkable as Matt alluded to, we were hoping to see a mean improvement of 5 points and what we saw was as not only a mean far in excess of that, but we saw 100% of patients in the brepo 45-milligram arm achieve twice that, twice the minimum clinically important difference. Really every brepo 45-milligram patient, a responder in this trial and does all walk through momentarily, that that's really corroborated by an independent patient reported outcome as well.
And then you see on the right-hand side of this chart, achievement of CSAMI less than 5, notable there's not an improvement by less than 5. This means that the absolute score end of the trial is 5% or less, which is a standard for functional remission. And you see 62% of brepo 45-milligram patients achieving that compared to no placebo patients. So again, this data are quite in line with the IGA 2-point improvement to 0/1 that I walked through before. So again, seeing pretty consistent data here across multiple endpoints.
Turning now to the patient reported outcomes. Slide 17 has the Skindex-16. This is, again, a pretty established standard metric in inflammatory skin disease trials. You see excellent data here with the placebo group worsening brepo 45 milligrams and 15 milligrams, both improving substantially well above the minimum clinically important difference. Again, here with brepo 45 milligrams outperforming 15 modestly and both doses really far better than placebo.
Slide 18, we have the KSQ skin domain. So this is the King's Sarcoidosis Questionnaire. It's a PRO for sarcoidosis overall map, just limited to skin disease. What we focused on in our initial [ TLR ] was skin-specific domains, and you see here very in line with the Skindex in terms of in terms of the data. So just yet another data point, a very compelling evidence of benefit.
And finally, on the efficacy side, I alluded to this before, but on Slide 19, we call it the patient's global impression of change. So this is a single question where patients are asked since they started taking the study medication, how would they describe the overall change in the sarcoidosis symptoms and they can answer no change or some degree of improvement or some degree of worsening I think this is a powerful endpoint for simplicity and notably, 100% of brepo 45-milligram patients reported that they improved, again, consistent with the CSAMI data where we saw 100% response rate. So very compelling here.
Brepo 15 milligrams also very considerable improvement for most patients, although two patients in the brepo 15-milligram group, did not -- not only do not report improvement, but actually reported worsening. And then in the placebo group, a very little improvement and most patients reported either worsening or no change.
Turning to Slide 20. Safety data. I think very well, brepo was very well tolerated during the study when no SAEs in the study and all adverse events were graded mild or moderate in severity.
So against the backdrop of this efficacy data, in particular, certainly, the safety data we see would tee up a potentially very favorable benefit risk profile for brepocitinib for these patients. Obviously, we have over 1,500 patients of data in brepocitinib, and so the overall safety database is characterized by much more than just these results.
But certainly here, nothing that would really add anything to what's already known about the drug from that perspective. And I think, again, starting to dose it now in this particular patient population, I think we see the early signs of a very indication-specific compelling benefit risk profile.
So just to wrap up very quickly, before handing it back to Matt, really compelling evidence of benefit. The effect sizes we see here are extremely large we see them very consistently across multiple different endpoints, including independent patient reported and physician-reported assessments, very high response rates, including the 100% response rate for the brepo 45-milligrams arm and the rapid onset of action sustained over time. So really exciting results. We're really excited to move this ahead to Phase III and potentially have the first approved therapy for sarcoidosis. So I look forward to discussing any questions later, and I'll hand it back to Matt.
Thanks, Ben. Yes, look, we're just terrifically excited about the data about what it means for us and what it means for these patients. On Slide 22, just sort of as a reminder of what the picture for brepocitinib now looks like.
People pass around the phrase pipeline and a product for a lot of different products I feel at this point, looking across the indication set for brepo, even with what we've talked about already with CS, DM and NIU, where we get to a very large addressable patient population. These are patients who -- in every one of these indications lacks efficacious therapies and is in need of options, and we continue to add legs of the stool or opportunities that grow into these sort of first-in-class orphan inflammatory diseases that are high unmet needs, important areas. And I think we've got more to come there. So stay tuned. But just starting to feel it brepocitinib is a really important medicine for us and hopefully for patients, so looking forward to continuing that journey.
I'm going to brief through a couple of other highlights or updates across the portfolio, quick financial update, and then we'll do Q&A at the end.
Super quickly on Slide '24. As a reminder, IMVT-1402 remains a huge focus for us at Immunovant. We think we've got an FcRn with potential best-in-class efficacy with a safety profile that looks favorably within the class. Obviously, convenient administration with a subcu auto-injector. And we [indiscernible] pipeline and product potential, again, with Graves' among our lead indications where we're expecting pivotal data in 2027.
We're now, as I mentioned earlier, expecting the DTRA data later this year, and that study is fully enrolled. We actually enrolled 170 patients in that study up from the anticipated 120 originally, and that was in part just due to speed of enrollment and the level of enthusiasm from the patient in that community.
Moving over to mosli on '25, and we'll definitely spend some time later this year talking more about PH-ILD and mostly in setting the stage for what we expect there. But that study is fully enrolled. With thanks those patients investigators in the Priovant team PH-ILD remains an exciting opportunity for us, where targeted delivery gets at a disease where lung is the primary site of disease activity. I think we have a convenient once-daily dosing regimen in a disease where existing therapies mostly have multiple daily inhalations there aren't very many existing therapies bluntly.
We expect or hope for tolerability benefits. And then as I think you know, we showed really the best ever PVR reductions in the PAH population if that translates we'll be able to get some best in class efficacy as well. So really excited about what we could do there later this year. I think it will be a really important part of our story in the coming months.
And then finally, and as I said before, I'm not going to spend a ton of time talking about this today because we're so close in here, but with the jury trial in the Moderna case is scheduled for March 9. We continue to make progress there and the sort of major update there in the recent weeks is that we got earlier this week, we got the first of the summary judgment decisions, which covered a few things and hand some puts and takes in it.
But one thing we were quite happy with is a favorable decision on Section 1498 which sets us up for the case that we were sort of hoping for in this trial, where almost all of the doses that we had asserted are going to be covered in this jury trial. So looking forward to that and obviously, more to come there.
Finally, just a really brief financial update on Slide 28. R&D expense of $165 million adjusted non-GAAP of $147 million for the quarter. G&A of $175 million, adjusted non-GAAP of $71 million, for total non-GAAP net loss of $167 million. Cash remains very strong, $4.5 billion of consolidated cash in the business. So plenty of capital to get us to profitability with dry powder to do other things as well. As a reminder, we still have share buyback authorization and are happy to have that sort of capability.
On Slide 30, as discussed just a really catalyst-rich period ahead of us. A couple of these things checked off now. Obviously, the beginning of the summary judgment also make progress and just feeling good across the board with a lot more updates to come this year. It should be a big year for us.
And a big few years on Slide 31 before I go to Q&A, multiple commercial launches potential in the coming years, obviously, brepo and DM would be first with that NDA now in multiple NDA and BLA filings. We continue to have even sort of more future POC study reads even among the ones we've already announced and now 9 or more pivotal study readouts, including cutaneous sarcoidosis coming over this time line, which is just a really exciting slate for us to build on.
So with that, thank you again for listening. I'm going to stop talking and open up the line for Q&A. Thank you. Operator?
Our first question comes from the line of Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
2. Question Answer
I think you've mentioned today and previously that you consider further development expansion opportunities for brepocitinib. And I'm curious how these data kind of inform the direction you'd like to go. Maybe you could also help us kind of size the opportunity set, particularly with respect to like what percent of the patient population you think are great candidates for this relative to NIO and dermatomyositis.
Thanks. It's a great question. Look, I think the first thing is we are absolutely enthusiastic about further development in brepo. We have other indications that Ben and the team are hard at work at. I don't -- I think the -- but I would say the main thing about this data is just that it continues to underscore how strong an agent brepo can be in these patient populations that need it. and sort of drives enthusiasm, but I don't know that it reveals anything specific or new.
Other than we're continuing to think about other forms of sarcoidosis, et cetera. CS is another indication where we will be first and only drug approved if we're successful from here. And then on patient population, look, I think this is right in the sweet spot of what we've been trying to do, not just bluntly for brepo, but across the different drugs we're developing, where we're in this kind of large orphan market.
And again, we might do things outside of this category, but it's been a really good space for us and for others with tens of thousands of patients, a big opportunity, high unmet need. And we think it will be the kind of thing that we can attractively launch and that we can that we can make a successful franchise around. So it feels great from an ability to benefit these patients perspective and from a commercial perspective as well. Ben, anything you'd add there?
I would just add that I think -- and this is something we've felt already, but this data really enforces that the alignment of TYK2, JAK1 inhibition to T cell polarization both as we see here, predominantly Th1 driven, but also Th17 driven. And the mechanism of TYK2, JAK1 inhibition really does aligned to that through IL-12 and interferon gamma for TH1, IL-6 and IL-23 for Th17. And I think that's really one of the mechanistic hypotheses around the distinctive benefits of TYK2, JAK1 inhibition, others are obviously the type 1 interferon suppression that's very important in dermatomyositis, in addition to the T cell polarization.
But I would kind of highlight that this data really enforces that NIU has some overlapping mechanism as well, where obviously, we had really strong Phase II data, excited to see that Phase III result. But I think just as we think about not just kind of the unmet need of indications, as Matt articulated, but also diseases where TYK2, JAK1 inhibition is going to really be, in our view, potentially better than any other form of immunosuppression. I think this data kind of reinforces some of our hypotheses there.
Our next question comes from the line of Dave Risinger with Leerink Partners.
Let me add my congrats as well, Matt and team. So obviously, the data was phenomenal. I had a couple of questions. First, with respect to the headline CSAMI numbers, they were similar between the two arms. The press release, obviously, you mentioned different baseline characteristics. Could you just add a little more color on that?
Second, with respect to the FDA timeline, obviously, Octagam is approved for dermatomyositis. But is there a chance for the FDA to elect to grant priority review? Could you talk about that a little bit? In DM, I'm talking about.
Thanks, David. Both great questions. On CSAMI point, I think Ben hit on this well in his presentation as well. Look, I think if you look at the table, I can pull up the slides in a second, but if you look at the table in the presentation, on baseline characteristics, I'd say there are some relatively -- it's a small proof-of-concept study, it's a relatively small in each arm. And so you can see some relatively significant differences on some aspects, including duration of disease.
As well as morphology of disease with more a plaque predominant patients, which are those more recalcitrant patients on our 45 arm than on our 15 arm. And I think that's probably in part what's responsible for the sort of headline numbers looking similar. And you can see that they separate more, again, as Ben hit pretty well in the presentation on the more stringent endpoints like the proportion of patients hitting a 10 or more point season benefit. So we feel pretty good about that translating into Phase II.
And then on the FDA time line, look, I think the answer to that question is DM is a severe disease with not a lot of options. And so there's certainly a chance, but that ultimately is up to FDA. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Yaron Werber with TD Cowen.
Great, really nice to see this data. I got a couple of questions. One is price. The IVIG is around $180, but the concomitant sort of price for Vyvgart for these indications around $870 gross. So maybe help us understand how you're thinking about pricing of brepo.
And then secondly, as you -- and I know this might be a little premature, but from Pfizer owns 25% of the JV, you'll obviously consolidate all sales of brepo. How do we handle their 25% ownership because you're not going to be paying a dividend, but I imagine you'll have to sort of give them their 25% of the profits. What is that going to hit the P&L?
Yes. Thanks, Yaron. Those are both good questions. Look, I think on price, we obviously have not decided on the price yet, it's too early to have an answer to that question. What we've said before is taking bookends that are not so different from the ones you quoted there. I think our view is IVIG is probably a little bit more expensive than that in practice. Those bookends are a reasonable place to think about in terms of the pricing envelope for these indications is what we said before, and I think that continues to stand. And I think it gives us a lot of room. So I think stay tuned, but this will be an orphan price drug.
And then on the -- what I think is really sort of an accounting math question, so we'll fully consolidate all of the results, losses, sales of everything, and then there'll be a below-the-line minority interest that attributes a portion of Pfizer's earnings. But again, it will be below the net income line.
And then in terms of how cash comes out, obviously, if we distribute cash out, Pfizer, we'll get their portion of that cash, and we'll get out a portion of that cash.
The only other comment I'll make there is -- and we said this elsewhere, the early portion of the relationship with Pfizer had dilution protection for their ownership stake. That's been exhausted now. And so for any further capital into Priovant, Pfizer will either need to match their portion of our spend or will be diluted and we'll wind up owning more.
Our next question comes from the line of Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
Congrats on the data here. Two questions from us. As we think about the Phase III, what's your latest thinking about the size and the dose that you have picked?. And just curious if you have any thoughts about how we should think about the stability of efficacy going from a Phase II to Phase III for this indication, it seems that you have a pretty large gap going from 22 to the 5-point Delta that seems clinically meaningful. How should we think about deterioration, and I have one quick follow-up as a housekeeping question.
Yes. Thanks, Brian. Look, I'm also going to hand over to Ben for these questions, but I'll just say it feels like we've got a fair amount of cushion in the quality of this data. And also, a, this was a relatively small study. You either aren't a lot of other studies to go on in CS. So we kind of got to take our guidance from here. But it was nice to see a low placebo response. Ben, do you want to talk a little bit about that and about whatever we can share at this point on Phase III design.
Yes, sure. I mean, first, just on erosion, obviously, would be hard to do any better than this. But I think that the minimum clinically important differences, as we've discussed, is 5 points here, we have over 20 points we could have significant erosion and still have a very compelling data set and a very compelling product profile for patients and physicians.
That said, I would also note this was -- it was the U.S.-only study, but 15 sites for the 31 patients. So this was a multicenter, multidose, placebo-controlled trial, very rigorous for a smaller proof-of-concept study. So while I think that there's always some risk of erosion in particular, while the very low placebo rate is consistent with natural disease course, you can never be sure of the behavior of placebo and these inflammatory disease trials, particularly when you move to larger global trials.
But broadly speaking, I think this data gives us an incredible cushion to still have an effect size in Phase III that maybe is large or maybe is not quite as large, but still would be extremely compelling.
As far as the design of the Phase III in terms of size, I think we would probably be looking at a sort of similar size per arms to the DM trial roughly, but we need to kind of take this data into consideration and think more about the powering and have final discussions with FDA on it, including as related to the in indication safety set that they would want to see to support approval. So we'll have more to share on that after we engage with FDA.
And the same is true on dose, I would say that I think our incoming hypothesis to this trial is that 45 milligrams based on the totality of the 1,500 patient data we have, a very compelling potential option for these patients balancing benefit and risk. And certainly, I would say, in totality, this data reinforces that, you see really excellent efficacy results from the 45-milligram arm, including on some of these higher bar, more stringent endpoints, starting to see real separation with 15 milligrams. And then certainly, in terms of the safety data, nothing that would suggest the overall safety profile of 45 milligrams that we've seen across all of the different indications in which it's been studied, that nothing in this data to suggest there's anything specific to cutaneous sarcoidosis separate from those. So I think broadly speaking, I would say we're very excited about 45 milligrams coming into the study. We're even more excited about it coming out of the study. 15 milligrams also performed very well, and that's great to see. It really just speaks to the overall efficacy potential of the product. And so we'll kind of have a final update on that after we engage with the agency.
Got it. And maybe just one quick one on the housekeeping side. So looking at the 10-Q from Immunovant, can you give us a little bit more color on the return for certain rights around batoclimab back to HanAll? Is there any read-through to how we should think about the setup for the tech data readout later this year?
No, it was the short answer to that question. meaning there's no read-through anything. It's just as we get closer to that data, depending on what we decide to do with batoclimab, if we decide to further development, we'll have to make a decision around how to work together with HanAll next steps there. So that's really nothing to say.
Our next question comes from the line of Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
This is Anthea on for Dennis. And congratulations on the data. I wanted to ask two questions on upcoming catalysts. First on Daubert, can you explain how important Dr. Mitchell's testimony is to the case improving direct infringement and whether or not there's any risk to that being taken out, so to speak, ahead of trial? And then on PH-ILD, thoughts on the competitive landscape and if sotatercept could work in the disease as well?
Both great questions. Look, on Daubert, as we said, we really can't talk too much about an ongoing litigation. There are a variety of Daubert motions in front of the court, what they are or visible and the judge will make a decision on all of them and anything within the range as possible. Obviously, we're hoping for favorable test outcomes in case.
On PH-ILD question, look, I think the answer is, in theory, any drug that improves PVR could work in PH-ILD, systemic vasodilation has not, in and of itself, a been a great approach in PH-ILD but sotatercept certainly could work in PH-ILD. Right now, we are slated, I believe, to be the first non-prostacyclin, non-treprostinil in PH-ILD.
I suspect given the amount of unmet patient need, there will be others behind us, but I think we have a really favorable profile as we enter that space.
Our next question comes from the line of Yasmeen Rahimi with Piper Sandler.
Thank you so much for all the color. As an Immunovant covering analysts would love to spend time on 1402 and get some color around here near term or a readout. Obviously, the study is upsized. Help us understand as the studies coming to end reading out what you hope to see and how you're sort of preparing for filing and how soon you could actually get ready for that first Phase II registrational study to be shared? And then I'll jump back in the queue.
Thanks. I appreciate the question. Look, I think in terms of expectations for RA, I think the short answer to that question is, on the one hand, these are patients with high unmet need. And so in some sense, the bar for efficacy is relatively low compared to what we may be used to seeing in RA. On the other hand, there's just very little precedent data for drugs in late-stage RA with sort of this level of pretreatment. And so it's hard to know.
I think we're doing some work on that very question now, and we will share some guidance on what would cause us to run the second study before we put out that data. So it's a stay tuned for that. Remember, these are burned out patients with pretty tough disease at this point. So obviously, if we're excited about the data, there's a potential for it to be a big product.
Obviously, we will engage with the agency once we've got the data and think about what a plan looks like. I think the base case expectation should be that this is one of a couple of studies that we'll have to run just because this is a relatively smaller randomized withdrawal trial, but we'll see the data, and then we'll have better answer that question.
Our next question comes from the line of Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor.
Congrats on these main results. So maybe on brepo and CS, just wanted to better understand the market opportunity here. You've talked about 40,000 eligible patients. would all of these be eligible for brepo therapy and meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the trial. And if that's the case, do you think this is a similar size opportunity as dermatomyositis? And maybe just one follow-up on the Phase III design. Would the time point of the endpoint the 16-week similar to your Phase II, given your -- you already have the safety database. Or would you have to test longer, just trying to figure out if there's any ways to accelerate development here?
Yes. Thanks, Prakhar. Great questions. Look, I think the short answer of our market opportunity is this is a patient population that's sick with high unmet need. And assuming our Phase III data looks similar to our Phase II data, I think a lot of these patients are going to be enthusiastic about a better treatment option. It's probably a modestly smaller indication than dermatomyositis just in terms of total end. I mean, obviously, DM is 40,000 patients in treatment with 70-plus thousand total patients. So I'd probably think of this as an exciting opportunity, but a little bit smaller than the DM opportunity, although, again, depends on the Phase III data.
And then I think the short answer on Phase III design is let's just wait until we've had the conversation with FDA before we sort of talk about final outcomes, but we're going to be looking to leverage as much as we can of what we've learned from the Phase II study. And obviously, to the extent that we can match parameters on which we're confident we'll do that. Thanks for the question.
Our next question comes from the line of Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
Congrats on this very good safe data. I'm wondering what percentage of patients in the BEACON study had organ involvement if you have that? And were you able to collect any data that would allow you to assess whether brepocitinib impacted organ-specific manifestations? And then just as a follow-up there, do you see a path to expand into other forms of sarcoidosis with brepocitinib?
Yes. Thanks. Look, I'll take the second of those questions, which is certainly something we will evaluate in terms of further places to study brepo. And we -- as I said before, we have ideas inside and outside sarcoidosis that are exciting. So stay tuned we'll be back with it. On the first question, in terms of pace of organ involvement and what we can learn from it, Ben, anything you'd share about that?
Yes. Around 60% of the patients had some pulmonary involvement and around 30% inclusive of that 60% had some other organ involvement, mostly ocular involvement we did take some exploratory endpoints related to those in the trial. We haven't analyzed that yet.
Ultimately, the study was not designed or set up to evaluate benefit in those other organ systems. So I don't expect us to learn anything too meaningful from that, but it's certainly something we will take.
I look at it, and I think the important point to note is this is a real-world cutaneous sarcoidosis population, given these -- many of these patients do have multiple organs and involved.
Our next question comes from the line of Yatin Suneja with Guggenheim.
A quick one for me on brepo on the data that you provided. Like if you look at the curves, they continue to deepen over 16 weeks. So I'm just curious to understand from you how should we think about further -- do you expect further deepening, further separation. Just talk about if somebody gets treated for a year, how should we think about it?
And then if you can just talk about the scope and the size. I don't know if you touched on that already of the Phase III study, should it be similar to what you did in DM .
Yes. I mean, just to reiterate on Phase III, and I think Ben shared a thought about that. But I think in general, we talked to FDA, it's like it's hard to commit to a specific study design. So I think like let us get through that, and then we'll be back with a full accounting of the study design. But I think we're prepared to run and enroll a nice sizable study, if that's what we need to do. I think we feel good about what we need there.
And then in terms of -- look, in terms of continued deepening, we're just looking at the data for the first time this week. So I think we're continuing to explore all the various features. I think it's fun, one of the KOLs was also involved with the study gave a quote to some journalists.
When I think his comment was if the data had been half as good and there have been twice as many side effects still would have been a great outcome. Look, obviously, long story short, there are certainly potential ways for this data to be even better with long with therapy with other parameters, but I think the answer is if we can come close to replicating this in a Phase III program, it would be a huge win. So I think we should be all set there.
Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright.
I guess, Matt, I'm just curious with brepo, how broad are you now thinking about the opportunity, right? I mean I think we've seen great results, obviously, in CS today DM as well as there is obviously a lot of data with JAK inhibitors in various indications, but not necessarily full randomized trials or proof of concept. I mean is that the breadth of universe? Or is there other white space that you're also thinking about where JAK hasn't been explored at all but perhaps it's worth exploration just given the magnitude of effect that you're starting to see. Thank you.
So could you just -- yes, how broad we think about the rep opportunity. Thanks, Doug. Great question. Look, I think the short answer is, I think you can see from our indication selection already that we've been creative and thoughtful in going after indications with high unmet need, including lots of places where JAKs have not been explored. And I think there's a lot of opportunity here. I'll just reiterate something Ben said. And Ben, if you want to do it again as well, I think it's a really good point to hit.
Look, I think anywhere that TYK and JAK are both important is a particular area of focus for it because it gets the uniqueness of our mechanism, but I think we've done a really nice job, again, thanks to Ben and a bunch of people in his team as well. The private team on exploring that biology. I think we have more ideas in that category. Ben, anything to add there mechanistically or otherwise?
No. I mean, I think I covered it earlier. I would say that the answer is both. I think there are some indications where there's maybe some IITs or clinical reports from off-label use of other JAK inhibitors, where we think TYK2, JAK1 inhibition is really optimally suited for it. And I think those are indications we're evaluating that would obviously be highly derisked. I also think as we -- to your point, as we continue to see more and more excellent data here, I think we're definitely looking into some obviously, higher risk but also exciting potential opportunities where there's less proof of concept, and we would see what we end up with there.
And Matt, if I can one follow-up, just obviously, business development has always been such a big part of the Roivant story. But just given the sort of expanding horizons for both brepo as well as IMP-1402, how are you thinking about capital allocation in terms of external versus sort of just internal R&D investment?
Dollars go to the best opportunity wherever they are, the short answer to that question. Look, we're funded through profitability on our existing portfolio obviously, things like running the Phase III program in cutaneous sarcoidosis are no-brainers at this point. We were definitely going to do it. And adding additional indications, brepo or 1402 or for mostly are attractive options because those mechanisms are strong, and we'll work in other places.
That said, and I'm sitting across the table from a right now, the world is full of attractive opportunities, and we look at all of them. So I think we've absolutely got opportunities to deploy sort of externally as well, and it continues to be a core part of what we believe we are good at.
Our next question comes from the line of Derek Archila with Wells Fargo.
Congrats on the data. So just quickly on Immunovant in terms of -- we saw positive data for nipocalimab in systemic lupus. So curious about how you think about the read-through to cutaneous?
And then second question, just in terms of commercial synergy between brepo and 1402, Obviously, we're Immunovant covering analysts. So just curious how you think about fielding a sales force in the most cost-effective manner to leverage both brepo and 1402 between the two companies?
Yes. Thanks. Look, these are both really good questions and important areas for us. On SLE, first of all, I was on record long before the brepo study in SLE saying that anybody who isn't afraid of a lupus study, I think the word I used in it. And so I'll say congrats to J&J on the positive data in SLE, it's always impressive when people were able to deliver those kind of results. It certainly supports the use of FcRns in diseases with a lot of complicated immune activity going on at the same time.
There's probably some read-through to CLE in the sense that in the sense that there's some pathophysiological overlap there. But every lupus study of any kind is its own special flower and we'll have to be successful in CLE on our own. We like cutaneous lupus in part because we know that forms are pretty good at reading those kinds of endpoints. And so we feel good about that. Again, CLE is a different competitive landscape in SLE and we're watching that bar as well.
On the commercial question, look, the first thing I'll say is even bluntly within a big pharma company these days, the truth is that for de novo launches, mostly you deploy a field apparatus that is specific to the program because you want to engage with those very specific physicians because you want sort of full voice share of your field force on the product. And so I'm not sure I think of like sales force as the most important commercial synergy, but we are definitely thinking about things like contracting expansively to make sure that we can get maximum benefit from commercial scale across the portfolio, and there definitely are areas where that is top of mind for us, but I think will translate to benefit both for the commercial performance of brepo and for the commercial performance of 1402 as those launches progress.
Our next question comes from the line of Ash Verma with UBS.
So for [ Barron's ], just upcoming the TED results, the data that you're expecting. Just curious how you're thinking about that in the light of recent Vyvgart setback in TED. In your case, how confident are you that a positive Graves' disease readout would translate to success in Thyroid Eye Disease?
Thanks. Look, I appreciate the question. Obviously, TED is out there, and that data is coming when we have both studies in the first half of this year. I don't think there's like a ton of -- a ton to say about that at this point. Those studies are going to happen and will put the data out.
Obviously, we know from our own Phase II study in TED as well as from our own Phase II work in Graves' that the drug is active in patients with hyperthyroidism. And I think that should translate in both indications to some degree of efficacy. And we don't think there's a lot of read-through from TED either in Argenx's case. And Argenx obviously also doesn't as well. or in our own situation in Graves' disease in the sense that we have -- look, obviously, both where we have all of our Phase II data in Graves' and the diseases are pretty different. Like the TED study enrolled mostly thyroid patients. So they're pretty different fundamentally in terms of who was in the studies. So I feel like we are confident in the efficacy or potential efficacy of FcRns in Graves' disease and not particularly focused on what information there is from TED.
Obviously, once we get the TED data and can talk about it, there will be information there from patients who happen to be hyperthyroid at various points in that study and how those patients look and we'll take full advantage of that data in optimizing our Graves' program. But beyond that, I'd say not much read-through between the programs and looking forward to getting all that data together once we've got it. Thanks, Ash.
Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Smith with Leerink Partners.
Hey guys, good morning. Thanks so much for the update. Great to see the rapid enrollment and the over enrollment for 1402 from D2T RA and I appreciate the update on the data timing I just wanted to clarify, should we expect that you'll report both the open-label and randomized data from this study together? Or is there potential we could see some of that open-label period one data first?
And then as a follow-up, we noticed on Slide 31, the expectation for Graves' launched by the end of '28, but not although you're expecting Phase III data for both indications in '27. I just wanted to ask if that's purely a function of data timing there? Or if there's some other strategic considerations with respect to pricing or competitive landscape?
I appreciate both questions. Look, I think on the data release timing for the RA study, I don't think we've made a final decision on how exactly we'll put that data out and when, but I think it's reasonably likely now that we know both are coming this year. That we'll wait for the randomized withdrawal period before we talk about it. Obviously, that first period is open label, so we'll get some information from it as we go on.
And then I don't think there's much to read into the exclusion from MG in 2028. In fact, there's probably some possibility it actually does, in fact, also launch in 2028. And so I think stay tuned once we get that data once those studies are -- once we know the exact timeline of those studies, we'll be able to provide more guidance on specific launch time lines.
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Thompson with Stifel.
Maybe one on sort of the competitive landscape in Graves. I guess with Argenx entering the area and maybe trying to follow their strategy of chasing fast follower indications here. Like how confident are you that you can maintain your lead in Graves' if Argenx were to run maybe 26-week studies or even one instead of two studies.
Obviously, the extent of our leading -- thank you for the question. The extent of our lead time in Graves' will depend a little bit on organic study design and what they decide to do. And until we know what that design is, it's going to be hard to say.
Certainly, shorter studies will be faster than longer studies mechanically. I think we have a lead in Graves' that will be significant, roughly no matter what design organic runs. We have great relationships with those KOLs that community. We've been out there. One of our studies is also 26 weeks. As a reminder, the 2503 study is 26 weeks. So look, I think the answer is we will have a significant lead in Graves' disease. How significant that lead is may depend a little bit on what the competition does. But this is also one of those -- whatever may got to run the bar situations or whatever. I think mostly our focus is just getting those studies done and out as quickly as we can and getting out to that population, and it's such a large and exciting population that it doesn't really matter.
The other thing I'll say is, as a reminder, we showed pretty conclusively in our Phase II data at the deeper IgG suppression that we expect to deliver will matter in this population. And I think especially on remission. And I think that will also be a significant factor in Graves' disease. So looking forward to getting all that data together.
And this concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Matthew Gline for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for the good questions. Thank you all for listening this morning. I want to once again thank everybody involved in all of this, including particularly with the cutaneous sarcoidosis data, the patients and investigators involved in that program. As well as the Priovant team for their execution there, but also everybody at Roivant, all the patient and investigators on all of our studies. And look, we've got a lot more to come this year. So I'm sure we'll be back together soon, and I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Q3 2026 Earnings Call
Roivant Sciences — 44th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference
1. Question Answer
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for another session at the 44 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. I'm Brian Cheng. I'm 1 of the senior biotech analysts here at the firm. On stage, we have the CEO of Roivant joining us. I'll now pass the mic to their CEO, Matt Gline, for a short presentation, followed by a live audience Q&A. Matt, the stage is yours.
Thanks, Brian. Thanks, everyone, for being here. We did quite a long Investor Day in December. So this is going to be in part a recapitulation of that and in part just an opportunity for me to test some stand up material because I don't actually have that many announcements. But look, it was a really fun year for us last year. And 2026 is a really exciting year, and so it will be good to go through some of that as well as just some thematic stuff that's affecting us in a mostly positive way.
I will be making forward-looking statements, and you're all not going to read this right now, but it's here. Cool. So look, where is Roivant as a business. I think there's a couple of sort of level-setting facts for us as we come into this new era. The first is, look, I think it's just true for us that our next decade is going to look a lot different from our last. We are a significantly simplified company focused on a smaller subset of products which we're going to be talking a little bit about today and which we've talked a lot about in this Investor Day. And I think we've been really laser-focused on that clinical execution. We've moved a number of top line readouts earlier.
We have a pipeline that I think really matters. I'm sure some of my presentation, a lot of Brian's questions will come down to some of those programs, and they positioned us to shape our own destiny. And our highest priority by far is making sure that we do right by those programs because we think they have a lot of potential for us.
2025 was a banner year for us, and it sets us up for an incredible moment going forward. we got positive data for brepocitinib in dermatomyositis. I'm sure that will be subject of a number of things we talk about later. But we showed statistically significant benefit across all of our 10 end points, a remarkable data set. We expect to file our NDA by early this year. It will be the first novel oral therapeutic in DM. I think it's a really big opportunity.
We showed that we could deliver durable drug-free remission in Grave's disease, which sets us up for a disease-modifying benefit for IMVT1402 now in multiple pivotal Grave's disease studies.
We progressed registrational studies across a whole bunch of indications at Immunovant, Graves, MG, CIDP, Sjogren's as well as a proof-of-concept trial in CLE. We now expect -- thanks to clinical execution, we expect to get that full RA data set, both the open-label run-in period and then the randomized withdrawal period in 2026 as well as CLE proof-of-concept data. We have this ongoing litigation with Moderna. We're not talking that much about it in this context. But we've got a favorable market ruling in the Pfizer case, and we have that jury trial scheduled for March.
We have an incredibly strong capital position. We have $4.4 billion in cash as of our last filing, with a pipeline that's capitalized to profitability. We don't need to raise money. We are basically at what I think will be our peak share count for the future potentially.
2026 is an amazing year for us. We will get, obviously, our NDA filing for brepo in DM, which sets us up for commercial launch there. We have top line data coming for a registrational program for brepocitinib in NIU, another indication that is every bit as large potentially is dermatomyositis, and that data will be in the second half of this year. We have Phase IIb data for mosliciguat, which is our inhaled SGC activator for PHILD. That data is coming in the second half. That's another huge opportunity. PHL has proven to be in therapeutics hands in enormous commercial market. Obviously, people are excited about some of the other prostacyclins. We will be among the first, if not the first nonprostacyclin novel mechanisms in PHILD and again, that data later this year.
One of the first ever studies for potentially registrational data in difficult to treat sort of fourth-line rheumatoid arthritis, these are for patients that have failed at least 2 of JAKIL-6s and TNF. So these are sick refractory RA patients who have no options right now. That trial has moved very quickly, and we'll be getting that data this year. We have proof concept data coming in cutaneous sarcoidosis and in CLE, respectively, in brepocitinib in the first half and in IMVT-1402 in the second half. So additional data that could drive future value. And then as I said, we have our jury trial scheduled for March.
So honestly, sitting here a few months ago, looking forward to 26, we weren't exactly sure how we were going to match 2025, and then we pulled some things forward and put it altogether, and it's just going to be a whole year. So it feels crazy to be at the start of it.
At this point, we have a 10-year track record of execution and value creation. We have, as I said, significant financial strength, the cash balance that should be the envy of many. I think is the envy of many and gets us everything we need from a capital perspective. We have 12 positive Phase III studies behind us, 3 commercial launches coming in the next 3 years. We generated 8 FDA approvals. We've had more than $10 billion in exits. So just a strong pipeline and a lot of performance in the River mirror. And then a ruthless focus on capital efficiency. We bought back $1.5 billion of stock at an average of $10 a share. So a really strong position from a capital efficiency perspective and an additional $500 million authorized.
I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, we never do in these meetings, but a number of things that make us unique. One, which I will definitely spend a lot of time on is just our talent model has been unique. We combine people from within the industry outside the industry. I myself, for example, came to biopharma 10 years ago from physics and finance and other places. We have a bunch of people from every background. I think that's been a major driver of success for us in our programs. I think we are -- a thing that I'm proud of is I think we're among the best in the world that creative clinical development. We've thought creatively about indication strategy. We thought we found dermatomyositis as an indication and others have followed us into -- obviously, patients have been stick with it for a long time. But as a beach front or beachhead for novel therapeutic development, same thing with Graves' disease. With mosliddd e Mogli, we pivoted into PH-ILD. I think we've been really thoughtful around how we develop these medicines. And then we've been ruthlessly focused on execution and getting patients into studies, I'm getting good outcomes from studies on designing studies for maximum benefit. And I'm really proud of that as well.
And look, I talked about 2026. Our next 36 months is just transformative for us. We have 3 commercial launches or more. We have or more pivotal study readouts across 6 indications. We will have 4 NDA or BLA filings across indications and multiple proof-of-concept study reap. The truth is we will have far more clinical data in the next 36 months than could be represented on this slide, much of which hasn't been announced yet, but we're working on all kinds of things. And so it's just -- we're going to look like a very different company a few years from now.
I want to talk a little bit more about that in the sense that I think we are -- with -- good Fortune writing a little bit of a wave in this moment in time where 7 or 8 years ago, we definitely would have been a launch story now. We have a commercial drug or a per commercial drug that's awaiting an FDA decision. And biotech companies were not doing great at launching products, and it was really sort of a show-me dynamic. But thanks to argenx and Internet and Alnylam and Bridge and Madrigal and Verona and Horizon, we get to watch these commercial launches, learn from them. And these companies have done an enormous job at showing that biotech companies can, in fact, in the right markets, under the right pricing dynamics, launch products successfully. And I feel like after what has been a relative drought of graduates from biotech, we went through talk a little bit more about this. where the fate of all biotech companies was to be bought or struggle. And I feel like we finally entered an era now where companies like us have a shot of graduating from the sort of small-cap biotech arena into the real company profitable sort of high leverage biopharma business.
And I'm excited that I feel like we are at the doorstep of that transformation that we get to look ahead towards companies like and argenx have done this recently, and aspire to be more like them, aspire to learn from their commercialization and do that for our own product. So it feels really great.
Actually, it's been sort of annoying being a public biotech CEO for the past handful of years because up until this moment, up until you had this like opportunity for companies to graduate, what it felt like to be a public biopharma CEO was either -- there was like this sort of Lord of the rings eye of Ceron thing happening where either you were in the M&A basket, and public market investors thought you were going to get bought by big pharma and your stock traded well or you weren't and everybody asked you how you could look more like those companies. And my team actually made a little video on what it is like to be public biopharma CEO in that environment. And -- it's -- well, anyway, you'll see.
[Presentation]
It feels good to be past that and it really felt like a moment in time really annoying, to be honest. So it's great to be in an environment where we have another path forward as a business, not that M&A isn't great, and we've benefited from it historically. Look, I think we have a real confluence of both internal and external factors that create opportunity for us from here. Obviously, and this is changing by the day. But in an environment where M&A has been, let's at least call it sporadic or idiosyncratic. We have launches and pivotal readouts that support value creation that go beyond M&A. In an environment where the capital markets have been up and down, we have a cash balance that support runway into profitability.
In an environment where China and other dynamics in early-stage discovery have affected what adds value. I think we are really good at late stage global clinical development, which is something that continues to matter, irrespective of the way the sector has evolved. And then -- this is a sector theme is really -- this was a long debate on how to write policy without writing policy. But it's been a choppy environment from a policy perspective. And I think the fact that we just have differentiated first-in-class products has allowed us to look at a lot of that from the outside, which feels good because it's been a tough environment for a lot of people.
Recent launches of the kind that I think we are going to embark on in the near future have been very successful, in a couple of different ways. They've been successful in that they have driven shareholder value and they've been successful in that they have open therapeutic categories and delivered outcomes beyond what was originally expected for them. And so they've been in markets like MG, like in amyloidosis, like in bronchiectomy, where new therapeutic options have grown the market where there's been unmet need supporting access and more adoption has been rapid, and I feel like we have an opportunity to do to do something similar.
We are, as I've said a few times, capitalized to profitability. We have a $4.4 billion cash balance. That will give us enough money to invest in our current pipeline to invest in new opportunities and to continue to return excess capital to shareholders. So it just feels like a great place to be. And I'll just reiterate in terms of what we're focused on for the next 12 months, we want to be ready to nail the launch of brepocitinib in DM. We want to progress 1402 across multiple pivotal studies -- we want to convert our proof-of-concept programs into pivotal programs. We want to successfully execute on this LNP litigation, and we want to add to our pipeline. Because we think we have an incredible decade ahead.
We think we have the possibility for a large, potentially $15-plus billion portfolio of products across the indications that are currently identified and others. I think that's about where I'm going to end this. I think Brian will take us through some of the specific products, but I'll just say we have an incredibly busy 36 months ahead. We can't even fit all of it on a slide. But I couldn't be more excited for what's coming and excited to talk more about the business in Q&A. So I'll leave it to Brian to take us through that Thanks.
Great. Well, let's start the Q&A. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. For those who are in the audience today. If you have any questions, please feel free to raise your hand. We do have runner on the floor. And for those joining us virtually, you can admit questions on the portal. Over the past couple of years, I definitely have witnessed how Roivant has evolved in a very good way, right? I think it's also going in parallel as my coverage grows and it's just been an incredible story. I think maybe just start off with some higher-level questions. I think when you look at Roivant, there are not a lot of biotech models that function that operate like this. And to me, there's always -- it's always a challenge to explain some of the parts of Roivant vans. And can you talk about just where are you taking this model in the long haul? And what worked and what didn't work and do you think it's going to work continuously moving forward?
Yes, there's a lot there. First of all, I'd say, thank you for the positive comments on the evolution of the business. It's felt like -- look, I think it always feels like a journey in this industry. I think one of the things that's been humbling is that biotech is a business where the how is eaten by the what. But it actually doesn't matter how creative you are, how thoughtful you are, how sophisticated your business is. What matters is whether you can successfully generate medicines that deliver good data and matter to patients. And ultimately, we've spent a lot of time in our history talking about and optimizing the how. And I think we're finally at a moment where the what speaks for itself, where we have a portfolio of products that are going to matter the first of them, we have all the data we need. And I think that's at a moment in time, sort of simplifies that whole question actually in terms of like people get lost in the model and the way we organize the team and what's its where. And actually, I think mostly that doesn't matter.
What matters is the same thing for us as for Insmed or any other company. What matters is that we have a portfolio of products that are going to deliver a lot of value to the patients that are with these diseases and that we've been thoughtful and aggressive in developing medicines for those patients.
So I think I think a lot of that has kind of fallen away from our story in a way that I feel proud of that we no longer have to get up here and talk about the portfolio of Vans and who's funded where and which says which CEO that, that stuff doesn't really drive the story. We are much simpler than we have been in moments in our past. We have fewer programs. They are programs of higher value. And I think that's a function of maturity and a function of realizing that it's much better to do a few things well than a lot of things not as well. And I think we've just learned a lot of those lessons. It is -- we do not have enough time here to talk about all the things that haven't worked for us. It's a long list.
Look, I think ultimately, I think, where we're at now, creative aggressive clinical development is something that is always going to matter. Sometimes I get asked about market moments. There's just no bad time to deliver good clinical data. I think that's really been where a lot of our focus has landed.
And when you look at your name, Roivant itself, ROI is part of the name. And it took me -- it actually took me a few years to actually recognize that. Do you feel a difference in terms of your level of execution or just the way how you executed in the past, has it changed? Because there are a couple of dynamics that you have marked, right? The way you think about operating the van model today or even, let's say, let's say when we talk -- had the same discussion in 2028, do you think there's going to be a difference in terms of expectation for ROI? And how are you going to get there?
I think if we are successful at becoming a $30 billion, $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion company, yes, look, I think -- it's 1 thing to grow from $1 billion to $2 billion, another thing to go from 2 million to 4 million. I think to grow from 4 million to 8 from 8 million to 16 million, hopefully, come from 16 to 32, even more hopefully. And I think each of those journeys is different. And ultimately, your clients, if you call investors or clients are a fickle bunch, and they will happily ask maybe what's next no matter how well last year went. It's just the nature of the beast.
I think we are well positioned for the next leg of value creation and that I think executing on what we have will take us pretty far. But I think from here, look, if we succeed at launching these products and they become multibillion-dollar products, and we are of the size of some of our larger peers and growing up, I think we'll need to then answer the question of what's next from there.
So I think we're looking at expanding the pipeline now focusing on opportunities that can drive value not from $5 billion to $10 billion of market cap, but from $30 million to $50 million and from $50 million to $75 million. And I think that's probably a little bit of a difference for us. That's I think 1 of the core founding innovations of Roivant from the beginning is -- and we frame this a lot of different ways over time. But look, the truth is our business is a capital-hungry business that relies on the not goodwill, but the return hunger of the investor community to fuel itself, and we have to feed that to be successful for patients.
And I think many of our peers, some companies that are very successful are born on a scientific dogma and pursue that dogma sort of irrespective of the business merits and succeed or fail sometimes. Whereas I think we were born on the idea that if we focus on creating value that the good outcomes for patients will follow from that. And I think that's always been in our DNA. It's -- I didn't name the company, but I think it's why ROI is in the name is because our belief is that -- with that as the horse the card of patient benefit will follow.
The transaction of the TL1A, I still remember those days to Roche, really gave So long ago. I still have the newspaper on my desk. And what I remember was it really gave you the cash runway that you need to really showcase such a robust. Has that changed your way about thinking about going for strategic, is any of these assets open for strategic discussions. How do you think about that? Because you have talked about the fact that you see a role towards profitability. So how do you kind of balance that?
Yes. It's a question are we for sale? I answer that question was because we are fueled by the investor community, the answer to that question to be clear is always yes. I know that one. Look, I first of all, for those that weren't around or don't remember or haven't paid attention, the transaction that Brian is referring to is we partnered on a drug with Pfizer for inflammatory bowel disease and it turned out to be a very good drug and a lot of good things happened, some of them driven by us, some of them outside of us. And we sold it a year later for $7 billion to Roche and capitalized ourselves for the foreseeable future, which was great and allowed us to do all kinds of things that are unique.
And I think, look, being funded through profitability is an incredible privilege in biotech. It is not a privilege that most companies have. And sometimes, I'll talk to an investor and the investor would be like, oh, your stock trade is funny, like something is different about it. It reacts differently to data, it moves in different ways. And I think part of the answer to that is like everybody else is doing financing. Everybody else is raising money when they put out good data, and I think like that just like affects the patterns of institutional investing activity in a way that we don't have. And so I think we are a different beast from that perspective. And I think there's very few other development-stage biotech companies that have that.
I think what it means is we are afforded the privilege of being ruthlessly economic in our decision-making of having high standards for ourselves in terms of what deals we will take high standards for ourselves in terms of what deals we will do and the ability where we have conviction, for example, that brepocitinib in dermatomyositis should be a multibillion-dollar drug or that our FcRn franchise is a best-in-class franchise that will matter in indications like Grave's disease. No 1 can take away from us the opportunity to test that thesis. And so if we do any kind of partnership, if we do any kind of transaction, we're doing it because the value is right, the moment is right and we want to, not because we have to survive. And I think that's mostly been great for us.
So less start to talk about some of the assets in your portfolio. Let's start with brepocitinib first. When you look at where the JAK class is today, doctor feedback has told us that there's about 20%, 30% of the patients are currently using JAK. How confident that you can grow this JAK class in DM today? Do you think that Pebble has the ability to grow it?
Yes. So brepo for those who aren't familiar with it, is a Dulior JAK1 and TYK2. It's a drug that we acquired from Pfizer back in 2021 when they were pursuing a more common kind of JAK or TYK2 strategy of looking at larger market indications. They've studied it in psoriasis ceroticarthritis and UC and Crohn's. And at the time, it wasn't exactly clear where the JAK class was headed across indications. There was a sort of safety question around Black Box warnings. And we decided to focus on orphan immunology as an area where there's enormous unmet need where JAK inhibitors and TYK2 inhibitors are some of the most effective anti-inflammatory drugs, we as a field, we as a species have ever discovered. And we decided there was a real opportunity there.
So we went into dermatomyositis. Now dermatomyositis is a terrible disease. It's an orphan inflammatory disease. It affects probably 70,000 people in America, of which 40,000 are in active therapy and claims data sets. Actually, practically the number of those patients are no Jack, the only approved medicines for dermatomyositis are either like steroids and immunosuppressants like methotrexate or high-dose prednisone or IVIG is approved Other than that, everything, including what off-label use of JAK inhibitor is all off-label. It's all without sort of FDA approval. And indeed, I think if you look at the claims data, it's a low single-digit percentage of patients are on JAK inhibitors now.
And I think why is it so small? First of all, the JAK inhibitors available are not dual inhibitors of JAK1/TYK2. They are pure JAK inhibitors. They are probably not as efficacious in DM as brepocitinib, and they're off-label. So access skin, it's about the individual ability of a physician to navigate the universe to be able to get these patients on drug, and it's hard. And so for all those reasons, it is like not very widely used.
And these patients are suffering. These patients are on very high doses of prednisone a significant portion of the time. Even the approved commercial dose of IVIG, if you follow the like letter of the treatment paradigm, these patients are unlike 4 or 5 consecutive days of 8 hour a day infusions every month. It's like a full work week a month spent an infusion clinic, and these patients are so sick that many patients are doing this. It's about whatever, 12%, 13% of the market is on IVIG for days out of the month. It's like a whole thing. And I think there's just hunger for a new treatment option.
So I think we have a huge opportunity. We've worked very closely with the DM document. In fact, one of the thing I love about talking to investors about dermatomyositis because I feel like I mostly don't need to pitch it. I think investors who do doc calls with demonicitis physicians, her enthusiasm for our drug because the docs are legitimately enthusiastic for a new treatment option. -- specifically for a combo of JAK1 and T2. And just based on the incredible clinical data that the team generated back in September that we put out, I think all of that has carried a lot of enthusiasm. I think that enthusiasm will serve us well assuming we're successful with FDA.
I think we have an opportunity to take share from off-label therapies. I think we have an opportunity to take share from IVIG, which is obviously, again, an onerous paradigm. But also, I think, among the biggest opportunities at the 75% of patients were just like on high-dose prednisone or methotrexate or some combination and I think it's like a lousy existence. It's miserable. It's unpleasant, it's not treating the disease effectively. And we have an opportunity not only to afford those people better disease control, but better disease control on a lower burden of steroids. And I think that will allow us a lot of enthusiastic patients who will benefit from the drug. So absolutely, I think we can grow significantly.
So you're interesting in FcRN1402, and you're also in DM with Pebble, we get this question a lot. People are looking into the incoming FcRn data in DM. What's your tech of ultimately where brepocitinib is going to place in the DM space?
I feel like I'm supposed to say better, right? We're going to be better. Look, I'll say a few things. One is -- so for those -- again, don't follow this closely. So argenx is studying efgartigimod in most -- the study they're running is about 150 patient study across 3 different types of myositis. DM is 1 of those types, but they're also in like polymyositis and IMNM. So it's a different kind of study in a broader patient population.
And indeed, I think the biological rationale for FcRns or IVIG for that matter, but we'll start with FcRns in myositis is probably stronger in some of the other myocytes in like IMNM, which is more obviously driven by autoantibodies and less indomatomysitis, which is significant inflammatory components. I think if you look at the data argenix generated, they didn't have a steroid taper, they generated against a backdrop of not having a steroid taper, like comparable benefit from a test perspective, which is to say, I think, like less overall clinical benefit to the patients because they were still on steroids at the time and a little bit slower. We generated moderate tich responses in a median of, I think, about 60 days, and they were about twice that.
So I think those are all benefits that we have. We're also an oral medication. They are either IV or subcu, depending on format, mostly subcu in this indication. So look, I think we have attributes that should make us appealing in dermatomyositis that should give us, I think, a real leg up. That said, I also think this is just 1 of these opportunities where these patients have poor disease control. There's really nothing available right now. multiple people out there talking about novel therapies, it's just going to be good for the field. They'll be better diagnosed. I was talking to somebody actually on the buy side at 1 point who has either DM or lupus and part of what they were saying is they were diagnosed and told like you probably have either DM or lupus, and they didn't get more specific than that.
Even though they're in treatment for the disease because it turns out it's like relatively hard to diagnose the disease and there wasn't much of a reason because they weren't going on a therapy that was like specifically approved in either of those indications. And so I think like that will change in a world where both we and others are out there talking about the treatment of the disease in a way that I think will expand the pie.
To be honest, I think there's almost nothing that you could have said about myasthenia gravis as a commercial market 5 years ago that you couldn't say about DM today. The size is similar, the severity is similar, the dearth of options is similar. And certainly, the MG market is larger than anyone imagined it to be and growing all the time and definitely supporting multiple drugs in the same class, definitely supporting multiple classes of medicine. So I think the same thing will absolutely be true in DM.
So turning to, I guess, from the audience, any questions? Okay. Turning to 1402. How do you define the criteria for success in RA? I think to some nipocalimab history in that indication, that's rate, some questions. Why do you think the setup here is different with 1402?
So as a reminder, we are running a study of IMVT-1402, which is our sort of next-generation anti-FcRn antibody in difficult to treat rheumatoid arthritis. So this is a study. Now you think about RA, you think about like 1,000 patient studies and a huge patient population. This is for patients who have failed -- I think I said this earlier, at least 2 advanced therapies. So at least 2 basically of IL-6, TNF and JAK inhibitors. These are patients with very few options from a therapeutic perspective. And we are also explicitly only studying those patients that are auto anybody positive, They're ACV-positive. And so it's a subset of the RA population that is severe late line and has disease that seems affected by autoantibodies.
J&J has run a few studies, nipocalimab has a few studies under the belt. The most important 1 here is they studied in early line patients, they studied a monotherapy. And in that study, they saw a clear dose response that is deeper, larger doses of nipocalimab drove better ACR20, better ACR50, better ACR70s and they show better responses in APT- positive disease. Than in the sort of general population as a whole. And so I think we took that, we looked at it and we said, okay, this is a drug that is -- it appears active in the patient population.
It's a mechanism that is orthogonal to most of the other anti-inflammatory drugs approved in RA. It's a patient population without very many options. We're going to focus on that patient population and design a study that gives us a quick answer. And so we're running this randomized withdrawal design where patients are open label on therapy for a period of time and then we rerandomize responders either to drug or to placebo so that we'll see sort of who falls off as responders.
You asked about the bar for success. I think -- so the first answer to that question is, I don't think we have a great answer to that question now. It is incumbent on us to have one before we generate this data, and we're working on it now. The problem is just like a very understudied population. There are basically no studies in late-line RA. And so I don't think any -- there's no like quantitative answer to like what we have to beat to be interesting. And so it's really a question for docs and patients of like what is the threshold ACR50 or ACR 70 or even ACR20 that gets patients with no other options excited about trying a novel therapeutic.
We are doing that work now. I expect we will produce our view of an answer to that question sometime in the first half of the year before we put out this data and that will inform our decision to run the second study, the sort of final pivotal study, depending on what we see in the study that we're running now.
There's about 75,000 of these late-line patients. This, again, is a patient and commercial opportunity that is wide open. Nobody else is really working in this field right now, and we feel like we have a huge opportunity if we're successful here to do something interesting.
Okay. And then turning to mosliciguat. Historically has have seen a lot of different competitors, many have failed. How do you think about the setup here? Maybe can you talk about what you saw in actually gave you the most comfort that this will be successful.
So mosliciguat an inhaled drug. It's a dry powder inhaler for a mechanism, it's called an SGC activator. It's a vasodilatory mechanism. There was an approved drug with the same target an SGC stimulator it was called Demis that did just under $2 billion in sales, mostly in PAH. And so now we're working on a next-generation drug here that's a by dint of being an activator should be more efficacious. And by dint of being inhaled drug should work in PH-ILD, where systemic vasodilation in PLD doesn't work. Basically what happens is you end up vasodilating the healthy lung tissue, which is good and you get better activation, but you also wind up vasodilating the unhealthy lung tissue, and you effectively bleed out oxygenation -- and so you wind up like with -- in some cases, a net negative effect.
Whereas what seems to work in these patients is local vasodilation in the healthy lung tissue, which you achieve through inhaled drugs. And so this is where, like, for example, systemic treprostinil does not work well in PH-ILD but Tyvaso was an inhaled treprostinil does work well. And now you've got TPIP from Insmed coming in quite a drug, all also inhaled treprostinil.
We are among the, if not the most advanced nonteprostinil mechanism here in PHL. The truth is the end of successful studies in PHL remain small. And so it's hard to say for sure exactly how likely we are to succeed. But what we have is unbelievably good data in PAH. As an inhaled drug in PAH, we saw some of the deepest -- you look at this right hearted blood pressure, PVR, it's a very difficult thing to measure. You put these patients on an operating cable and put a cath in their artery. But we showed some of the deepest reductions in PVR ever shown, and PVR has generally correlated really well with clinical outcomes in PAH. It has also correlated well with clinical outcomes in PH-ILD, but it's hard to say really well because it's just such a small number of studies.
But anyway, I think the hope here is we are able to reproduce what Tyvaso has shown that is a drug with good PVRs and PAH will also generate good PVR reductions in PH-ILD and that, that is sufficient to then translate to clinical benefit in the form of 6-minute walk or time to clinical worsening or whatever else in the PH-ILD setting. And if that's true, I think we have a really big opportunity.
PH-ILD as a market should be about as large as PAH -- and currently, treprostinil are the only mechanism approved, and so it's a huge opportunity. And this will be 1 of these polypharmacy indications where patients are on everything all at once that works because these patients are otherwise very sick and dying -- and so we expect to see drugs used on top of 1 other. In fact, we're running already a combo study with Tyvaso as a part of our program.
Okay. Turning to one of the big titles coming up in March. There's a Maderna LNPKs. Just heading into the litigation the trial. Do you have an update on when we could get summary judgment?
It could come in an hour or it could come the day before trials. The truth is like we don't know and it's up to the judge. And in fact, the judge could decide not to rule, I think, basically on any of the issues in summary judgment and allow for the jury to rule on all of them. That's like a possibility in theory. I think either even then he would issue some kind of opinion. But the short answer is we don't know.
This trial, again, for those that are not quite as close to it. So -- we have a team of scientists that have been working on lipid nanoparticle chemistry for literally decades where some of the originators of that field and developed the lipid nanoparticles that went on to be used in our view, in the COVID-19 vaccines. And so we're in IP litigation with both Moderna and with Pfizer BionTech to try and get our fair share of that, given our scientific contributions to the programs.
How should we think through the readthrough from this case to other litigations are ongoing in other jurisdictions?
Yes. So first of all, it's hard to comment that much on an ongoing litigation with the trial that's this soon. But look, I think in the Moderna case, our patent portfolio was a little bit different in the U.S. than in Europe. So they're not like perfectly analogous, but the product is pretty much the same in these different regions. And the patents are very similar. And so I would some change in the patent portfolio or otherwise, expect some translatability from a U.S. outcome to another, but it will be idiosyncratic and the different courts may look differently at different things. And again, like patent validity and things like that could be different from -- in different places. -- in there, again, the patents are slightly different.
In terms of tier, it's a different product and a different set of patents that have been asserted in the case. And so I think there's some read-through on what's allowed in court and the mechanisms and the analysis that we've done and so on, but I think mostly, they are different cases.
Got it. We have about 3 minutes left. So I want to go back to cutaneous acidosis is 1 of the indications I've been getting a little bit more questions on. Maybe just on that indication. I know that you have worked on this indication in the past. So definitely some insights into what -- how to best design a trial. Can you talk about what you want to see out of the proof-of-concept trial in CS and what will give you the confidence to move this into a later stage study? .
Yes. So sarcoidosis as a whole is a rare inflammatory it's about 200,000 circoidosis patients in the U.S. that can be multisystem in nature. Most sarcoidosis patients present with pulmonary sarcoidosis in the lung. Many present with skin symptoms, some present with ocular sarcoidosis in the eye, which actually is a subset of noninfectious uveitis that we're studying in our NIU program. And it's a terrible disease in every case. It can lead towards breathing problems. It can lead cutaneous sarcoid, which is a question you asked about is the skin manifestation that leads to like terrible, terrible skin rashes and plaques that are debilitating and very, very uncomfortable.
So that's the disease we're studying. Again, it's one of these orphan diseases with tens of thousands of patients with really no other options. The study you're referring to, where we have experienced, we ran a pulmonary sarcoidosis trial with a different drug, an anti-GM-CSF antibody that failed. Pulmonary sarcoidosis is a very difficult disease to study. I think our hope is that cutaneous sarcoid is a little bit easier from a clinical development perspective that it's got the endpoint is a thing called C-SAM, which is 1 of these sort of skin scores. It's not so different from the skin scores used in other indications, CLE or even psoriasis or dermatomyositis. I think it's helpful that we have that kind of indication. And then obviously, JAK inhibitors historically have worked well in skin disease. And in fact, there is open label data for tofacitinib in canard that looked very good.
So I think our hope is that we're running a program that's going to generate good data. It's a very small study. It's really a proof concept. It has a small placebo arm and then a drug arm. I think we'll see what we show. The answer is because it's a disease with really no other options, it's really it's just about delivering any kind of clinical benefit. And our view is like a 5-point change in the CSM end point. is probably sufficient for doc and patient enthusiasm.
And just lastly, in our last minute here, -- there's a slide you talk about how you look forward to the $15 billion plus sales -- peak sales opportunity. How does Esben stack up? And give us a sense of when we can see that.
When you can see $15 billion in sales Eventually. Look, I love all my children equally. brepocitinib and FcRn for 1402 both are at this point already in clinical development in many indications, several of which in east case can and should be multi-blockbuster indications. So I think it's easier to chart the path towards $5 billion, $10 plus billion sales for either of those drugs. Which, again, it feels ridiculous to be sitting here and talking for a drug that hasn't launched about a $10 billion market opportunity. But on the other hand, they're really exciting drugs, and it's what we're supposed to do in these settings. I think they're going to be really big drugs.
I think -- you got to take it foot in front of the other, though, right? We're going to launch in DM first. I think DM has the potential on its own to be a multibillion-dollar blockbuster opportunity. Then we're going to launch NIU. I think that on its own has a chance to be a multibillion dollar opportunity. if we're successful in Grave's, that will be the next 1 after that, probably, and then we'll start talking about PH-ILD and some of these other markets thereafter. So I think it's really about -- and this is 1 of the things that I love most about our situation right now. It's really about being able to stack these things on top of each other and build something that accumulates over time that makes me excited.
Right. Well, thank you so much for your time, and thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Roivant Sciences — 44th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference
Roivant Sciences — Analyst/Investor Day - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good morning, and thank you to those joining us in person on this cold New York morning. An equally warm welcome to those joining us virtually. My name is Keyur Parekh, and I head Investor Relations for Roivant. Before I hand over to Matt and the rest of the Roivant management team for the more exciting stuff today, just a bit of context to today. This is our first Investor Day since 2022, and we have indeed made tremendous progress on this journey.
Matt and the rest of the team will talk about this a lot more in detail, but I'm truly excited about the journey that we are on today. And I do hope that most of you will join us, not just for this Investor Day, but also as a part of our shareholding group for the journey ahead. Lastly, and before I hand over to Matt, a few small housekeeping things for me to flag.
One, I would like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties. As you can see from the agenda for the day, there are going to be several opportunities for Q&A during the course of the day. May I please request that you state your name and affiliation before asking the question and that you limit yourself to one question at a time so we can get as many of you as possible. If you could limit your question to the topic of discussion, that would be very appreciated.
We will be taking questions from both people in the room and those joining us virtually. If you're joining us virtually and would like to ask a question, please just type it in your webcast browser, and we will get to it straight away. Several members of the Roivant management team will join us for an informal lunch at the end of today's proceedings. And I do hope that you will join us for that.
So with that, let me pass it over to Matt.
Thanks, Keyur.
Thank you all for being here. It's great to see everybody. Those that know me well know this is not my most natural setting. So I'm doing my best. And the rabbi at my Bar Mitzvah told me I set a land speed record. So I'm going to try and speak slow, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it. Look, I'm super excited to be here today for a bunch of reasons. It's been an incredible year for Roivant in terms of what we've done. And I'm excited to talk about where we are, where we're headed and to lay out what we think is a vision for the business that's as exciting as it's ever been.
I'm also excited because, as you know, one of the decisions we've made is that all the IR activities are concentrated in the Roivant management team, and I get to offload a little bit of the work today to some of my colleagues. And so you'll be hearing from a number of folks on the management team, including the CEOs of each of Priovant, Immunovant and Pulmovant. So looking forward to that also. Cool. So look, what do we want you to walk away from today with? I think there's sort of 4 main things. One is we are a changed business. We've been a business that we've been proud of this entire time, but our next decade is just going to look different than our last decade. It's going to be simplified. It's going to be focused on development and commercialization of programs that we think are awesome and that at this point have reached the stage where they require a lot of attention in the best possible way.
So that's the first thing is that we're sort of starting off a new decade here, and I think it's an important moment to mark. The second thing is we're executing well. I'm just really proud of where the team is. We've moved forward a number of clinical milestones this morning. I'll hit them in detail, but I think those are all helpful for highlighting the level of clinical execution and focus that we've been bringing to the business.
The third thing is we have just huge opportunities in front of us that each of our pipeline programs has multiple indication potential. Each of those indications has multi-blockbuster potential. And we think we can do something really exciting in terms of the scope of the franchise that we can build with that in mind.
And the final thing, and obviously, we're opportunistic, we will do all kinds of interesting things in the next 12 months and beyond, I'm sure. But we see a very high premium right now on executing on the opportunities we have in hand, and we think they are the kinds of programs that can carry us to extraordinary heights.
So look, I think we are a pretty unique place. First of all, and this is important for biotech, we are very well capitalized. We have, as of our last reporting, $4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents. We're funded into profitability as a business. which is something that very few of our peers can say, and it's something we're proud of. I'll talk more about it in a minute. The second is I think we have a track record at this point that highlights that we're good at -- science is humbling. So it's always [indiscernible] on to say, but we're good at developing drugs. We've had 12 positive Phase III studies. We've generated 8 products approved by FDA or 8 approvals. We have 3 commercial launches coming. We've had over $10 billion in exits against that backdrop, which have enabled us to be this well capitalized, have funded this existing pipeline. And I think we've been good stewards of investor capital.
We've repurchased $1.5 billion of stock since going public at $10 a share. We have an additional $500 million authorized. We are laser-focused on generating the kind of value we think we can generate in a shareholder-efficient way. What makes us unique? Look, the left side of this, and we've had some internal debate about whether investors even care. But I do think we have a talent model that is fundamentally different than many of our peers.
We have homegrown leadership. You'll hear from a number of people today who are the CEOs and people executing our big programs, executing well on our big programs who have come up from within Roivant. Roivant is, in many cases, the first place they've worked within the industry, and they've learned how we want to develop drugs. They've partnered with experts who have done this for a long time and have built a sort of unique hybrid DNA that I think is pretty important. We have a dynamic organization.
We change things quickly when they need to be changed quickly. That is maybe common for biotech. And then I think we have an entrepreneurial mindset, and we have very carefully worked to align the incentives of the people working on projects with the success of those incentives. You'll hear from Ben, Ben's fate and fortune rests in the success of Brepocitinib. You'll hear from Eric Eric's fate and fortune rests in the success of the FcRn programs. We think we're good at creative product development. Obviously, the indications that we've chosen for brepo at this point, we are incredibly proud of pioneering a series of different indications for a target that's pretty well understood biologically, but where we found, in our view, a completely new swim lane that is enormously valuable. We'll talk about a number of those opportunities.
Graves disease is an indication. When we started working on Graves a few years ago, it was a backwater. No one talked about Graves. Investors that we spoke to were skeptical of the opportunity. But we knew from talking to patients, from understanding the biology, this is a huge patient population with a high unmet need and imitation is the finest form of flattery.
There are now a number of other people working on programs in Graves disease, and we are years ahead. We understand that doc community, that patient population better than anybody. And then -- with Mosli, we took a program that had been studied in lung disease in pulmonary arterial hypertension, had shown really great promise, and we got it at just the right moment where we could pivot to PH-ILD and be the first non-prostacyclin in PH-ILD. So again, a really exciting opportunity.
And then we're laser-focused on execution. This is something that's always been true, but it's something I think we've invested particularly heavy in, in the last 12 to 18 months is making sure that we run clinical programs the way we want to run clinical programs that we put people in charge of those programs who are going to be relentless and aggressive in figuring out how to enroll them, get good data, get good data quickly.
And I think you'll hear from the teams today, and you'll see my enthusiasm for that. And you can see a number of both in the past and in the future execution milestones that we feel really great about. Today, specifically, there's a number of really good updates on that. First, we're pulling forward the guidance on the DM NDA filing. We now expect it by early 2026, so really soon. That is a function of really hard work by the Priovant team.
The NIU Phase III study is fully enrolled, and therefore, we'll generate top line data in the second half of 2026. That's earlier than -- it's about 6 to 8 months earlier than we had originally guided and a sign both of incredible enthusiasm and a lot of hard work by the Priovant team. The cutaneous sarcoidosis study is also fully enrolled and will read out early in the new year in the first half of 2026. That was also previously expected for the back half of the year, again, a faster-than-expected enrolling trial.
Additionally, Immunovant, the difficult rheumatoid arthritis study came in about 6 months. That data is now expected in full in 2026. So previously, as you may remember, the -- that's -- it's a randomized withdrawal study with an open-label run-in period followed by a randomized period. The period 1 data was expected in '26 and the randomized data was expected in '27. That's now all coming in 2026. That is, I think, a sign again of 2 things.
One is enthusiasm in the late-line RA setting for new options, and we'll talk more about that and the other is just really strong performance by Eric and the new management team at Immunovant and really focusing on getting these trials moving quickly, and I hope it's a sign of more time line improvements to come there. And then PH-ILD trial is enrolling well, and we're going to get that top line data in the second half as planned and that's pretty confident guidance at this point. Cool. Over the next 36 months, we have a lot to do. We have 3-plus commercial launches across DM NIU and Graves.
We have 4 NDA or BLA filings, add myasthenia gravis to that list for Immunovant. We have 8 pivotal readouts across 6 indications at least and 3 proof-of-concept study readouts across multiple indications. And again, there will almost certainly be more to come there. This is just in the stuff that we have already announced that we're doing. And then -- and I'm going to talk a little bit about this thematically in a second, but our commercial opportunity here is focused in the kinds of things that biotech companies have been good at lately.
These are tractable high-value indications, which fit sort of in this, in our view, very sort of useful important sweet spot between the like ultra-orphan stuff that's maybe a little bit smaller than we're focused on and then the stuff like bluntly, the biggest indications in cardiometabolic disease, where we're certainly excited about them, but we think it will be much harder for us to succeed. These are indications that we feel in every case, we are able to execute on successfully.
Okay. A couple of other things from a framing perspective, and then we'll get to the substance of the day. First of all, we're just proud of our capital efficiency. And I think there's very few companies that can actually make all 3 of the following claims at once. We have net returned cash to shareholders since going public. We have increased our cash balance meaningfully since going public, and we've doubled our share price since going public.
And I think the combination of capital efficiency, again, it's something we're all supposed to do and think about every day, and I can't promise that every period is going to look like this one, but it's something that we're very proud of in terms of it being a part of our DNA. Okay. So a couple of thematic points, and then we'll get to the programs themselves. First of all, we are at a unique time in biotech. There was sort of a drought for a period in terms of graduates from biotech into biopharma.
And actually, if you look historically, there are some great examples in the distant past before 2000, with the creation of modern biotech. In the early 2000s, there were a few really important people who entered that graduating class. You can see some of those logos here. Since then, in some ways, there's been a little bit of a gap. The market turned more to M&A. There were some structural factors that made it harder.
And one of the things that we are incredibly pleased about is that we get to now follow in the footsteps of a new class of graduates that have clearly made this jump, right? You look at the Insmeds, argenxs, and Alnylams of the world, they have successfully commercialized programs that rhyme with ours. And these are -- we've got some stats on here, but we've gone from a sort of short the launch private public market environment where launch stocks were meaningfully underperforming to a public market environment where launch stocks are overperforming.
And we think we have a lot of opportunity there. That breaks out into a couple of categories. It's probably less true in the last few months, but there was a period where M&A had backed off a little bit, and that opened up the possibility that, frankly, companies just made it longer and got to see their own success better.
This says the rapid rising influence of China biopharma really, there's just been a commoditization of certain discovery stage activities that make access to programs different for big pharma, different for us. And I think our creative development is now at a premium, and it's something we feel like positions us well. The capital markets are fickle. They're good right now, but that's been an up and down. And then there's just been sector themes macro -- from a macro perspective. There's been obviously changes from a government perspective, changes from a regulatory perspective, and we're watching all of that. And we think our portfolio where it is from a stage perspective, sets us up pretty well to weather that storm.
We think commercial launches like the ones in our near-term future have been successful for a variety of specific reasons. They've obviously generated meaningful shareholder value, but they've also been the kind of launches that have outperformed everyone's expectations for them. They represent new therapeutic options as our programs do with good diagnostics. They represent significant need. There's been rapid adoption. There's sort of a handful of common themes in that recent graduating class.
Drugs that serve high unmet medical need, opportunities with tractable commercial execution, focused prescriber bases, prevalence in the, call it, tens of thousands or maybe low hundreds of thousands, not millions of patients where a biotech company can really make it work. Often diseases treated at specialty centers and by specialty physicians, companies building specialty dedicated patient access support and organizations and frankly, programs with limited competition at launch.
And I think you'll find that our commercial opportunities managed to hit basically all of these boxes across the board, and you'll hear about that from the leaders of each [ Vant ] as we talk about these programs. So our pipeline is familiar at this point. I don't need to say very much about it, but we're incredibly proud of our latest-stage drugs here. We think we have a pretty unique portfolio that fits together, hangs coherently and has the potential to underwrite a new graduate, if you will, from this biopharma class.
So I'm going to move on now to talk about brepo. I'm going to introduce the section. I'm then going to hand it over to Ben Zimmer, the CEO of Priovant, to take you through those programs in detail. And I'm really excited. Ben has been at Roivant for a long time. He first worked on clinical development under Larry Friedhoff, who's actually sitting right there, one of the first developers at Roivant and has since done a whole bunch of things, culminating in now the success of the Brepocitinib program in DM, and I'm excited for you all to hear directly from him. I just want to talk a little bit about brepo first, though.
So brepo is a bear of a drug. It's an amazing drug for us. It is a unique mechanism with dual inhibitor of JAK1 and dual inhibition of JAK1 and TYK2. We'll talk about that more in a second. We're focused on indications that benefit from both of those levels of activity. We have some great indications.
The NIU treatment paradigm is clearly wide open for new opportunities with uptake across different market segments, and that data is now, as I said, coming in the second half of this coming year, so pretty soon. There are no approved therapies in cutaneous sarcoidosis, an area that's been difficult for drug development and where we think the choice specifically of cutaneous sarcoidosis is going to benefit our drug and has some nice homology, as Ben will discuss with uveitis, among other things.
And then RDM data, I couldn't be more proud of this data, but RDM data gives us an opportunity to redefine the standard of care for DM patients where the current paradigm leaves patients poorly controlled, dissatisfied and frankly, uncomfortable and sick with a very high steroid burden. So that NDA filing is expected by early 2026, and we are actively preparing for a commercial launch. Ben will talk a little bit about some of those details. As a reminder that I think relatively few people in this room probably need. So the JAK/TYK signaling pathway is involved in signaling a whole bunch of cytokines in the inflammatory systems.
There are 4 human JAK isoforms, JAK1, JAK2, JAK3 and TYK2. And both individually and really pair-wise, they signal different cytokines. And so we're focusing on diseases that match the cytokines covered by the signature of our specific drug. JAK1 and JAK2 give us a lot of flexibility and area to run. From the JAK1 side, specifically, we get interferon gamma and IL-31. We get IL-2 and IL-21. We get strong inhibition of IL-6.
From both JAK1 and TYK2, we get interferon alpha and beta, IL-10 and IL-22 and the interferons in particular, are relevant to a lot of the diseases we're studying. And then from JAK2 and TYK2, from the TYK2 side alone, therefore, we get IL-12 and 23, which is also an important channel that many of you are very familiar with.
So we get pretty broad activity against an important group of targeted cytokines. And we are focused at indications that are at the intersection of our capabilities here. Mid-high tens of thousands of prevalence, both -- either JAK1 or TYK2 clinical proof of concept of some kind is important to us, high unmet need with few approved therapies, and they're biologically suited for dual inhibition. Obviously, our current indications, DM, NIU and cutaneous sarcoidosis, more to come, and we're actively working up some additional late-stage programs.
The other thing I'll say, which is easier for me to say because I'm the one on the stage is just to highlight, the Priovant team here has done an incredible job, and the successful execution there has set us up for success. The positive readout sets us up for the NDA filing. The enrollment of the CLARITY program sets us up for the fast top line data. By the way, we significantly overenrolled that study. We have 370 patients in that study, and it's still enrolled well ahead of schedule. That data is now coming in the second half of next year. And then the enrollment is completed in the proof-of-concept study for cutaneous sarcoidosis as well.
So with that, I'm going to invite Ben up on the stage. Thank you so much for doing this, Ben. I'm excited for you all to hear directly from him, and he's going to take you through each indication in turn, and then we'll do some Q&A after.
Thanks, Ben.
Great. Thanks.
Great to see everyone and to be with everyone online as well. With brepo over the last few months, we've obviously had a lot of focus on DM and the DM data, and I'm going to talk more about that a bit later. But I actually wanted to start with some of our other indications. We've made great progress, as Matt mentioned, over the last few months on both our NIU and cutaneous sarcoidosis trials. That data from both of those programs now is coming out next year. I imagine for many of you, that's not been necessarily a primary focus.
And so I just wanted to start by going through those 2 indications, providing a bit of background on the diseases, our studies looking ahead to the readout. So starting with NIU. This is an ocular inflammation occurs in many cases, idiopathically, but also frequently occurs in combination with a variety of different other autoimmune diseases.
Across all of these etiologies, the pathobiology though is consistent in terms of T cell infiltration into the eye. And there's multiple different anatomical regions within the eye impacted by NIU as well. The most common is to be only in the anterior chamber of the eye, and that's generally treatable by local therapy. But in many cases, patients also will have intermediate or posterior involvement or pan uveitis, which can include anterior inflammation, and that almost always requires some form of systemic therapy. You'll notice the prevalence numbers here have a pretty wide range, and that reflects different data sources. The academic literature, there's not that much academic literature on prevalence.
Most of it is around 10 to 15 years old, and that comes into the lower ends of these ranges here with intermediate posterior pan uveitis being in the high tens of thousands of patients. But we've actually been doing our own claims analysis, looking at more recent data, and that shows significant growth over the past decade and now looking at potentially just under 200,000 patients who have some involvement beyond anterior inflammation.
And I would, again, just since this may be a newer indication to many of you, I would note also that another feature with the claims data is that many patients may sometimes initially be diagnosed with anterior NIU, but then go on to be determined to actually have pan uveitis. So we see sometimes patients who may initially have an anterior NIU diagnosis who ultimately go on to get systemic therapy.
The unmet need here is very high, as you can think about with ocular inflammation and vision in a lot of autoimmune diseases, physicians and patients will sometimes have tolerance for low levels of inflammation, and it's really only moderate to severe disease that draws a sense of urgency in moving aggressively to advanced therapeutics. In NIU, that's not the case. Even small amounts of inflammation, if not controlled, can lead to significant vision loss and over time, if not adequately treated, can actually lead to blindness. NIU is one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States among the working age population. So really a quite devastating disease. And as you can see on the left hand of the slide here, that vision loss really can be driven by inflammation in all of the different segments of the eye, again, speaking to the importance when you move beyond just anterior inflammation of systemic therapy.
I also think as we think about this indication and think about potentially in the future having an approved oral therapy, I think the kind of market and prescription environment here is going to be different than thinking about an indication like AMD or a lot of other ophthalmic indications. I think starting with the left-hand side of the slide, there is in the United States and globally, a small group of uveitis specialists who are ophthalmologists, but are really pretty distinct profiles from your typical ophthalmologists.
Many are double board certified in internal medicine. Even those who are not will do at a minimum 1 year, often multiyear fellowship, focused on just treating these patients that obviously involves a lot of interdisciplinary work with rheumatology and otherwise. And there's a significant portion of the NIU population concentrated at these centers.
And these ophthalmologists are willing to move very quickly to systemic medications, treat very aggressively. Today, they're using not only a lot of Humira, which is the only approved therapy, but a lot of off-label therapies as well like Tocilizumab and others as well as off-label TNF inhibitors. And so we really see this as a group of prescribers that at launch with no behavioral change will be very eager and excited about a new approved therapy.
Then there's also many patients who are treated at your more classic community retina doctors -- and those physicians, as you would expect, are really focused just on local therapy. And when they see a new patient, we will start by doing several usually steroid injections in order to try to get it under control. But with non-anterior disease that most of the time does not work and systemic therapy is needed. And at that point, they will loop in a rheumatologist, and it's actually the rheumatologist who does all of the prescription of any systemic medication beyond sometimes oral steroids. And then the retina doctor and rheumatologists will partner where the retina doctor monitors the eye, the rheumatologist does all of the systemic prescriptions.
And in this case, the patients would generally follow a more conventional rheumatology ladder through systemic medication. I think -- important to note here, though, that none of these medications, as we'll get to in a minute, work that well. And so within this cohort, you see many patients ending up on TNF inhibitors and many patients going on to fail TNF inhibitors.
And so even just in a more focused way, looking at rheumatologists and their partnered retina doctors who are using TNF inhibitors today for NIU that provides an additional prescriber base at launch, I think would be very excited about potentially rapidly adopting a new oral therapy without any behavioral change needed. Obviously, over the longer term, if the medication is providing benefits to patients, I think there is opportunities for kind of more broad behavioral change as well. But I think we don't really need that to be successful. And certainly, at launch, that would not be our focus.
I would -- again, just to kind of build off of the point I was just making, there is a significant amount of use of systemic therapy for these patients today. This data here does not even include DMARDs, which are also used frequently along with oral steroids. This just shows more advanced therapies in terms of Humira, again, the only approved drug, other off-label TNF inhibitors, infliximab is used pretty frequently and then other off-label therapies. And you see this is an analysis that IQVIA did with us several years ago. And through 2022, nearly 50,000 patients with NIU on one of these therapies. So this is even just looking at the market on TNF inhibitors today, pretty significant market. And I think notably, the TNF inhibitors don't work that well. We've seen in the VISUAL-1 trial, which was the registrational trial for Humira, 50% of patients failed on Humira within the first 6 months.
And then in the open-label VISUAL-3 trial, again, over the course of 1 year, only around 50% of patients were able to achieve a quiet eye, which is a slightly different definition, but basically the same concept as treatment failure. And so you see both in the placebo-controlled setting, but even in the open-label setting over the course of a year, only around half of patients being well treated with Humira. And I think that's why you see from the last slide, significant uses of other TNF inhibitors as well as other off-label therapies because there really is this kind of zero tolerance for inflammation among these patients.
So then moving on to Brepocitinib. Very excited about the potential here. As I mentioned before, the disease is characterized by T cell infiltration into the eye. One of the great things about TYK2/JAK1 inhibition is in a pretty distinct way, we're able to address both Th1 and Th17-driven inflammation. And I think this is a nice slide, both for NIU, but I think it also just brings to light some of the points Matt was making about our indication selection overall in terms of how dual TYK2/JAK1 inhibition can be distinct from other medicines.
In terms of starting with Th1 inhibition, both interferon gamma and IL-12 play a major role in that. Only by addressing both TYK2 and JAK1, are you able to hit both of those cytokines? Same with IL-6 and IL-23 on the Th17 side. So I think the mechanistic rationale, not only for JAK inhibition in general, but for this particular mechanism is very well suited to the disease. And then we do have Phase II data here in the indication. This was data that came out in early 2024. Some of you may remember that, but I'll do a brief reminder. This was a study that did not have a placebo control, but did have 2 doses and was double blind within those 2 doses. And the structure of these NIU trials, this is how the Humira trials were done in this trial as well as our Phase III is given -- again, given kind of the zero tolerance for inflammation, all -- patients who are eligible for these trials need to be treated immediately. So across both the drug arm and the placebo arm, all patients get a 2-week 60-milligram per day steroid burst, and then that's rapidly tapered down to 0.
And then the clinical endpoint assessed is treatment failure, even with that taper, do you fail or not? Notably, in our taper -- or sorry, in our trial, the taper was 6 weeks, which is more rapid than previous trials conducted. And the data we saw, obviously, a small study. So we're excited to have the Phase III data coming out next year.
But certainly, for a small study, very encouraging data, both on its own and in the context of the VISUAL-1 trial, our protocol was modeled very closely on that VISUAL-1 trial, the registrational study for Humira. The main difference is their taper was 13 weeks, while ours was 6. So actually, our study was designed to make it harder or easier for patients to fail, harder for the drug to prevent treatment failure.
And patients in both arms did quite well, very clear dose response between brepo 45 milligrams and brepo 15 milligrams. So certainly sets us up potentially with data similar to this or even data that's not quite this good but still strong to be clearly the leading therapy in this indication if the Phase III goes well and the drug is approved.
I would also want to highlight some of the biomarkers that we looked at. These are very important to ophthalmologists treating these conditions. The gold standard biomarker for NIU and particularly for posterior segment inflammation is a wide field fluorescein angiography measuring vascular leakage in the retinal area. And you can see here improvement in a dose-dependent way between brepo 45 and brepo 15 milligrams and notably, improvement, particularly in the brepo 45-milligram arm that increases from week 24 to week 52.
And in the brepo 45 milligram arm, no patients worsening while in the brepo 15, several patients worsening and really a distribution more centered around the lack of change. So I think looking at this measurement, which ophthalmologists will tell you is not extremely noisy, even in a smaller study can carry a lot of meaning and you see the patient level data here, I think a pretty compelling story that gets us excited for the Phase III. And then the other biomarker I would highlight is central subfield thickness, CST.
Again, we saw improvement here in the 45-milligram arm, sustained out to a year without worsening even as the taper went on. This is an area where Humira is known to not provide a lot of benefit. And so again, we're excited to see what the Phase III shows here. And so that brings up the Phase III study. This is what we'll be reading out now in the second half of next year. So first, just to highlight that time line, that's about a year after the VALOR trial that recently read out. So if all goes well and the study is positive, we're looking at a potential approval and launch in NIU just a year after DM, give or take, obviously.
And so thinking about the early commercial launch, early revenue growth potential of the drug, early patient impact of the drug over the first few years, I think NIU is something that's very important to take into consideration along with DM. I would also note, Matt made this point before, but the enthusiasm from the physicians and patients was really very striking.
We enrolled this trial in 1 year while significantly over enrolling it. And over 50% of patients were enrolled in the United States. So I think, again, speaking to that enthusiasm there. The study is going to read out as 2 distinct substudies, CLARITY 1 and CLARITY 2.
So there are different sites, different patients in each of study. So we'll read out as 2 distinct parallel trials with identical protocols across the 2, very similar design to the Phase II NEPTUNE trial, again, with a 2-week steroid burst, 6-week taper and then the primary endpoint time to treatment failure. We'll also again be looking at some of the same biomarkers and patient-reported outcomes that we -- in the case of the biomarkers discussed for the NEPTUNE trial. So very excited about this readout coming out next year.
Next, I'll move on to cutaneous sarcoidosis, where, as Matt mentioned, and I'll walk through in a minute, we actually have a much smaller study, Phase II, but that we will be reading out quite soon in the first half of next year. A bit about this disease. First, just starting about the clinical manifestation of this. This is a skin disease with a particularly high urgency to treat. It's characterized not only by erythema, but also by scaling, ulceration in the case of bad scaling as well as in duration and depression.
And as a result of that, can pretty quickly lead to permanent skin damage as well as, in some cases, even damage to cartilage. So as compared to many cutaneous inflammatory conditions, very high urgency to treat, get the disease under control quickly. And then thinking about this market, obviously, I can't really think about cutaneous sarcoidosis without the broader context of sarcoidosis is an indication many of you may follow primarily in the context of pulmonary disease and pulmonary sarcoidosis, it's a multi-organ systemic condition.
Pulmonary disease obviously is the most common manifestation, but cutaneous disease, which we're studying here and ocular sarcoidosis, which is part of non-infectious uveitis are the next 2 most common organs impacted by sarcoid. And pulmonary disease has proven a pretty challenging area for drug development. Roivant itself, along with other -- many other biotech companies, including with some recent readouts have experienced that.
And so at the moment, there's no approved therapies. There's no therapies in Phase III. There are some Phase II trials ongoing in pulmonary disease. But I think it's going to be -- it has been and I think will likely continue to be a challenging place to bring new medicines to market. And so if we are successful in cutaneous sarcoidosis as well as ocular sarcoidosis, we would really be the only approved therapy for any form of sarcoid and with our 2 on-label indications covering a very meaningful portion of the overall patient population.
So I think thinking about kind of the synergies and overlap between NIU and sarcoid, I think something that's valuable to think about as we look ahead to a world where this drug is potentially approved for multiple of these indications. And that kind of relates to how we think about the cutaneous sarcoidosis population alone. There's around 40,000 cutaneous sarcoid patients in the United States.
So slightly -- still within that category of kind of large orphan indication Matt was talking about earlier, but certainly smaller than NIU and smaller for that matter than DM. But really, our view is all of these patients would be very strong candidates for therapy if the drug is approved. Just under 50% of them have minimal to no involvement of other organs. Not all patients with sarcoid have pulmonary involvement. And even many who do for not all of them, is it severe enough to really be driving treatment. Then for slightly over 50% of patients, there would be significant noncutaneous involvement. And there, the other organ systems certainly would play a bigger role than the skin.
Obviously, if you have really bad lung disease, that's going to take precedence over skin. Really bad eye disease will also take precedence over skin. Again, well, for really bad eye disease, that's where we have our NIU development program. And then again, I think within pulmonary disease, the unfortunate reality is that there is no approved therapies there. And I think at least for the near to medium term, there's not an obvious path to there being an approved therapy. So I think at least in the early part of launch, we would really see a lot of these patients being candidates for therapy with cutaneous disease alone.
So I think sarcoid obviously, is a complicated multifaceted indication, but we really see a significant opportunity here, both as a stand-alone indication as a nice add-on to NIU and DM. A lot of these prescribers in cutaneous sarcoidosis are academic, dermatology centers of excellence that have some overlap with DM, but then also really along with NIU as a nice beachhead into the sarcoidosis population overall and really thinking about Brepocitinib as a treatment for multiple organs within sarcoid.
So very quickly, just to wrap up this section, the study that we have, again, reading out reading out quite soon. This is a small proof-of-concept study. Obviously, we'll have to see what the data says before getting too excited about the indication. But this is a 3-arm study, Brepocitinib 45 milligrams, 15 milligrams in placebo, 31 patients randomized 3 to 2: 2, U.S. only a shorter 16-week trial, given it's a cutaneous endpoint, we would expect to be able to see improvement over that time frame. The primary endpoint is the CSAMI score. I'll walk through that quickly on the next slide and the mean change in baseline difference of Brepocitinib compared to placebo. CSAMI score, this is an assessment that's very similar to the other area and severity indices used in inflammatory dermatology like the CLASI, SASI, PASI, similarly breaks out into activity and damage. Our focus will be the activity score, which, again, as I was saying before in the opening, reflecting this disease measures not only erythema, but also in duration and surface change.
So we're excited to see the results of this trial, obviously, a small study. But I think if the results are compelling, this will be a really exciting additional indication to add on as we think about the brepo potential. Terrific. And then I'll wrap up now last but certainly not least with dermatomyositis. This is an area, obviously, we have a tremendous amount of excitement about. I think even if we were not doing anything with Brepocitinib other than dermatomyositis, this would be a really incredible opportunity to make a very important impact in the lives of tens of thousands of very sick individuals and also make a very valuable franchise around the drug in the process of doing that.
So excited to walk you through that. And one of the things that over the last few years has made me so excited about this disease -- or not about the disease, but about the potential to treat the disease and the indication is really spending a lot of time engaging both with clinicians who see these patients as well as patients themselves. And so I wanted to start by sharing a short video that we've put together with some patients talking about their story and experience with DM.
[Presentation]
I hope that was helpful for people to really try to bring to life a bit of what some of these patients are living with and dealing with on a daily basis. And obviously, that was an anecdotal set of 5 to 10 people. But I think what the stories and messages that you hear them delivering, we really see reflected in broader aggregate data around the disease. And I'll walk through some of that now, hopefully, with the context of kind of seeing the real human element of it to bring even more understanding.
I think the first thing is, as you saw several of the patients talk about, when patients are initially diagnosed, they are really loaded up with steroids. And this is something that we see in the data as well and claims data with average number of days on steroids in the first year of diagnosis of 128 and very notably, an average steroid dose of 18.6 milligrams per day. So an extraordinarily high steroid burden.
Over time, then, again, as was reflected in the video, patients end up on polypharmacy because there really is no actually approved efficacious treatment here other than IVIG, which has many limitations. And we -- again, see that reflected in claims data with nearly 2/3 of patients receiving 2 or more therapies a year on polypharmacy and over 1/3 of patients receiving 3 or more therapies. So primarily, these are high-dose steroids and immunosuppressants, but also IVIG and off-label therapies. And I think in spite of the fact that patients are getting all this polypharmacy, their steroid dependency and even their high-dose steroid dependency doesn't go away.
We see that among patients receiving ISTs, off-label biologics or IVIG across you're kind of looking at all patients, whatever the other set of drugs they're on. But if you're getting one of these, then you fit into that category, you can see that the vast majority of these patients still require steroids for a significant portion of the year. And a vast majority of those are getting high -- very high dose steroids of 10 milligrams per day or more for a significant portion of the year.
So really a very high steroid burden for these patients in combination with the polypharmacy of these other medicines. It will be one thing if these drugs were working, but they're really not. There's continued need in terms of significant symptom burden for patients. There's a significant amount of data on this. I'll cite some various statistics different patient advocacy group surveys, different cohort studies conducted at various centers and other research data, but around 2/3 of patients are dissatisfied with current treatments and say they're only partially controlled.
Notably, again, you heard some of the patients talk about this in the video, the 60% discontinue therapy due to either side effects or lack of efficacy or both. And really, they're kind of living -- DM is a disease where the severity of it, there's always some level of inflammation and burden, but it does ebb and flow in terms of how acute it is, and that leads to this kind of perpetual fear about worsening of disease where even if at any one given moment, the level of disease burden is moderate rather than severe, the patients live in this constant fear of getting worse. And that fear is reflected in the reality of their experiences. Around 3/4 of patients report experiencing a flare in a given year.
Many of those flares end up resulting in hospitalization. And pain, as you heard some of the patients talk about, is a really prominent feature of this disease. And actually, we see both in our own claims analyses as well as multiple different sources in the published literature that opioid use is quite significant among DM patients, again, reflecting the amount of medication and really toxic medication that is needed to get patients to even a medium level of control where they're at a minimum, not ending up in the hospital.
And although with the kind of heavy treatment regimens they're on, patients are able to stay out of the hospital and sort of have the worst aspects of flares treated, the overall daily living activity burden on these patients is very significant. From the muscle disease here, you see in patient advocacy surveys, 2/3 of patients unable to climb a flight of stairs, 35% of them requiring use of mobility aids.
So the muscle disease, very debilitating for daily living activities. And the skin disease, extremely bad as well, often covers large portions of the body, can lead to alopecia and hair loss, extremely itchy, extremely debilitating in terms of daily activities. DM is incredibly photosensitive. Patients really can't go outside almost at all unless they're like completely covered from head to toe.
The patients report really bad psychosocial burdens and emotional burdens of skin disease in terms of social life, physical intimacy is heavily limited. And so really significant burden from the skin disease along with the muscle disease. And we see this notably even in specialized myositis centers. This is a publication that came out of Stanford, which is really one of the top 3 or 4 dermatology centers of excellence in the world for DM.
And even there, they were very open about the fact that only around 15% of their patients in the course of the year were able to get to clinical remission. And that's even while those patients, again, heavily treated both with steroids, but also reasonable percentages with IVIG and then significant portions with DMARDs. And with all of these medications and particularly steroids, they carry significant adverse health effects of their own. There's large numbers of comorbidities associated with dermatomyositis, including heart disease and malignancy.
And some of this relates to the disease itself. DM is a -- it actually starts with inflammation of the vasculature in the skin and muscles and that can impact other organs as well, including the lungs. But also a significant portion of this adverse event burden comes from the chronic high-dose steroid use, and we see that documented in a large number of studies. And notably, as we think about the different adverse events that matter a lot to DM patients and kind of look across published literature of different categories of drugs. We have here steroids, JAK inhibitors as well as the DMARDs.
And you see steroids really across these at the upper end and in some cases, real outliers with several multiples more incidence rate than we see from these other categories of drugs. And then we also see the DMARDs across most of these in line with or even with greater incidence of these events than we have with JAK inhibitors. So thinking about the set of comorbidities as well, we have to think about that not only in the context of the of the disease itself, but also the heavy treatment regimens that these patients are on, including steroids.
And we think some of this is actually reflected in the VALOR data, which I'll walk through in a minute. So I think just to summarize this before I get to the VALOR data, there's a very significant unmet need here. These patients are very sick. They're heavily treated with polypharmacy, including high-dose steroids. They're not happy with that, constantly changing treatment options, continuing to experience flares in pain, significant daily living activity burden and quality of life burden. And then on top of all of that, you have the side effects of their existing medications, particularly steroids.
So I think a real opportunity here for a new medicine that can deliver rapid and sustained efficacy benefit to these patients while also bringing them down in significant ways off of their steroid burden. And the VALOR trial resulted in data that we think sets Brepocitinib up potentially to have a product profile that can really do those things that patients need. I won't spend a ton of time going through the data. Obviously, happy to talk about it in the Q&A, but we've presented on this, I think, a few times now. So don't need to over repeat ourselves. But again, I would just remind a few key things about the study.
This is a 52-week placebo-controlled study. The trial was the first ever 52-week placebo-controlled trial in DM to read out positively. And this also was a DM-only trial. Many of the myositis trials that have been conducted in the past or ongoing are pooled across multiple inflammatory myopathies. Our view, which I think is a consensus view, it's just a fact is that the pathobiology of these inflammatory myopathies are not identical.
There are important differences, and we really wanted to focus our program on where there's the tightest alignment with the TYK2/JAK1 mechanism of action and also deliver a data set that's maximally impactful for patients and physicians that is kind of directly relevant to the patients who we want to be using the drug. So the baseline data, I've been through this before. The main thing I would highlight again here is this is a real-world population, mild, moderate and severe patients included.
And then looking at these medications at baseline, we did not -- your patients had to have tried and failed one prior DM therapy, but they did not have to be on any background therapy and some of them were not on any background therapy at baseline. But just reflecting the real-world reality of these patients, you see heavy use of background therapies, 80% of patients on 2 or more DM medications. And for about 3/4 of them, corticosteroids was one of those with a mean dose of around 11 to 12 milligrams per day.
So very heavily treated with background medications. I would also highlight these 2 lines at the bottom, again, reflecting the real-world nature of the population, around 1/4 of patients having previously tried and failed IVIG. And also, I would note that this was not a study where we were overly exclusionary in terms of patients at risk of comorbidities.
We really wanted to include real-world risk of -- a real-world patient population, which includes patients who have issues and challenges beyond just skin and muscle disease. This is true in terms of cardiovascular risk factors. Significant numbers of patients in the trial with diabetes, obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia. As you saw from the videos that those things are frequently side effects of steroids.
And we saw that on the previous slide as well. And then I would highlight here that around 15% of patients came in with a prior line -- had experienced a prior benign or malignant neoplasm. So obviously, patients with active malignancy were excluded from the trial, but patients who had experienced that in the past or may have had some risk for that were allowed in because that's reflective of who DM patients are in the real world.
And the data -- we've been through this before, but we were really excited by this. We found out that we'd hit -- we've got primary endpoint, 9 ranked key secondary endpoints in the SAP and what I found out that we hit on all of them. I was kind of blown away in a positive way, obviously.
And I think this is reflective of both the statistical robustness of the data, but also one of the reasons we ranked so many endpoints in the hierarchy is this is a -- the clinical manifestations of this are heterogeneous you have patients where the muscle disease is worse, you have patients where the skin disease is worse, you have patients where the steroid burden is the thing that is bothering them the most. And I think we really wanted to assess the totality of these factors that impact disease burden. And by hitting on all of these endpoints, we're really able to show benefit across skin disease, muscle disease, rapidity of onset, steroid sparing, I think really a very exciting and compelling data set.
In terms of the primary endpoint, myositis total improvement score, again, I think most of you are familiar with this, but statistically significant improvement from brepo 45 compared to placebo as early as week 4, sustained at every single visit out to week 52. Dose response, I think, lending to the statistical robustness and meaningfulness of this data while also clearly establishing 30 milligrams once daily as the appropriate approval dose for this indication and then achieving all of that while significantly bringing patients off of steroids, simultaneous clinical improvement with reduction of steroid burden, I think, is one of the things I'm most excited about with this data set.
As I mentioned before, around 3/4 of patients on background steroids and brepo 30 mean dose of over 12 milligrams per day at baseline and nearly 2/3 of those patients got to a minimal steroid burden by the end of the trial and over 40% came off steroids altogether, and those numbers were about twice the levels of reduction that we saw in placebo. So -- so very excited about that.
Looking at the TIS response thresholds, 40-point improvement moderate, 60-point improvement major, again, very encouraging data, just looking at the fact that over 2/3 of patients in the trial on brepo 30 milligrams experienced moderate meaningful improvement and nearly half experienced major improvement. And then when we look at the intersection of that endpoint with minimal to no steroid burden, we see still quite high levels of response within the brepo 30-milligram arm and even higher placebo-adjusted differences as you would expect.
And the safety data, obviously, something we were also very attuned to and focused on looking ahead to the readout. And I think also very encouraging data. SAEs were elevated in brepo 30 milligrams compared to placebo. That was driven primarily by serious infections, most of which resolved and the patients were able to resume drug. And indeed, you see that AEs leading to permanent treatment discontinuation were actually higher in the placebo arm than the brepo 30-milligram arm. And then of very high notable interest to us was the adverse events of special interest we looked at.
And again, here, we saw no increase in brepo 30 milligrams compared to placebo across these categories of AESIs, including cardiovascular events, thromboembolic events, and malignancy. In fact, the only 2 malignancies in the trial occurred in the placebo arm. And again, just to echo the point I brought up before, this data occurred against the backdrop of enrolling a patient population that had risk of these events. Of course, one of the many factors that can lead to risk of these events is high steroid burden.
And so the placebo arm here is heavily treated with steroids and DMARDs. So I think helpful to understand the safety data in that context. And again, I think that's the context in which we will be bringing the drug to market in the real world in DM patients. So obviously, the VALOR data happened. We're excited about it, but now onwards and upwards and the top priority at Priovant, as you can imagine, is getting the NDA in. We've been working on that 7 days a week, many hours per day. I think we've been making really great progress on that.
And as mentioned -- Matt mentioned, we feel good about a filing, hopefully in the quite near term in early 2026. And then also really laying the groundwork for a successful commercial launch. I think we have the benefit here of having been working in this space for a number of years, working with patients, working with the patient groups and working with the physician groups who treat these patients.
And actually, even by the time of the VALOR readout, in our view, there's a little over 100 kind of key DM centers of excellence in the U.S. and we had a relationship with at least one key physician at each of those centers. Many of them were sites in the VALOR trial, which is how we built that, but many were not. And it was just a function of having been out in the medical community here at medical meetings, just being really actively engaged in this community to build those relationships.
And now since the VALOR data, we already have a quite large field medical team in place working full time on DM-related scientific engagement with the medical community that's allowed us to significantly deepen our relationships within those key centers of excellence.
Obviously, at many of these centers, you have 5, 10, 15, 20 relevant physicians across multiple specialties and then also going out to more of the community doctors, community rheumatologists in particular, many DM patients are treated at community rheumatologists, not just the centers of excellence, and we've made great progress already over the last few months at deepening our relationships there. Same goes with the patient community. We have close relationships with the patient advocacy groups who are great collaborators of ours. They're very enthusiastic about new therapies for this condition and the need for that. And we also have a disease education website, dermatomyositis.com.
This includes videos from patients, physicians and caregivers. And we have several thousand patients and caregivers who have signed up and subscribed to this website and have a lot of great engagement there as well as on associated social media platforms. So I think really working on building direct channels of engagement with these patients and raising awareness about the disease.
There's actually remarkably little I found about DM online and part of I think reason patients have been excited about this is we actually have a lot of great content on this website, including not related to Brepocitinib at all that I think people have found quite valuable and actually meets its own real unmet need in the community. And then finally, laying the groundwork for the operationalization of the launch in real ways, all of the things needed to do to get ready for a launch, really kind of adopting a strategy and approach here that I think is consistent with other successful launches in analogous indications over the last few years.
We'll be using a limited distribution network of specialty pharmacies and supporting that with in-house Priovant hub and significant progress has been made around the selection of our partners there as well as the operational build-out of the hub. So really excited about all the progress we've made there, really excited to hopefully get the drug approved as soon as possible and have a successful launch. So yes, with that, I'll wrap up. This is the time line chart. I think we've been through all of this already. And key points, DM, NIU, and cutaneous sarcoid, we're excited about all 3 and think all 3 have great potential. Thanks so much.
Good morning. I'm Richard Pulik. I'll be moderating -- up on stage, Frank Torti also joined us who is the Vant Chair. So I'll be taking Q&A from the room and also from the webcast. And I know that some people were asking for the WiFi. It's -- there's no passcode needed and the WiFi is [indiscernible]. First question, Corinne. Actually, could you bring the mic down here, please? And can you introduce yourself?
2. Question Answer
Corinne Johnson, Goldman Sachs. Maybe on NIU, you mentioned that 50% of these patients have comorbid autoimmune disease. So what portion of the patients are kind of already on background JAK inhibitors? How are they treated in the trial? And what can we learn from their patient outcomes as you think about the mechanism of action?
Thanks, Corinne. Great question. Ben, do you want to take that?
Yes. Yes. I mean in terms of background for the trial, like patients on kind of other advanced therapies were needed to wash out of those prior to enrollment in the trial. Obviously, anyone who enrolled in this trial, whatever therapies they were on were not working for their NIU because they were experiencing active disease. I think JAK inhibitors are not used off-label for NIU as much as they are for DM candidly.
There was the Phase II study of filgotinib that showed pretty strong data, not as strong data as our Phase II study, but I think there's very kind of strong evidence around JAK inhibitors in DM -- or sorry, in NIU in general. But I think it has not been actively used off-label as much. In terms of patients with the comorbidities, I do think for patients with bad eye disease, it is unlike something like cutaneous sarcoidosis where the other organs would take precedence over cutaneous disease if they're really bad, patients who are experiencing active NIU, I mean, they're at risk of going blind.
And so that really does tend to be what dominates the treatment of the disease. But certainly, whatever therapies they've been on for these other indications have not been working to control the NIU -- from what we've seen in the claims data, it's a lot of TNF inhibitors that the patients are on with NIU, including patients with comorbidities.
Next question, David Risinger, up there in the back, please.
Dave Risinger from Leerink Partners. So my question is on the brepo launch in DM. Could you just talk a little bit about like the prevalence of patients, what percentage are in the different buckets of disease, including severe disease? And could you talk about transitioning patients off of IVIG or other therapies? How quickly you think you can start to convert patients, which will obviously play a big role in the ramp upon launch?
Thanks, Dave. Great question. That just reminded me of one comment I intended to make earlier, which is we've said the NDA is going to go in by early '26. We're actually -- we're probably not going to comment on the actual filing of the NDA. So the next you'll hear from us about that is when it's been accepted, and we have a PDUFA date. On the commercial launch and segmentation, look, I think it's a good question. I think it's a little bit hard to -- I think our belief is that almost every DM patient is eligible for therapy and that a lot of them are quite sick on high steroid burden. So it's a little bit hard to sort of talk about how deep in.
And indeed, when you talk to DM physicians as many sell-side analysts have done, you get an answer that a very large percentage of patients would be on therapy. So I think we view a lot of eligible patients. And frankly, I think IVIG switches is a relatively small piece of the overall market just because IVIG is not that widely used in DM now. It's only about 13% of the patients are on IVIG. So I think we have a lot of flex. Ben, anything else you'd say about the breadth of the landscape there?
No. I mean I think in terms of the prevalence, I think the latest data that we've seen ourselves and that others have been seeing as well is high tens of thousands of patients, like 70,000 or more with DM in the United States. I think there's still a real underdiagnosis of the disease as well. You heard some of the patients talking about that in terms of -- I think there's a lot of patients who get diagnosed with lupus who actually have DM. And I think as more therapies get approved, as we've seen in other diseases, I think that will become reflected in the prevalence I think in terms of mild, moderate and severe, a very significant portion of those are in the moderate to severe category, but also even those in the mild -- who may be mild in the sense that rating their skin and muscle disease at a given moment in time, they show up as mild. That is because they're receiving high-dose steroids, like their level of muscle inflammation and muscle impairment at one moment in time may be rated as mild because they're on 15 milligrams a day of steroids.
And that carries with it its own whole separate set of problems. So I think I would just kind of echo what Matt said in our view, obviously, it will be a patient-by-patient, physician-by-physician determination. But in terms of what is kind of the eligible population who should at least be considered for therapy, we would really see it as the full DM market.
Next question, Yaron.
Yaron Werber from TD Cowen. Really a great session. I have 3 quick questions. Maybe the first one for DM, is there any chance to get priority review when you file? I believe you have an orphan designation. So hopefully, you can get a priority review. And then for the CLARITY study, you don't technically need to be refractory to previous drug, right? You just need to be active disease. So is there a chance that you can have frontline patients and can you get a broad label? And then I have a quick follow-up on Clarity. Is there any chance you can share what's the powering in the study?
Thanks, Yaron. All good questions. On the first one, I'll take it, and I'll say, yes, there is a chance we'll get priority review. Look, obviously, we won't know until we have the conversation with FDA. On the 2 questions on CLARITY, Ben, do you want to take those 2?
Yes. So the first is it includes -- obviously, all patients enrolling in the trial are getting steroids as part of that initial steroid burst, but wide variety of patients coming into the trial, including a meaningful number who have tried and failed TNF inhibitors, but also a meaningful number who have not.
That's not a requirement for entry into the trial. And we have a significant number of patients in both of those categories. I think as far as the powering goes, it's highly powered to detect with the Kaplan-Meier curve, curve endpoints, those are actually pretty robust statistically, we overenrolled the trial, the VISUAL-1 trial. With over enrolling the trial, each of our 2 substudies is around the same size as each of the VISUAL programs. And so we feel very good that any meaningful difference could be detected.
Brian Cheng, next question, please, right there.
This is Brian Cheng from JPMorgan. Just thinking about the groundwork that we need to do here for cutaneous sarcoid here, given the heterogeneity of the disease phenotype, which of the activity or morphology item do you think will see the most impact just given the JAK1, TYK2 MOA here in the BEACON study. Is the trial powered to show stat sig on primary? And can you give us a sense of what we should expect on the placebo arm?
Those are all each individually difficult questions to answer. But thank you. They're good questions. Look, I think I want to be clear this is a proof of concept. It's a signal finding study in an indication where there's some validation from open-label studies of JAK inhibitors, but we're trying to learn here in order to design a Phase III program. So look, I think we're going to pay a lot of attention to the data and look for signal on a variety of different aspects. And I don't know that necessarily finding stat sig is the main goal of the study, but I think we're excited to see what we find.
Yes. I would agree with that. I think, yes, it's a proof-of-concept study. One of the reasons we're doing it is to kind of get a sense of where we see the benefit across those. There's not been -- Matt kind of talked about creative development, pioneering new indications. This is one where there's really not been a lot of studies done of any therapy in cutaneous sarcoidosis. So we're excited to see the result, but it's an exploratory Phase II. And then on the back of that, we'll have a lot more insights for the Phase III.
Let me just -- maybe just hand it to Frank for a second. Just look, sarcoidosis is obviously an area we've had some history and maybe a little bit of the thinking that went into cutaneous and some of the overlap with NIU and what we learned from the pulmonary program.
Yes. I mean I think there's a lot that can be taken from what we did previously in sarcoidosis and thinking about how maybe you expand over time into broader kind of reaches of sarcoidosis and get beyond cutaneous, I think we're going to look for those signals in this study and kind of -- I think our ambitions for this study, if it's really positive, are both to go fast on this study and to kind of look more broadly into sarcoidosis. Now that's all data dependent. But I think there's a real opportunity to go on both think faster and more expansively on the back of this data set.
Next question, [ Umer. ]
Two, if I may. First, as it relates to the data set and congrats on the data, obviously. But when I look at the 31 versus 46, the primary endpoint in VALOR. I'm not necessarily blown away. But I look at your responder data, and it looks very intriguing. So could you speak to clinician feedback on the responder data at the higher threshold in VALOR? And I ask because it has direct implications for your price, especially considering -- which is the other part of my question, if GSK hits their study in polymyositis and dermatomyositis with a molecule, which is in the market for a very, very low price point, how does that change the commercial reality of your gross to net and the pricing integrity '27 onwards?
Yes. Look, thanks. Those are both good questions. On the primary, I guess the one thing I'll say, and Ben talked a lot in his presentation about steroid taper and steroid burden for these patients.
And I think the data have to be looked at in totality.
I think one thing that was sort of interesting to us when we first saw the data is that we had spent so much time thinking about the steroid taper as kind of a risk mitigant on separation between the arms that we probably didn't give enough forethought into just how impactful the steroid taper would be as effectively an additional sign of clinical benefit.
And so I think -- and Ben can talk about the direct experience with the doc. But I think in general, the doc looks at this data and is, in fact, blown away by the performance on the primary, in part just because, to be honest, it's -- I mean, again, there's so many failed studies in this area that it's just -- it's a big benefit. But then also they look at it in conjunction with the ability to deliver a very significant reduction in steroid burden at the same time.
And I think that's a real driver. So I think that -- that plus the very good performance on the responder rates, the speed of action as well. For example, efgartigimod had a study that in Phase II took, I think it was about 100 days or a little more than 120 days to reach -- was a moderate response on average, and we took, I think, half that basically. And so I think both speed, magnitude in conjunction with steroid burden, all really important endpoints for us. On the commercial side, look, I think it's hard to comment right now, both on price point and on the evolution of price point over time. We believe we have a pretty healthy lead here as a first-to-market option.
Obviously, if FcRns enter, they will be at a still higher price point probably. So look, and IVIG is expensive in the indication. So I think there's good precedent depending on what other later market entrants show. And obviously, this anifrolumab study, for example, the market will evolve over time, but we get to paint that picture first and early as argenx, for example, did in MG. And I think that's going to give us a strong initial position. Anything you would add?
I would just add on the first question, I'd encourage anyone to talk to as many DM doctors and hear from them directly, their feedback, my conversations with them and ours has been extraordinarily receptive and enthusiastic. It's important to, again, contextualize this in the context of DM drug development and what the TIS is.
The TIS is a composite endpoint that is somewhat noisy at the patient level to be able to get that clean result on it hitting with such a low p-value at all and meaningful difference is I think, speaks to the fact only a drug that's delivering a lot of benefit to patients could do that. There's never been any other trial to show any improvement on TIS compared to placebo at 52 weeks.
So I think -- and then the responder data, as you point out, is quite impactful and is, in some ways, really a more -- in terms of clinical meaningfulness, a more kind of interpretable result because it's like, okay, what percent of patients achieved moderate or significant improvement.
So I feel that even before getting to Matt's point about the steroids, which I couldn't agree with more, I wouldn't minimize the level of clinical improvement that we're seeing amongst these patients in terms of their core myositis symptoms. And then you add on top of that, the steroid reduction data, I think it's really a very exciting data set, and that's certainly been all of the feedback that I've received.
Yes. And just to add to that, I think, look, it's an extraordinarily limited set of competitive options right now. And I think that has a lot of homology with things that we like broadly. If you think about -- we'll talk about Graves later in the day, another place where there's really limited innovation, really limited success.
And I think if you think about commercial launches that have really worked well, launching into old generic competition with very limited efficacy really sets you up well in the physician community because they're really hungry for that next new thing or really the first new thing they've seen in a long time. We really hear that echoed a lot in the physician community of doctors we've spoken to about this data and more broadly.
I'm going to have to cut it off here. We're going to -- we have plenty of opportunities for further questions, but we'll have a quick break and come back at 9:30 for those on the web.
Thanks, everybody. We'll see in 5 minutes.
[Break]
Maybe -- there we go. We're going to get started again try and keep things as close to on schedule as we can. So thank you, everybody. So we're going to move on now to the next section here, which will be -- first, we'll talk about our FcRn program, especially IMVT-1402, where Eric Venker will lead the presentation, and then we actually have a great presentation from a physician in the field as a part of that.
And then we'll talk about mosliciguat just after. So I want to start with just a little bit on IMVT-1402 to set the stage. I know most of you are familiar broadly with this program. But look, first of all, we obviously love FcRn as a field.
It's an important field. We think it's evolving quickly in important ways. We think we have the best drug in the field. 1402 delivers deep dose-dependent reductions in IgG. We think we get to about 80% in terms of IgG reduction, which is as deep or deeper than any of our competitors go.
There's significant evidence that we've generated across studies that deeper IgG reductions are associated with better efficacy. There's now been 8 different indications in which that relationship has been shown. It also just makes good intuitive sense. We see an absolutely huge opportunity in Graves' disease. We have pioneered that indication.
We think it's an enormous step forward for those patients. We sort of got there initially by way of studies in thyroid eye disease, but now we are all in and very focused specifically on Graves and what we can do there. We have generated disease-modifying data in our proof-of-concept study, and we expect registrational data in 2 different studies in 2027 with a multiyear lead, and we think we'll have best-in-class efficacy.
We'll talk a lot about that with Eric and with [ Dr. Lupo. ] 1402 will be first and we think best-in-class in Graves, has potential to be first and best-in-class in difficult-to-treat late-line rheumatoid arthritis. We'll talk more about that study. It's now moving a little faster than expected.
And in CLE. We think we have an opportunity for a best-in-class drug in the established FcRn indications, MG and CIDP as well as in Sjogren's. And the top line, as I said, for the difficult to treat RA study is now expected in 2026. So that will be great.
Look, FcRn antibodies are killing it as a field, as I said, there's now $7 billion in cumulative revenue in MG and CIDP within the first 4 years of launch. So we're excited just to be a part of that field in general as well.
So we think we have a best-in-class drug. Obviously, the main sort of leg of that stool at the top of the pyramid is we think we have the potential for best-in-class efficacy. We think deep IgG suppression will win the day in terms of clinical benefit across a range of indications. We also have great administration. We have a simple low-volume subcutaneous auto-injector. That is the format that is being tested in our clinical trials. So we feel great about that, and it sets us apart as well. And then finally, FcRn is one of the maybe unsung great facts about the FcRn class is how easy it's been for physicians to use.
The safety has consistently been clean. These patients are really benefiting. They've been easy for docs to write. And so we have a safety profile with 1402 that we think is commensurate with the other great drugs in the class.
I know that not everybody agrees with the headline here, but we believe the deeper is better debate has largely been settled at this point that deeper IgG suppression yields better clinical benefit. We've shown that in our own data in 3 separate studies at this point.
In our Graves Phase IIa study, in each case, we've cut the data based on less than 70% or greater than 70% IgG reduction. One thing to note, we think the vast majority of patients on our drug will be over 70% from an IgG suppression perspective, whereas our competitors' average IgG suppression in many trials is in the, call it, mid-60s.
So in the Graves study, we showed over 60% of these patients were off any thyroid drugs as responders compared with just over 20% in the below 70% population. In myasthenia gravis, we looked here at minimum symptom expression, which is sort of like a measure of disease remission in MG.
Over half of our patients with the deeper IgG suppression had this minimal symptom expression endpoint hit, whereas only 30% in the lower -- and again, sort of double the number -- double the percentage of responders in the CIDP Phase IIb study at the deeper IgG suppression versus at the lower level. So again, this data we've shown before. We're not going to hit the point too hard today, but we do feel like we will continue to be able to outperform from an efficacy perspective, given the depth of IgG suppression we deliver.
1402 is well underway from a development perspective with 8 potentially registrational data sets coming in the next 30 -- sorry, with 5 potentially registrational data sets coming in the next 36 months.
Obviously, first-in-class and best-in-class indications, Graves, RA and CLE. Graves is the elephant in the room there, and we'll be talking a lot about it today. In Sjogren's, we think we have a potential for a best-in-class program that will be neck and neck, maybe within a year of the other programs from an FcRn perspective in Sjogren's in a rapidly evolving field that we think has high unmet need. And then obviously, in CIDP and MG, well-established FcRn classes. We're playing from behind from a timing perspective, but we think there's real upside there from our clinical profile.
A wide variety of risk and commercial potential across these indications, ranging from something like MG, which is extremely well validated for the class, extremely well validated for our programs, but a more competitive indication, something like Graves, where we've actually generated Phase II data, which is highly derisking, big commercial opportunity, all the way to the other side of the spectrum where we've got indications like D2T RA and CLE, not yet heavily validated for the class, potentially big opportunities, especially in late-line RA, where there's a huge amount of patient demand that we're seeing come out of the woodworks if we can deliver a clinical benefit to that recalcitrant patient population.
And we like having a diversity of risk and opportunity across the portfolio, and we're continuing to evaluate opportunities in different parts of this spectrum. This is just the beginning for the FcRn class.
We are not the only company to put up a slide like this. There's a lot of other companies out there working in the field or -- there's a handful of other companies out there working in the field. But really, we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of this biology. We are sort of through a set of indications where there's FcRn proof of concept and in development in a bunch of indications where people are either ourselves or others are working.
But there's also a ton of opportunity in FcRn land kind of beyond the existing indications. And you can imagine we are spending a lot of time and effort continuing to evaluate where we think the field is going and figure out places where we can play, where we continue to expand upon the profile of what we've done.
It's also just true in terms of the metrics of what's happened over the last handful of years here. We've gone from in 2020, a handful of indications across about 700,000 addressable patients in development now to millions of addressable patients, 20-plus indications in development and obviously, just a lot of commercial validation for the class behind us.
There are other classes that have followed a similar trajectory. These are not chosen at random. But look, obviously, both the TNF class and the JAK class were broad biology, lots of applicable places to go, both classes that were early pioneered with molecules that were subsequently succeeded by better kind of best-in-class molecules.
And we just want to point out both the way these markets have evolved in terms of the number of therapies approved, but also the role that the best-in-class molecule ultimately played over time in each of these markets was significant, and it wasn't about who came first. It was about who delivered the best drug and the best profile.
And over time, that's what carried the day. And we hope we have an opportunity to do something similar in the FcRn space. 1402 alone is now looking at markets with over 600,000 patients. Obviously, that starts with MG and CIDP, which are well established. Graves disease is an almost unfathomably large patient population for a mechanism of this kind, but also excited about late-line RA, excited about Sjogren's, excited about CLE.
It adds up to a lot of addressable patients, which obviously, at the price points that people are talking about for FcRns or using for FcRns is a really big opportunity. So I'm going to end my intro kind of overview there and hand it over. I'm going to introduce Eric Venker. Eric has been at Roivant for a long time, was previously President and COO of Roivant and is now President of Roivant and CEO of Immunovant is leading these programs since April. He is going to take us through some of the near-term opportunities, and then we'll get into a longer discussion on Graves. So with that, Eric, thank you very much. take it away.
Great. As Matt said, yes, I've been at Roivant for a long time, almost 10 years, and I've moved into the Immunovant CEO role just 8 months ago earlier this year. And yes, my first focus -- really the first 6 months, I think we're there now, I can say with confidence, but was just getting the clinical execution trains on the tracks. This is an enormous amount of clinical activity for a company of Immunovant's size to have this many studies start in parallel, at the same time, we had not asked this team to do this much in parallel.
There are very few biotechs of this size doing this much work in parallel. So that's been my sort of maniacal focus. And I think the first thing on this slide here on the left-hand side demonstrates how that has been effective and that we're able to bring forward that difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis top line data set from 2027 forward several quarters into 2026. I want to make a little note about that fact, I think, which is a testament to the Roivant model as we've been doing it for several years. It offers us pretty outstanding advantage to be able to divide and conquer and have excellent people spend the right amount of time on the right things.
As an example here, there are not many CEOs of public $4 billion companies that do not spend a lot of time with investors. I spend 0 time with investors, and I work a lot. That means that I can spend all my time working on this stuff and driving these programs forward. By having Matt able to take the brunt of that work for Immunovant it's just an incredibly successful execution model that has worked for us. So I'll walk through these 3 first here. We'll talk about rheumatoid arthritis. We'll talk about CLE, and we'll talk about Graves.
I'll hand it over to Dr. Lupo, who is a longtime Immunovant adviser, a thought leader in Graves, has a large practice here in Florida. We'll then do a fireside chat with Frank, who's the Chair of our Board of Immunovant with Dr. Lupo, and then I'll come back on to talk through kind of how I think about the commercial positioning for Graves' disease in more detail before we round out the rest of the portfolio. So this is a slide template you'll see for every indication that I talk about today to orient you. We're going to talk about the kind of the target patient population we think we're going after that we think 1402 is going to be a great option for.
We'll talk about the rationale and all of these are smartly designed and indication strategy revolves around the likelihood of something working with 1402, and that is principally that it's autoantibody driven, usually with IgG subtype being predominant. And then as Matt said, we always have the angle of deeper is better, and we think efficacy, we can win basically everywhere. And where we're first, we're going to be first and best. So for RA, I think the thing to think about here that's important is lots of drugs approved for RA, still a meaningful unmet need out there for late-line patients.
When we say refractory, to therapies. What we mean and what we've studied in our Phase II proof-of-concept study here is patients that are fourth or fifth line. So they've had multiple exposures to TNF, JAK, a typical earlier DMARD, so very late line. This is actually different.
I think it's an important distinction. You will -- we're going to have this data set out next year, so you're going to look for it. And you'll look at the nipocalimab data from J&J that came out, that was an earlier line patient population where only 25% of the people in that study were fourth line or later. So that's in contrast to 100% of the patients in our study will be fourth line or later. So I think our bar, which we'll do work to understand what we think good looks like, but almost any clinical benefit is going to be meaningful to these patients.
And as Matt said, when you think about 70,000 patients as the group of people that need this medicine that are excited about a medicine like this, that can enroll in a trial at varying speeds depending on a lot of factors like how many other trials are ongoing with competitive agents, et cetera. But the pace at which this enrolled is a testament to the execution for sure. I don't want to step away from that, but it's also a testament to the unmet need and the patient demand and physician demand for this to pull a study of this size forward that much demonstrates just how much people need another option after they've been on so many agents.
This is a classic autoantibody disease. The ACPA is an IgG positive antibody. We're enriching our study for that. You have to have an IgG-positive ACPA serotype to get into our study has to be elevated well above the upper limit of normal. So I think we're enriching for a group of patients that will respond there. As we think about the patient group build in a little more detail, RA is a big disease.
There's 500,000 people in the U.S. who have severe RA, even more, over 1 million who have RA generally. But if you, again, circle that Venn diagram down a little bit more narrow and say, who has positive autoantibodies, which is a likely responder for a therapy and who has been refractory to treatments, that number gets down to a tighter 70,000, which is kind of a sweet spot for us in terms of market size. Moving over to CLE. So CLE is a little bit different. And as Matt said, I think this has got risk attached to it without a whole lot of proof-of-concept data in mechanism. Not none know.
We ourselves have demonstrated in an open-label CLE study with 1402 that clinical response has been seen in patients after 12 weeks of dosing. But this is another classic autoantibody disease. It's got a nice population base, about 150,000 people total. Half of those people do pretty well on the topicals and antimalarials that have been approved like 50 years ago. But that leaves half of the patient population that needs something new. And our agent, I think, is well positioned to deliver that.
Again, it's an IgG autoantibody-driven disease. So it should tee up well. This is a patient build similar to what you saw for RA. It leaves us with about 75,000 people who need a medicine who need a second-line agent that can work for them. And this -- with the dermatologists who treat this kind of the profile that they tell you they want to see in a product actually lines up really well with what we have in 1402. They want a targeted biologic because the therapies available today are not targeted.
They want rapid mechanistic onset of action for us that's IgG dropping quickly within a couple of weeks, a strong reduction there. And they want to see that the disease can be modified longer term with remission and a well-tolerated drug. So 1402 hits that bucket for this indication as well. All right. So before we get into Graves in total myself, I'm going to have Dr. Lupo come up. He's going to walk through how he views this disease and the unmet need. And like I said, he's been a great collaborator for us and a thought partner and a leader in the Graves community. So Dr. Lupo, excited to have you on board. Thank you.
Thank you, Eric. All right.
It's a pleasure to be here as a clinician to share my thoughts about Graves' disease over the last 22 years of having treated these patients. Talk is why are we treating Graves' disease like it's 1950. And by the end of this talk, hopefully, you'll understand why I titled it this way. These are my disclosures. I'd like to call out that I'm a consultant and speaker for Immunovant. So a little bit about my practice. I established a practice in 2002 in Sarasota, Florida. It's an independent center focused specifically on adult thyroid and parathyroid disease. There are 3 endocrinologists, and we see hundreds of patients with Graves' disease.
And as we look back a lot of these patients, over half are still on antithyroid drug therapy. So of our hundreds of patients we see and follow per year, many of these patients are still on methimazole primarily. So when I think about patient phenotypes, we recognize that Graves disease and thyroid eye disease is very heterogeneous, meaning these patients present in different ways.
They respond differently to therapy and sometimes predictable, sometimes unpredictable. So if we look at how they present, first, we diagnose Graves with the measurement of TSH receptor antibodies because that's what we think is mediating and driving the process.
And then in our practice, about half of them are relatively mild presentations with small goiter, either suppressed TSH like a subclinical hyperthyroidism or mild overt hyperthyroidism with high T4 and high T3. These patients may have no evidence of thyroid eye disease or mild thyroid eye disease. They have a modest elevation in TRAb levels, and they have usually a predictable response to antithyroid drugs. About 35% to 40% are in that moderate category.
So you see more goiter, higher T4/T3 levels, more symptomatic. They are more likely to have mild or moderate thyroid eye disease. The TRAb levels tend to be 3 to 5x normal. And you end up having to change the antithyroid drug a lot more frequently, and you can predict that from the beginning based on that initial presentation.
And then severe cases, which is about 10%, 15% of our population, large goiter, very high T4/T3 levels, a lot of symptoms of tachycardia, insomnia, anxiety, very high TRAb levels, often 5x normal. And they sometimes will have thyroid eye disease that's quite severe with diplopia and a lot of pain and other symptoms. And they have high antithyroid drug requirements with an unpredictable course. And with each of these, there's other factors such as age, less than 40, male sex or tobacco use that increase the probability of relapse or persistent disease. So clinicians rely on TSH receptor antibodies, not only for diagnosis but for management. And this graph kind of plots out 3 typical trajectories of TRAb levels over time that kind of mirrors what I just talked about in terms of mild, moderate and severe disease. So if we look at the top line, the smoldering, that's about 20% of patients in this pretty well-documented cohort that was published a few years ago, they have a remission rate of 20%.
These patients have persistent high TRAb levels and are very difficult to treat. Just under that is a typical autoimmune disease phenotype. So these are patients that relapse and remit. So TRAb levels look like they're improving. We take them off antithyroid drugs and they come right back. And it's very frustrating for clinicians, very frustrating for patients.
They're on a roller coaster that looks like this kind of waning sine wave that you see in the middle, and that's about 38% of patients with about a 38% probability of remission. The bottom line is how we want patients to behave. Those are the mild cases with predictable response to antithyroid drugs.
That's about 40% of patients, very high remission rate after cycle 1 or 1 -- 12 to 18 months of antithyroid drugs of 90%. So as a clinician having done this for 20 years, if I can see some of these patients in the top 2 curves be shifted to a predictable response curve, that would be a paradigm shift for the way we manage and treat Graves' disease.
So why do we care? What's the consequence of uncontrolled Graves' disease? The primary thing we think about as endocrinologists is cardiovascular, atrial fibrillation. Everyone here knows about atrial fibrillation either personally or with a family member. So we know there's a higher risk of stroke and death with atrial fibrillation. We don't think about it as much, but we clearly see with hyperthyroidism, high output heart failure, which can lead to morbidity and death and increased clotting factors, which increases the risk of strokes and blood clots, pulmonary embolism, et cetera. So high stakes there.
Bone loss, which can cause osteoporosis and fractures, especially in postmenopausal women with hyperthyroidism thyroid eye disease, so vision-threatening that would be the most severe form of thyroid eye disease, but these patients have severe proptosis, diplopia, a lot of psychological stigma, difficulty driving, difficulty working and other quality of life impacts that we commonly see are anxiety, insomnia, muscle weakness, tremor, infertility. Often, these patients are treated for anxiety or depression well before their diagnosis of Graves' disease is made.
So looking specifically at atrial fibrillation, this was a large registry data of almost 600,000 adults with previously no atrial fibrillation, previously normal thyroid function, looking over time by TSH level, and this goes from left to right. So as the TSH goes down, the incidence risk ratio of atrial fibrillation increases.
And the increase for subclinical and mild subclinical and overt is in that 1.2 to 1.4 roughly risk ratio or hazard ratio. And that's pretty consistent with what we see with other cardiovascular risk studies in patients with hyperthyroidism. So 20% to 40% increased risk there. This may be more impressive fracture risk, looking at this meta-analysis with a high number of patients, looking specifically at any fracture for a TSH less than 0.1, twofold risk of any fracture. And then at the bottom, lumbar or spine fracture, TSH of less than 0.1, the risk is three to fourfold the regular normal population. So this is high stakes for these patients.
So we need to think about how we're treating them. And why are we treating them like it's 1950 because it's been 75 years since we've had an approved drug for Graves disease. That's when methimazole was approved by the FDA in 1950. So reviewing the 3 treatments, we can give antithyroid drugs, which inhibits thyroid hormone synthesis or we can destroy the thyroid, either surgically remove it or give radioactive iodine to cause thyroid dysfunction or destruction with radiation. So these are tools that we've had for 75 years.
That's why we're treating it like 1950 because same toolbox. But as we look at clinician surveys on how we use these tools, there has been a big change over the last 25 -- 35 years. So this is a survey sent out to endocrinologists saying, how would you first-line treat a patient with Graves disease. So in 1990, about 70% would respond with radioactive iodine. That's when I was in med school. So that's how I trained with radioactive iodine. But as you start seeing this shift, you see 90% first-line therapy. Now the preference is antithyroid drugs.
Surgery is always an option, but stays as a low percentage of patients being treated first line. But if you look at that shift now in 2023 and 90% of patients being treated with first-line antithyroid drugs, and as we'll talk about, the remission rate is about 50% you end up with a larger pool of patients who have not had definitive therapy, like they did in the '80s, '90s and 2000s. And now they're on these cycles of antithyroid drugs often with a nonpredictable response. So we've seen it in our practice, more and more patients are not interested in destroying their thyroid with radioactive iodine or surgery.
So more of them end up on long-term methimazole, but over half of them still don't achieve a durable remission. So when we talk about definitive treatment discussions, so this is usually a discussion when patients are not tolerating the antithyroid drugs either due to side effects or rash or whatever other issues they have or they have a very unpredictable response or requiring high dose or they get tired of it after a few cycles of antithyroid drugs, they say enough is enough, just take my thyroid out and let me be on levothyroxine.
So the options for knocking off the thyroid would be radioactive iodine, but we have concerns with that. We see an increased risk of thyroid eye disease. We see increased TRAb levels, especially in reproductive age women, that could be an issue because those high TRAb levels cross the placenta and can cause fetal and neonatal thyroid dysfunction. Radiation exposure is an issue with a slight risk of increased solid tumors down the road and permanent hypothyroidism dependence on medication like levothyroxine.
Thyroidectomy, there are certain indications. So if we have a thyroid cancer with Graves' disease, it makes sense to take the thyroid out or a large goiter or patient preference. But interestingly, when you look at the data on thyroidectomy for Graves disease versus thyroidectomy for goiter or low-risk cancer, we see a higher probability of hypoparathyroidism, which is a very difficult to treat low calcium in the absence of parathyroid hormone. We see higher risk of postoperative bleeding, hematoma, higher tracheostomy requirements.
So this really demands a high-volume surgeon with expertise in Graves' disease. So this is a high-risk proposition to send someone for thyroidectomy. Certainly, there's a scar, which is concerning. And again, resulting in permanent hypothyroidism. And I don't see permanent hypothyroidism as a cure for Graves disease. You're trading one problem for another. So quality of life after definitive therapy.
Hypothyroidism, no matter what the cause is, Hashimoto's autoimmune or -- destroying the thyroid, these patients consistently report a decreased quality of life compared to general population. And of course, we have the treatment-specific complications that we talked about. And in general, 1 in 4 people feel unwell post definitive therapy despite having normal thyroid labs. So they are out of exchange with their clinician telling them your TSH is normal, you should feel fine. I don't feel fine. So this is a conversation we have with our patients every day. One of the larger studies looking at long-term outcomes was 2,400 patients with Graves' disease, over half followed for a mean of 8 years.
With antithyroid drugs, the remission rate was 45% with radioactive iodine 82%; surgery, 96%. And for patients who failed first-line antithyroid drug, if they went on to a second course in this study, a 29% remission rate. So once you fail course 1, you're setting yourself up for a lower probability of succession with future cycles of antithyroid drugs.
And if you focus more on antithyroid drug population, 50% had a chance of avoiding definitive treatment. So that's why we sometimes use antithyroid drugs is to avoid definitive treatment. That was flipping a coin and 40% have a chance of achieving a chronic euthyroid state. And overall, 25% did not feel fully recovered long term no matter how they were treated any of these 3 ways. So thinking back about that survey that reminds us that now 90% of patients are being treated with first-line antithyroid drugs. The question is, why are we choosing that?
Well, it's hope for remission and avoidance of hypothyroidism. That's what the clinicians are wanting. That's what the patients are wanting. But the reality of that remission question is we know that 50% of patients with Graves' disease relapse after stopping medical therapy. So the stop medical therapy, we follow for 2 years. And at the end of that 2 years, 50% after stopping first cycle antithyroid drugs, those patients will -- 50% will relapse.
So what happens to them when they relapse? Most of them will go back on antithyroid drugs, again, increasing that pool of patients who are on cycles of antithyroid drugs with a somewhat unpredictable response and inconsistent quality of life and health. So looking at this in a different way, kind of claims-based data. This is over 46,000 patients with a diagnosis of Graves' disease. These are from November 17 to October 2023, these patients had a diagnosis within 3 years before or 2 years after.
So the idea was to try to find first diagnosis of Graves' disease, first prescription of methimazole and then follow them for 2 years and say, what does that journey look like? So this is the journey, and this is a sankey diagram. So if you're not used to seeing these, it looks a little confusing. But the idea is to take those patients at week -- at time 0, they all get started on some dose of methimazole, high, moderate or medium, low doses, and then they get followed over time. And so following them over time, you see clearly a lot of movement.
So that movement reflects the lack of predictability of response to therapy. That movement to the patient means that they're changing doses, they're having more labs. They're coming back to see people like me more often than they want to, and there gets to be some frustration there. These are patients who really are not consistently healthy and they don't have a lot of other good treatment options.
So after 1 year, 46% of patients are still on moderate or higher doses of antithyroid drugs -- or they have had ablation or total thyroidectomy for their disease. And then -- so when we look at this, the thing for me for this is that the top 4% to 6%, so 10% of patients are still on 15 milligrams or more at the end of 1 year. And if you look at the 35% that stopped after 1 year, we don't know a lot of those were going to end up resuming after in second year, but 20% -- 25% of those, another almost 10% end up with definitive therapy.
So at the end of 1 year, we're seeing 20% of patients still on high-dose antithyroid drugs or who have committed to definitive therapy. So this is a frustrating journey for patients and for clinicians. When we look at current recommendations for the management of Graves' disease by the American Thyroid Association, we usually give antithyroid drugs for 12 to 18 months. We measure TRAb levels. So TRAb is central to the way we make decisions on managing these patients.
If TRAb is normal and their euthyroid, we stop antithyroid drugs. But remember, half the time, they're going to recur. So that they relapse, and they end up most of them going back to long-term therapy, cycling on or off or radioactive iodine or surgery. But if after that 12 to 18 months, they still have positive TRAb levels, then they stay typically on cycle 2 or continued antithyroid drugs. So arguably, there's an unmet need in Graves' disease. We know that the standard of care is to destroy the thyroid or to slow the thyroid down.
In other words, we're targeting the innocent gland where the underlying pathology is an autoimmune problem. So we know current therapies do not target the underlying autoimmune disease. A significant portion of patients respond to antithyroid drugs up to 25% are unable to complete their initial course due to side effects or unpredictable response to therapy and 50% remit after stopping antithyroid drugs and positive TRAb levels are highly associated with relapse rates.
So these TRAbs are driving the process, and it makes sense clinically to lower TRAbs levels to help these patients hopefully have a higher chance of remission and be able to come off antithyroid drugs. So the rationale makes sense for treatment with an FcRn blocker for Graves' disease. So these are pathologic IgG autoantibodies of stimulating the TSH receptor. And the FcRn blocker would then -- instead of escorting for recycling, the FcRn is blocked.
So then those TSH receptor antibodies can be degraded in the lysosomal process and therefore, lowering pathologic TSH receptor antibody levels in the blood and then therefore, decreasing the stimulation of the thyroid gland. So clinically, this makes sense. It's an unmet need and doing this for over 20 years, and it's exciting to see potential future options for these patients. So I thank you for your time.
So we've got a nice opportunity now just to have a little discussion with Dr. Lupo and kind of give us a little bit more informally some of his insights from the field. And I wanted to start with kind of an easy one, but this -- you've mentioned that there hasn't been anything since 1950. And what's your feeling about when you talk to your colleagues, the excitement for a new mechanism and their kind of view of that?
Yes. It's interesting. I mean there has been some complacency of endocrine thinking we can treat Graves' disease fairly well. But as they learn about new options for Graves disease, the enthusiasm and engagement over the last year or 2 has been really dramatic. And we've known that TRAb is the driver here. And the fact that we have an opportunity to potentially lower TRAb is a huge shift. So I'm seeing with my colleagues and a definite engagement and interest here that's kind of not something I've seen before in thyroid disease. It's exciting.
Yes, it's great. Yes.
And give us a little bit more of the patient perspective. How are these late-line patients really doing? How are they -- how do they feel? How often they are in your office? What's that experience like?
Yes, they're frustrating. I mean, so the ones who -- the only ones who are really happy are the ones who've tapered off and stay off, and that's at 40%, give or take, 50%. But the ones who keep coming back, I have a patient who's a neurosurgeon and he has Graves' disease. So he's texting me his TRAb levels and with little emojis that are not happy emoji saying, why is my TRAb still high?
So patients are getting their labs tested every 2 to 3 months. Usually, they're coming back to see me. We're adjusting methimazole doses up and down. So that could be quite frustrating. And certainly, if we've had definitive treatment with the permanent hypothyroidism, they're generally not completely happy with or satisfied with that response to therapy.
Yes. Great. And one of the things I noticed when I first started talking to physicians about the indication, and I called some referral academics about this is they said, hey, look, if I treat super high doses of methimazole, right? People -- I'm going to get people into remission, right? And does that really happen in real life? And kind of how do you think about those really, really high methimazole doses?
Yes, the idea of driving patients into remission with very high dose, just we haven't seen that play out. So first off, the doses that people maybe state when they have that comments at 30 to 40-milligram dose or more, I almost never see anyone starting that. I almost never start that. So usually, the doses are less than 20 milligrams.
So no one's using that. And the studies have not shown that higher dose antithyroid drugs drive these patients into remission. You may be able to control their hyperthyroidism, but they have more side effects. So higher antithyroid drug doses have more specific side effect probabilities. So it actually becomes more dangerous to be cavalier with that concept.
Yes. And I think that's a nice segue maybe in just thinking about these side effects. We see them in the label, right? There are black box warnings for a lot of side effects and these are old drugs. But what's your real-world experience you and your colleagues of these severe side effects?
Yes. So let me -- anecdote about a colleague. So I have one colleague who had a thyroid-only practice, and he had one episode -- young patient with agranulocytosis. So that's our most severe side effect for antithyroid drugs. This was with methimazole. That means your ability to fight bacterial infections is 0, almost like a chemotherapy patient. And that patient died because of that. So then categorically, he would never give antithyroid drugs, which I understand. But I've seen that happen as well. I've had patients hospitalized for low white blood cell counts, have to get [ G-CSF ] to stimulate the white blood cell count production. And those are very nerve racking situations.
So these are real issues with antithyroid drugs, especially if you start using higher dose that percentage goes up to almost 1.52% at high-dose methimazole. And that's a big deal for those patients. Also, liver toxicity is a big deal for -- with PTU, it can be irreversible, can lead to hepatic failure and death. With methimazole, usually, it's reversible, but it's -- these are real major side effects that we have to discuss with patients on a regular basis.
Yes. And as we think about where this might be used clinically, how do you think about it kind of sitting in front of thyroid eye disease? And kind of what is the relationship you see between Graves and thyroid eye disease?
Yes. So thyroid eye disease is an extra thyroidal manifestation of Graves. And the way we look at it pathologically is that, that means that the TSH receptor crosstalk with IGF-1 causes thyroid eye disease. So if I can lower TSH receptor antibody levels, then more likely than not, I will probably impact thyroid eye disease, especially in patients who currently don't have thyroid eye disease or have mild to early moderate that will probably change the course for them. So I see -- if you look at my phenotypes that I presented, if I have a fairly symptomatic moderate or severe patient with high TRAb levels and thyroid eye disease and some of these patients will present with tachycardia or atrial fibrillation, I need quick control. So I think that having a newer option for quick control would be very welcomed.
Yes. Great. And maybe talk about both quick control, but also kind of long-term control. And again, kind of back to that patient experience, but is this really happening? And do you feel like you get patients into good long-term control?
Yes. So...
Especially in this kind of population we're talking about, right, the second-line patient. And I think it's for the group, important to distinguish between the frontline patients who come in and get rapidly controlled and then kind of second-line population, which is really our focus.
Right. So the rapid control, I meant for life-threatening kind of arrhythmias, things like that mediated by thyroid. But for the second line, so these patients are not consistently well controlled. So only in studies that are very closely engaged with patients, can you get a long enough long-term antithyroid drug therapy where your remission rate goes down significantly. In the real world, what's happening is these patients are coming on and off antithyroid drugs with a lot of unpredictable response.
So I don't think that even with some of the data on long-term antithyroid drug looking good, the reality in the average community practice, the average patient is not getting that tight control, is not following up consistently. And so I don't think -- I think we're back to that 40% to 50% control rate.
And then you've had an opportunity to present this data in the clinical community, especially kind of coming out of ATA and showing some of that off-drug remission. Can you talk about just qualitatively, how was this perceived before that data? How is it perceived after? And how are people thinking about it?
A game changer in terms of the audience engagement. So when you talk about we might have something that can lower TRAb levels and maybe we can get some patients off antithyroid drugs, at least for the short term, it's like, okay, there's some excitement there. But clinicians always want to know, is this durable? Is there -- is there going to be a remission.
So when the ATA data was released on a short remission with these patients and every -- the engagement shifted completely because now you take -- and we're not talking about the average Graves patient. We're talking about hard-to-treat Graves patients and you're getting them off antithyroid drugs and off therapy and still in remission 6 months plus down the road, that's a very enthusiastic acceptance from the community. So we want to see more of that as clinicians.
Great. And then just thinking forward then, if that data were to be replicated in the pivotal studies, how do you think about in these kind of hard-to-treat patients, where this would fit into your treatment paradigm, where you'd use it and kind of what patients you'd kind of start with?
Right. So I think I've used it first line for the higher-risk patients potentially. And then certainly would use it for patients who have failed first-line therapy of antithyroid drugs. As we've talked about, the appeal of definitive treatment with surgery radioactive iodine has really gone down both with clinicians and patients. So I think there's going to be a lot of interest in patients who are now on cycle 2 or 3 of antithyroid drugs saying I need to do something different. And then I've got multiple patients on cycle 3, 4, 5 who I think would be excellent candidates for it as well.
So if I look at my population who -- I have a small amount who've had definitive treatment, most of mine either went into remission if they -- that 30%, 40% or they're still on antithyroid drugs. And I look at the burden of disease, even 5 or more milligrams of methimazole, those patients, once you're on more than 5, I know they're less predictable than the patients less than 5. So if I've had someone on 7.5 to 15 milligrams, for example, on cycle 2, 3, I would certainly want to offer them something different.
Great. Well, thanks again for your coming to speak to us today, and I know it's a nice opportunity to meet some of these investors and engage in this forum. We really appreciate your insights and willing to help.
Yes. Thank you. Happy to be here, and you're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Dr. All right. Thank you, Dr. Lupo. Thank you, Frank. That was great. So I will make up a little bit of time here probably. We're a few minutes behind, but most of my content is new. There's a few slides that will be redundant to Dr. Lupo, so I'll kind of move through those more quickly. So this is one of those. The punchline for this slide is Graves' disease is not fine. It's not okay at all. It's beyond Graves. You have other complications you'll develop morbidity, mortality. It's a bad disease that leads to worse diseases down the line.
So there's a huge unmet need. On the right-hand side of this slide, TED is talked about. You're probably very familiar with TED with TEPEZZA doing great. TED is on the spectrum of disease with Graves' disease. I think that sometimes is missed. You don't get TED without Graves disease, okay? That is how this works. You have bad Graves disease for many years and you develop TED. 40% of people with Graves will develop TED in the course of their life.
So this is -- if we can control Graves' disease upfront, a way to step in front of that actually and have a huge impact on patients' lives down the line. So this, I think I want to hit again. Dr. Lupo hit on this a little bit. This is -- let's just walk left to right here. This is a patient journey with Graves disease. Okay, I'm 40-year-old man, I got diagnosed with Graves disease.
It's peripheral blood test. I feel like c***. I went to my physician, TRAb-positive, I have Graves' disease. What happens is, as Dr. Lupo said, no more are we doing huge percentages of surgery, thyroidectomy, ablation. Most people, 90% plus are starting on anti-thyroid medicine. For some percentage of those people, that is just fine.
They do well. They're able to get off antithyroid drugs, they go into remission and they're okay. At the bottom right here, this is the red line, the red dash line. This is our patient target population, okay? 25% to 30% of these people after that first line do not do well and need something else.
And Dr. Lupo mentioned that extensively. So that's the group I want to double-click on for the next few minutes and really explain kind of what's happening with that group. So this is what that group is dealing with, okay? They've been on antithyroid drugs for a couple of years. It's not going well. They're not controlled or they're relapsing and flaring, like Dr. Lupo said, dose changes, labs are out of whack.
We have definitive therapy as an option, as you mentioned. I just find it hilarious that we talk about that like it's a reasonable option. You have hyperthyroidism. And so your solution is that you're just going to destroy the thyrocyte, take it out of your body to sentence you to a life of hypothyroidism forever then. You're trading one thyroid problem for another. And it's the same situation. You take levothyroxine. If you don't know about how that's managed, there's 20 doses of levothyroxine, you do the same thing. You go on with your thyroid function tests.
It's little bit off, you tweak it. You're taking 88, you're taking 75, you're taking 108. It's a mess. It's all the same and the patients aren't doing well. So that's not great, okay? So like no one's picking that, and we know that. The chronic ATD, the issue in the middle bucket is you can stay on this stuff forever. As Dr. Lupo said, that the patients who are not responding well upfront tend to need longer duration and higher doses of methimazole get their grades under control. Then the risk-benefit calculus shifts away from something that you're interested in. It doesn't make sense. You want another option.
The only option we have right now is that definitive therapy on the left pillar, and that's bad for all the reasons we talked about. So that's the issue here. And on the right-hand side, you got to do something. These patients are going to get sick. They're going to have cardiovascular disease. They are going to have bone health problems. They're going to have issues.
So there's a huge unmet need here, and we are sort of positioned to totally deliver it. So this is a slide that I want to focus again. We're double-clicking here to understand who is the patient population that we have that are going to be a great candidate for 1402. This is a 5-year look and a snapshot in time. On the left-hand side, what patients do first when they're diagnosed. And you can see there's a lot of people on methimazole, some are high doses to get started, medium doses. 5 years in, what has happened to those patients?
The top red dash bucket is a different version of the red dash bucket on the slide before. That is the percentage of patients that had to revert to a thyroidectomy or ablation are still on uncomfortably high doses of methimazole at that period of time who are going to be again recommended to consider definitive therapy. This is the group of patients that Dr. Lupo and his colleagues, I'm in the field every week meeting our investigators in person and talking to docs at conferences. This is who they're saying, 1,400 is going to work for these guys. I want to offer them this as another option. It's a big group.
So this is just kind of a funnel building to think about the patient populations like any disease you think about, you got to think about the incident market, that's new patients getting diagnosed every year. That's on the left-hand side and then the prevalent pool, right? Graves is a little unique. It's not insanely unique.
There's a couple of examples of this in the last 25 years. But when there's been no innovation and no new agents approved in 3, 4, 5 decades, there tends to be a very large prevalent pool that is sitting there ready to receive the new therapy you have available. That will rhyme with things that you've experienced in the past, things like hepatitis C.
So we have a huge group of patients here that's sitting here, but it's not everybody, right? There's 1 million people, 880,000 people with U.S. -- in the U.S. with Graves is sitting there. That group, though, some of them will do okay on ablation. Some of them will do okay with the methimazole.
We whittle that down to a few hundred thousand patients who are just sitting there coming into the clinic every month looking for something else. So that's a big bolus of patients we'll be targeting in our first years of launch. On the left-hand side, this is what it looks like on a replenished annual basis. About 20,000 people are going to end up not doing well on the therapies that are available, including hopefully avoiding things like thyroidectomy and ablation and another 20,000 patients there for us that will be great candidates for 1402.
So this slide is what Dr. Lupo mentioned about this remission data we presented at ATA in September in Scottsdale. I was there with a lot of our investigators and key opinion leaders. So I'll walk you left to right through this slide. This is batoclimab data. This is FcRn inhibition data that we generated last -- through the course of the last year and presented to the right-hand side of this in September.
So 25 patients came into this study. All of them had uncontrolled Graves' disease. That means they're on methimazole and they're still not controlled. Most of these patients had very elevated TRAb levels and really fit the phenotype of the commercial population we're thinking about targeting here. So what we did for this study, 12 weeks of high-dose therapy, okay? That's -- the high dose batoclimab is equivalent to the high dose of 1402 from an IgG suppression perspective. At week 12, how did it go? It went insanely well. 20 out of 25 of those people were able to get their T3 and T4 normal because they are euthyroid, and they did not have to increase their ATD dose and many lowered their dose. I'll show you a slide on that. That's a great 80% response rate. That's just an unbelievably positive number.
This study, we also wanted to probe the question, as Matt mentioned, is lower better here for us also. We've seen it in MG clearly. We saw it in CIDP clearly. We wanted to look at Graves too. And so after 12 weeks of high-dose therapy, we stepped people down to the low dose of 340, which is also equivalent to the 1402 low dose, another 12 weeks of therapy at that lower dose and see what happens. Now we lose 2 responders.
You say 2 responders, 20 to 18, not that big of a deal. I think that's wrong, okay? I think you got to think that number 20 was going to go up if you stayed on that high dose for another 12 weeks. So it's not a loss of 2, it's a loss of greater than that. And in any case, it didn't even maintain the level of response. So after week 24, this is what Dr. Lupo was talking about when the tone in the room changed, when you say, okay, that's great. You've got now 6 months of therapy, 12-week high dose, 12-week low dose. Let's stop the drug. Let's take the FcRn inhibition away and let's see what happens to these patients. That's when everybody got really excited.
So 21 people entered that follow-up period, which is a 6-month period off of batoclimab. 17 out of those 21 retained their response rate at 6 months. Euthyroid, T3, T4 normal and no increase in their baseline methimazole dose, which is an outstanding level of remission. And when you see something like this, what I do as a clinician myself is think, that looks great. I'd like to see some other data points and evidence that kind of through lines that together in a way that makes complete sense.
And as Dr. Lupo kind of talked about, the next 2 slides will do that. So this is the 17 people that did remain in remission at 6 months of therapy. What did they look like though, underneath that? Well, half of them on the right-hand side of the pie chart, 8 out of the 17 were off of all methimazole in total. So that really is like the remission standard that Dr. Lupo is talking about trying to achieve. There's guys not on drugs at all. He's not coming into check his labs. He's in a functional cure at that point.
And in the bottom left hand of the pie chart there, you see another 30% were on basically the lowest dose of methimazole we have as a 2.5 milligram a day dose. So very, very strong, not only in the response rate with 17 people maintaining that, but half of those are able to be off drug at that 6-month period. Now this is the other evidence I wanted to point to, and this is -- we talked a lot about TRAb, so I won't repeat what Dr. Lupo said, but TRAb is the disease-causing autoantibody in Graves disease period, okay?
This is the same study we just talked about, 680 for 12 weeks on the left-hand side there in that purple color, step down in the salmon color to 340 for 12 weeks and then all batoclimab taken away, FcRn inhibition taken away for another 6 months of follow-up. That solid line is IgG that tracks over time. We know this works. You guys know these other FcRn inhibitors. Drops like a rock, we get 80% reduction, consistent. When you take the drug away, we also know this. The IgG comes right back up to baseline.
So at the end of week 48, these people's IgG has returned. What is interesting here, obviously, and this points to how the mechanistic rationale is working for this achieved remission. The TRAb dropped like a rock also. TRAb, I think, Dr. Lupo mentions. TRAb is an IgG antibody. It is about 90% IgG 1 and maybe 10% IgG 3.
We do not have any sensitivity around IgG subtypes. We just suppress all IgG subtypes equally at 80%. So TRAbs come down like a rock here, too, but when we stopped batoclimab at week 24, TRAb stayed suppressed. TRAb is the indicator for us that we think about when are you likely to go back into remission? Are you likely to -- or to recur? I mean, are you going to stay in remission? And this as a marker just mechanistically makes complete sense for us as we see why these patients are able to stay in remission and what is so exciting, I think.
So look, this is kind of a recap of -- there's a lot of information just going to you a recap of what I just said. So let's go through it quickly. First in-mechanism data for Graves' disease generated by us earlier this year with batoclimab, remarkable efficacy seen with 18 of 25 patients hitting a clinical response in euthyroid after 6 months of therapy.
Off of drug, an unbelievably high-quality remitted benefit shown here where of the 21 patients that rolled over 17 remained disease-free after 6 months off of batoclimab therapy. This is a disease-modifying thing. No one else had seen this. Of those 17 patients that were responders at 6 months, half of them were off of their methimazole and truly in the early stages of remission. One note in bullet 4 here, step down for the batoclimab study 6 months -- sorry, 3 months of 680 and then 3 months of the lower dose.
Our pivotal studies that we're enrolling right now globally for 1402, it's just the high dose for longer. So the efficacy in those studies should be better because you're doing higher for longer, and we'll see that translate or we should. And as I said, we've got 2 registrational studies globally active now with lots of screening and enrolling happening and it's off to a great start. Okay.
So that is Graves, which is super exciting. We're thrilled about it and Dr. Lupo thanks again for joining us here. I want to pivot to the rest of the pipeline quickly. We have a lot going on. So these are the places where we won't necessarily be first, but where we really do think we will be best. And I'll talk through there. So these 3 indications, most of them you'll be familiar with, MG, massive market, as Matt said, CIDP, also growing quickly with the FcRn class approved now.
And Sjögren's disease is one that has in-class data from J&J and nipocalimab, not an approved agent yet, but I'll walk through each of these in turn with our similar formatting from before. So Sjögren's is interesting, I think, and what -- maybe one of the most interesting things about it is that there seems to be a huge amount of patient interest. This is an enrolling study for us, also enrolling ahead of our expectations in terms of time line. It's a pretty bad disease, though, it's a classical autoantibody-driven disease.
It's the lacrimal and the salivary glands that are unable to do what they're supposed to do when you think dry eye, dry mouth, whatever. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. You're going to have cavity problems, teeth problems, you're going to have eye infection problems. It's going to be bad for your quality of life. There's about 300,000 people with primary Sjögren's’ disease in the U.S. If you slice that as we always do, and I'll build this -- the next slide, we'll build this autoantibody positive people who are moderate to severe, that number is going to come down to about 90,000, which again is in that nice sweet spot for us.
This is a classic autoantibody disease, as I said. And this is a place where actually we already do have in mechanism data to support the deeper and better concept. We have not generated that ourselves. The slide Matt had up before was actually Immunovant data from the United Studies. But nipocalimab, the J&J data that put out shows clearly that deeper IgG responders lead to more autoantibody reduction and more clinical benefit.
This is the build that you've seen. As I mentioned, I think, a few hundred thousand people here. But if you focus on the most likely to respond to this therapy with positive autoantibodies as well as people who are moderate to severe, you get that patient population down to about 90,000. Sjögren's’, look, there's a lot of things in development for it. There's nothing approved right now, 0 agents approved. It's still kind of high-dose steroids and really junky stuff.
Moving to MG, I can be quick here. You guys know this market. It just works well clinically, we know. But one thing that I would say is that I do think that the commercial picture is shifting from a physician expectation perspective around what is the unmet need, what do you want? This MG-ADL few point reduction is no longer what the neurologists are talking about. They want to see MSE. They want to see really total symptom control.
And as Matt talked about, that's one of the cuts we did in our Phase III study, so, VALOR, where we see just a much better rate of MSE achievement in that higher IgG reduction pool. So I think we are going to come in with a best-in-class on efficacy, able to deliver what -- where the physician community and the patient community is moving, which is to get MSE up and up and as a core measure of success. So I won't do the build there because you guys have seen it.
And then for CIDP, again, I mean, early uptake is great with Vyvgart. I think there's a huge unmet need here. There's not a lot of good agents. This is a tough disease. It's a smaller population, probably closer to 15,000 that we think are good candidates for 1402, but a meaningful population still driven by an autoantibody and again, clinically very derisked with maybe a mechanism approval already and clear evidence that deeper is better here.
You saw this before from Matt. I won't belabor it. This is just a very rich catalyst period. Every year now is going to be a big year for data at Immunovant. So it's exciting. And then I hit on all these points about 15 times. So I think I'll leave it there, and we can have a Q&A.
Mark is going to join us for this too.
Great. First question goes to Yasmeen.
Thank you so much for the great present. First question is for a physician with a thoughtful remarks. You showed that beautiful curve for a patient who are on antithyroid medication sort of go through these peaks and valleys of response and lack of response that kind of creates a little bit of a fear among investors given that this is a placebo-controlled study.
So help us understand how could we control that to make that we don't capture patients who were at full response? And what would be an acceptable placebo response? We get that question a lot. And if I may squeeze one question we get also is the work that you guys have done in terms of understanding the TAM, a lot of times, we try to get the repetitive question, is this really the market? And how do we know -- and I'll pass on the mic to my next colleague.
Thanks, Yasmeen. Those are great questions. I'll hand over to Mark to take most of them. Look, obviously, on trial design questions, it's an Immunovant study. I can say I think we feel confident. But maybe, Mark, you could speak to it as well. I guess even for those patients in the middle, maybe to reframe the question, how likely is it that those patients with kind of waxing and waning disease would be able to see normal thyroid hormone levels and get off antithyroid drugs as a part of regular way treatment?
Right. So it's important -- the inclusion criteria was set up to look at patients who were less likely to have those NADERS of TRAb levels and less likely to spontaneously go into remission because these are patients who have been treated for a long period of time with high-dose methimazole with high TRAb levels.
So yes, you'll see a placebo response, and that might be in that 15%, 20% range, I would expect as a clinician. That has nothing to do with the data. We don't know that yet, but in that would be maybe reasonable. But overall, it was designed to try to tease out that very question of -- by picking not all Graves' patients, but patients who are harder to treat who are less likely to go into remission spontaneously. I know you had two other questions in there as well.
I think the other question was just on TAM, just market size...
Do you believe those?
Is it really that big?
Yes, do you have those patients in the real world?
Yes. It's not what I think about every day as a clinician is market size. But if I look at my market and think about of my -- if we have 1,000 patients with Graves' disease at any given time and the three physician practice that treats thyroid we probably have 500 or 600 on cycles of antithyroid drug and probably half of them would be candidates for this. So I think the percentages align nicely with what we're seeing clinically in Graves' disease.
The one comment I would make just about the placebo question, too. I think the trial is designed, and this is in there, so you can read this. But we are pushing and there's a grid guideline and phone calls and conversations to titrate down the antithyroid. Everyone will attempt to titrate down. And if you really are a sick Graves' patient and we titrate down here at meds, you are not going to be okay. And so I think placebo could be driven quite low as long as we do that titration well.
Next question is from the web. Thomas Smith from Leerink. Congrats on all the progress for Immunovant. Now that we're expecting potential registrational data for IMVT-1402 in difficult-to-treat RA in 2026. Can you comment how you're thinking about the path to registration in this indication? Particularly interested in your thoughts on FDA's recent comments suggesting a move to requiring one Phase III study rather than the historical requirement for two in many settings.
For Immunovant-1402, are you still planning to report Period I data from difficult-to-treat RA study prior to full top line results? And if so, can you help frame your expectations for the Period I readout?
Thanks. That's a great question, Tom. Look, I think, first of all, I've gotten a lot of questions this year on how we feel about our ability to do things in light of the changing policy landscape. And my answer is always, I feel like all we know about the policy landscape is like a couple of tweets. And so the tweets just aren't completely clear on this point. But look, I think you can imagine we will be aggressively looking at any change in guidance to figure out whether the existing program allows us a faster path to registration, especially now that the studies come in.
And on reporting, I think I'll say we just haven't decided yet now that we're going to get the data within the course of 2026, whether we're going to change how we talk about the data, but we'll be thinking about that as well. I'll say on DTRA, and Frank or Eric may have comments on this, too. I'll say a piece of work that we are doing very actively right now is frankly setting our own expectations on what good looks like in a population that is very understudied.
There are not that many studies in patients who have failed both TNFs and JAKs or TNFs, JAKs and IL-6s, all three. And so the response rates that people are used to looking at and other mechanisms for other categories of RA patients are not the relevant benchmarks. I think let alone your collective expectations outside of our four walls, we need to give some thoughts just like what we're hoping to see before we flip over that randomized trial card. Any else, Frank or...
Just to add, I mean look, I think back to the FDA for a second. First of all, we have a lot of respect for the people at the agency and the work that they're doing. And the idea that we could accelerate medicines to patients who need them is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us. I think if you think about these kinds of programs, whether it's very late-line RA treatment, whether it's Graves' and we've got a 1950 RAs treatment paradigm, whether it's brepo coming in dermatomyositis, and we've got the longest, largest study ever done in that indication.
And all of these things, I think we have the kinds of things to offer to patients and to offer to the agency for discussion that if accelerated paths exist, and that's an if, but if they do, we're going to avail ourselves of those. And I think that we have the kind of clinical data and kind of unmet need that would put us in a good position for those conversation.
Yes. And I do think for late -- for the refractory group, specifically our fourth and fifth line, remember, this is very different from what you've seen. This is not -- the second study, this is 1 of 2 pivotals that we have here. The second study is not going to be some 800-person massive. This population is small. This is the kind of population like can get breakthrough designation. It's that small and not refractory. So it's a different thing than what you've seen out in the marketplace for rheumatoid arthritis. This is a pretty refractory group, uniquely so.
Great. Next question is from Sam Slutsky from LifeSci. Batoclimab versus TRAb rebound. Any mechanistic hypothesis for why TRAb stay reduced following treatment cessation with batoclimab versus rebounding?
I'll take that one. So I mean, of course, it's reducing IgG and pathologic IgG antibody recycling. So that's part of it. And if you look at what accounts for the circulating IgG in the serum, most of that's recycling and protecting it from degradation. But so when I see those curves diverge like that and the TRAb is going down, that means that TRAb production has been decreased.
So this is beyond a decrease in TRAb recycling. We're seeing a decrease in TRAb production. So we know the FcRn system in part plays a role in antigen presentation. So if you're having less TRAb cycling through, it's less TRAb-- receptor antigen presentation. So therefore, less plasma cell production of TRAb levels through that process. I think there's an underlying secondary process that's keeping that blunt response of TRAb compared to IgG.
And I do think actually, probably less well appreciated, but it is in the public domain, you can see that we actually did reduce the volume of the thyroid gland in those studies. And so you can actually see a reduction in that inflammatory loop and in fact, of the volume of that gland.
And that's a gland where the life cycle of a thyroid cell is very long. They turn over 5, 6x in a patient's lifetime. So if you think about the reduction and why would that gland get smaller, it's not because you're adjusting the actual volume of thyroid cells. It's really breaking that inflammatory loop. And so I think there's good evidence of us doing something fundamental to the biology that supports a long-term durable effect.
Just one follow-up from Sam. Dr. Lupo, in your own practice, what percent of Graves' patients do you envision ending up on a drug like IMVT-1402 commercially? And would patients with mild TED be a particularly interesting population given the difficulty in getting TEPEZZA reimbursed for mild TED.
I think independent of a reimbursement question, I think just mechanistically for mild TED in patients with active Graves' hyperthyroidism, something that lowers TSH receptor antibodies would be a first choice.
So the percentage of patients, I still think we're in that 20% to 30% of patients with Graves' disease would be in one of these boxes clinically that we've discussed that would be a good fit for specifically targeting TRAb levels, either due to stuck in this relapse cycle or risk of progression to TED or needing rapid resolution of hyperthyroidism due to AFib or other issues like that. So I think that 25%, give or take.
Great. I know we're running a little bit behind, so that's all the time we have for questions, and we'll move on to mosli.
Do you want to cut it off there? -- Great. Okay. All right. Thanks, everybody. So I'm going to hand it over to Frank, who's going to introduce the next section on mosliciguat.
All right. So it's nice to be able to introduce our mosliciguat program because I think it's a little bit less talked about in our portfolio of programs. But if you think about the potential value and I think increasingly appreciated value in pulmonary disease franchises, this is a really nice place for us to be playing and complementary to a lot of the kind of thematic work we're doing across the portfolio here. And to start with PH-ILD, well, this is a very -- again, large actual unmet need.
And I think these people with this interstitial lung disease, there's about 200,000 of them in the U.S. and Europe who can really benefit from something new. And this is really a differentiated mechanism of action. We'll talk a little bit more about that in Drew's presentation and also briefly on the next slide. But we start with a drug that's already been shown to really meaningfully impact PVR, pulmonary vascular resistance. And we think about how these drugs work and the kind of physical manifestations of ILD and of PAH.
The ability to kind of reduce that vascular resistance really offers an opportunity, especially independent of other pathways, independent of treprostinil and complementary to those pathways to drive incremental and important efficacy for patients who don't get good therapeutic response I think respiratory diseases, in particular, if you think about the evolution of how PAH has been treated, but even if you go back to how COPD or asthma have been treated, really pave a way for combination therapies, right?
These are diseases, whether it's a simple asthma or COPD patient or even thinking about the way that people have layered on vasodilatory approaches in PAH, that there's an opportunity both for mosliciguat to provide independent stand-alone efficacy, but also really work well in an environment of combination therapy. And as we think forward to the way this field could evolve, I think we'll bring dramatic and important efficacy ourselves as a single agent, but also in the future, work well with agents that are being developed in the class and exist in the class today.
So our data is on track. The team has made great progress in that study, and we'll look forward to reading that out kind of later in '26. But maybe just to give you two framing slides before we turn it over to the team. So what does this drug do, right? Well, if you think about soluble guanylate cyclase, this is a key enzyme in the nitric oxide GMP pathway. And in the existence of particularly ILD, you get kind of a lower oxygen environment. And why is that important? Because this is an activator. And so the activator actually works in a nitric oxide effectively independent way.
And actually in the cases where the heme binding pocket is altered because of that hypoxic state, it can activate the sGC pathway even in that kind of environment. So that gives us a different from a stimulator, different from other approaches, really the ability to work in the physiologic environment that exists in these kind of PH-ILD patients. And I think we're really excited about what that can do and how that can drive clinical effect.
And we've also worked on kind of some of the things that we know matter in respiratory diseases and that do you have the right particle size? Are you getting distribution into the right parts of the lung? And can you bring the lung -- the drug to where it matters. And we've already done that work and demonstrated that we can do that. And I think that's important. It's also important to just remind yourselves, if you're newer to this program, this is a dry powder inhaler. This is not a nebulizer.
There's just a lot of more patient convenience in patients who have a lot of medication burden to bring to them. But I think fundamentally, what we want to bring to them is a treatment for a disease that is complicated. And when you think about PH-ILD, it really exists in this intersection between lung parenchymal disease and vascular disease. And I think Drew again, will go into this, but I think the ability to focus on sGC activation allows you in this hypoxic state, in this state where you have inflammation, you have maybe some scarring and fibrosis, you have impaired gas exchange.
But you also have the kind of vasculature effect that you see in some more traditional PAH. And then in that intersecting disease state to bring both activity and clinical response has been something both our investigators have been excited about, and I think mechanistically, we were excited about from the get-go. So maybe with that, I'll turn it over to Drew to dive into the presentation. But we will start as is -- as he reminded me with a nice video to kind of lay the ground where [indiscernible]
[Presentation]
Well, it's hard to step up after such a great video like that. It's like a mic drop. But it's great to see you all. And I want to thank Frank a ton for a great introduction to mosliciguat. So at Pulmovant, it's our mission to transform the lives of patients with pulmonary diseases. I figured I'd start today with a look back at where we've come from and where we're going with mosliciguat, which was discovered by Bayer in 2012. Very rapidly after the ATMOS data, the Phase I ATMOS data was completed, we immediately in-licensed mosliciguat into Roivant in July of '23 and rapidly built Pulmovant to be able to announce and unveil mosliciguat in Q4 -- Q3 of 2024 at the ERS conference in Vienna. And then very rapidly thereafter, we were in a position to initiate our Phase II PHocus study in PH-ILD.
And we are still completely on track to deliver data in the second half of '26. We're also going to speak today a bit about our new PHactor study. So our Phase II PHactor study which is going to be looking at mosliciguat in combination with inhaled treprostinil. And I'll go into more detail there. I would just say here that we're so pleased with the speed and quality of what we've done here with this program. And I attribute that to the Vant approach at Roivant and also our world-class team at Pulmovant.
So with mosliciguat's MoA and its overall profile, Bayer decided to move into a Phase I study in healthy volunteers and PH patients. Now I'll start by telling you a little bit about the five WHO group categories for PH organized by disease type, clinical presentation and also therapeutic approach. Across that, in the Phase I study, there were 170 participants. The first group was 132 healthy volunteers in SAD, MAD and Bioavailability studies, single and ascending dose formats.
And the takeaway was that mosli was extremely well tolerated in this group and also had a long 40-hour half-life. Further, the second group looked at in Phase I was a 38-group PH set of patients in both Group 1 PAH and Group 4 CTEPH. And this was a single ascending dose format. Same punchline. Mosli was extremely well tolerated and also was clearly very potent. And so what would we expect -- and let's just dive into the ATMOS data in more depth here. So what would we expect effectively with a potent vasodilator in pulmonary hypertension?
Well, that would be the reduction of pulmonary vascular resistance. And we saw that very clearly with mosliciguat. With 1 dose of mosliciguat, we saw PVR drop right out of the gate for the first hour and through the 3-hour observation period. Thereafter, we also saw mean PVR reductions of over 30% and mean peak PVR reductions of up to 38%. And when you look across single dose and repeat dose studies, it's very clear that mosli is a very active drug. Any way you slice it, it's an impressive PVR reduction, especially for a single-dose study.
And Frank spoke briefly about the importance of cGMP in a couple of different ways, including vascular homeostasis and also vasodilation and the potential to exert antifibrotic and anti-inflammatory effects in the lung. And here again, with one dose of mosliciguat, we saw cGMP rise immediately and sustain at elevations through a 24-hour period. There were no clinically meaningful side effects in system, including with blood pressure and heart rate.
And we actually attribute that to the inhaled approach to mosliciguat and the fact that mosliciguat has very low bioavailability in circulation. It's over 95% protein bound. So we would expect to see that localized effect of mosliciguat. Also, with cGMP production like this, we would also see other hemodynamic parameters kick in the gear. And we saw that with mean pulmonary arterial pressure and cardiac output. With one dose of mosliciguat, we saw mean pulmonary arterial pressures reduce up to 20%. And with cardiac output and the strain coming off of the right heart, we saw cardiac output go up as much as 25%.
I think what I would say here is all of this culminates into what you saw in the last couple of slides, a real intensive drive down of pulmonary vascular resistance, which is very important to the ultimate efficacy of these patients. And mosli was very well tolerated, as I mentioned before, both in healthy volunteers and PAH patients and also across doses. We saw that reported treatment-emergent adverse events were mild to moderate across doses and patients. We know that cough is a major issue for PH patients.
And in fact, we also know that the inhaled treprostinil drugs today can exacerbate cough in these patients upon administration. We did not see that with mosli in the ATMOS study. And further, we saw very limited systemic -- we have limited systemic bioavailability, which ended up impacting very limited aspects of the periphery in circulation. Again, blood pressure hardly being affected at all.
And that's really important given understanding this entire environment. So with data like this, what do you do in Phase II? Well, we were extremely focused on picking the right indication going forward. And we looked at a host of indications that lined up very nicely with mosli's attributes and also had a large population, but in particular, with an unmet medical need. And if you look at PH-ILD, that came to the top of the opportunities over and over again as we were looking early and ongoing.
The reason, the lung is the primary site of disease, high dosing burdens for these patients with treprostinil administrations today. Current therapies are not well tolerated. In particular, cough is a major issue. And last but not least, we have the lung parenchymal disease and the pulmonary vascular disease, which that comorbidity becomes a very big challenge. Mosli lines up beautifully. You have an inhaled med once-a-day administration, well tolerated, especially not seeing that cough that we're all concerned about.
And then with cGMP production, the ability to address both the lung and the pulmonary vascular side of the disease. So to dive deeper into PH-ILD, it's got a huge medical unmet need, and I'll speak more and more to that. Up to 200,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe, we believe it continues to be underdiagnosed because of the limited treatments available to these patients, but also diagnostics and also treatment paradigms are catching up now to the treatment of these patients.
These patients are fragile. They have less than a 5-year median survival and PH-ILD is a really tough disease. And I'll also say that the comorbidity of PH and ILD is worse than PH and ILD separately and alone. So those two together create a real issue for the duration and the prognosis of these patients. And there are very limited drugs on the market. There are only two FDA-approved drugs. They're both inhaled treprostinils and I've already gone through a little bit of that background.
And we'll do that now as we take a look at a bird's eye view of what's going on in the heart of this development arena. You can see the three light colored boxes on the top are three inhaled treprostinil drugs, two are already approved Tyvaso and very recently, Yutrepia, TPIP just going into its Phase III and seralutinib, which is a TKI, very different kind of drug. I can have you look across this grid, and it will bring your eye right back to mosliciguat, which is where we're heavily focused.
And the reason is we're in a great position to differentiate from all of these other drugs over time. But in the end, with our mechanism of action, once-a-day simple inhaled daily dosing approach and then the tolerability that we have here and also the PVR reductions, which over time will inure to the benefit of the patient via efficacy, we believe, is something that we believe will drive the standard of care in this arena. And the last thing I'm going to say about the Tyvaso -- the PH-ILD market specifically is we've seen a market that's very nascent.
Over the last 3 years, starting with Tyvaso being approved in 2021 as a nebulized formulation or administration and then going to a DPI, we see the great demand here that has driven this one drug out of the gate to a $1 billion blockbuster status. And again, I'll remind you, only inhaled treprostinils are available in this space. And I will say, and I don't know how often I'll say this, we really do agree with United Therapeutics that this is the tip of the iceberg for this group here.
And I'll be clear that I think it's actually larger than even what they're saying. So this was a point where I felt and our team felt we could bring some real context to another market that we believe PH-ILD may mirror going forward. And effectively, that's the growth of an evolution of the market around pulmonary arterial hypertension. If you look at the key treatment pathways and median survival and then ultimately, the PAH guidelines that supported all this, we started over 30 years ago with supportive care for these patients in PAH.
It's ironic because that's exactly where we are today with PH-ILD. With very few drugs available across the globe, many of these patients move directly into supportive care or go on drugs that really are not giving them any benefit. Over the ensuing 30 years, we saw this evolution of drugs coming in from IV prostacyclin and through numerous additional mechanisms of action. And over time, combination therapy came together as those mechanisms proved to be powerful also together.
And at the same time, treatment guidelines kept pace and supported each of these stages of this evolution. But the great punchline here for patients is we went from approximately 3 years of median survival in the early days to now over 15 years of median survival for these patients in PAH. And as I stated, we're now at a large market. We have a $7 billion market growing at 20% year-over-year. There are literally 15 drugs approved, and it says something about the unmet need. It says something about the difficulty of pulmonary hypertension.
But also at the same time, we've seen some of the earlier classes start to become generic. But yet, I will say we have not seen -- or let me say it in a positive way, we've seen a very robust pricing environment. And the reason for that, again, is this is a hard drug to -- hard disease to treat. You need multiple mechanisms. Combination therapy is the norm and the pricing supports that, and it continues to grow, as I've described. The punchline here is 40% of patients begin today when they're diagnosed with dual therapy.
By the end of that first year, 15 more percent of those patients will go on another drug and have triple therapy, and that is the norm. I understand that PH-ILD is a different disease. I actually believe it's a complex heterogeneous disease where this kind of increase in mechanisms of action and the need to do combination therapy over time will also become similar. But with a drug that has great single-agent activity, we're going to be in a great place in this early part of the market.
So bringing us back to where we are today, we're looking at our Phase II PHocus study. We're in Group III PH-ILD, just putting it back in the WHO group designations. And our Phase II PHocus study, which we effectively initiated in the second half of 2024 is a study of mosliciguat in adults in PH-ILD. It's a placebo blinded randomized study, double-blinded study.
And when patients come in and they're screened by the investigators, the most important things that we look for here, although there are other inclusion and exclusion criteria is a clear diagnosis of ILD, elevated PVR and then limits on fibrosis and emphysema as seen by CAT scan.
Once these patients are eligible, they move into the study and go through a rapid up titration and get to stable dose and then move forward to the 16-week endpoint analysis where we look at the endpoint of change from baseline PVR and then secondary endpoints of change from baseline 6-minute walk and NT-proBNP, as patients move on to week 24, all go on drug if they were not on drug already and move into an elongated long-term extension, which is a really important thing for these patients to get the opportunity to get on the drug.
And then I mentioned earlier the Phase II PHocus study -- a PHactor study, excuse me, of mosliciguat in combination with inhaled treprostinil. This is just beginning to be opened. It's an open-label study in 20 patients with the objective of looking at tolerability and safety primarily as we put an eye towards the end of our Phase II PHocus study in the second half of 2026 and thinking about the design of our study in Phase III for mosliciguat.
So to wrap up, we're really psyched about mosliciguat. I'm excited that Roivant brought it in. I think we have an excellent opportunity here. It's a very early market, as you saw with the PAH market. We're really on the front end of this market. This is a great opportunity for PH-ILD patients. Mosli may be the second drug approved after inhaled treprostinil formulations or administrations. And we keep coming back to mosli's overall profile with an excellent mechanism of action, a simple once-a-day inhaled administration and then seeing that it's well tolerated in important things like cough coming out of the ATMOS study.
And these deep PVR reductions will be an important element of how mosli evolves over the coming years. Top line, again, for mosliciguat should come in from our Phase II PHocus study in the second half of 2026. And I personally -- and I think the team believes that this could be with good data, a real derisking opportunity, not only across the PH-ILD area, but given mosli's profile, much more across the pulmonary disorder arena.
And I believe we'll be in a position to really drive the standard of care in this area. And I'll make one last self-serving statement. I really want to give a great nod to our team at Pulmovant. We've built a world-class team, not only in the business functions, but we knew early that we needed to build a team very deep in pulmonary hypertension experience. And it's really inured to our benefit as we've gone fast and we've built excellent relationships across the spectrum. And I thank our KOLs, our steering committee members, our investigators and most importantly, the patients for what they're doing for our study.
And then, of course, there's Roivant. I do want to thank Roivant, one, for having a great investment team to find a drug like this, but also to give us their acumen in so many areas and of course, allow us to keep our heads down and focus on doing the right thing for the development of mosliciguat without being at the sort of whims or ebbs and flows of the capital markets day in and day out. So thank you, guys, for that. And so I'll stop with that, and I'll be pleased to take your questions with my colleagues. Thank you.
So on stage, as Drew was saying, we also have Carlos Sanmarco. He's the Senior VP Program Lead at Pulmovant responsible for leading the mosli program and overseeing CMC and business operations functions. Carlos has extensive experience working in pulmonary hypertension and was the global program lead at Acceleron, overseeing the sotatercept program in pulmonary hypertension from IND filing through Phase III completion, which obviously led to the company acquisition by Merck for $11 billion.
Yaron, first question.
Congrats on the really nice data. I guess the biggest question that I have is there's no question you have a very nice effect on PVR. Can you talk about the anti-inflammatory and the fibrotic effect and what you've seen maybe in preclinical models or biologically based with cGMP modulation?
That's a great question. Thanks. Drew will answer...
Sure. I'm happy to take it. Yaron, nice to see you. A little bit. I would say that there are preclinical models that actually demonstrate that this type of mechanism could have impacts on reducing fibroblast proliferation, collagen deposits, things of that nature. I know I can make the statement that there are more preclinical models in this world, especially coming also out of oncology.
But it was impressive the way that was working. I think more importantly, we really do know that cGMP, in particular, has the opportunity to drive these anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic effects. So we'll see what's also happening in some of the other areas where we're -- TETON, is an example of that, where we'll see if they're actually driving antifibrotic effects or there are other reasons for that study doing what it's doing. That will continue to allow us to go further and deeper into which aspects of this broad set of opportunities we have with mosli that can drive antifibrotic effects.
Carlos, anything you'd add there?
No, I would just add that it's clear that there is a crosstalk between the cyclic GMP and cyclic AMP as well. So the potential of having an antifibrotic and inflammatory effect in the sGC pathway is high and it is proven in preclinical models.
Look, I think it's unclear to us whether the TETON data is a function of vasodilation and vascular remodeling or whether it's a function of more fundamental antifibrotic effect. I guess our general view is we're watching that program super closely, and we mostly feel like if they're able to do it, we should be able to do something similar. Thanks, Yaron.
Great. Next question comes from Yatin from Guggenheim. PH-ILD correlations. How is the historical correlation between PVR and 6-minute walk test in PH-ILD? What kind of signal would you like to see on the secondary endpoints?
Yes. In terms of correlations within PH-ILD between PVR and other measures of clinical benefit, I think there's a question about how many data points you need to actually correctly compute a correlation. We just don't have that many. In general, obviously, in pulmonary hypertension, there is quite a good correlation between PVR and measures of clinical benefit. But Frank or Drew, anything you'd add to that?
Nothing from me.
I just think in this study, we're in Phase II. We have a mechanism that we know is a very potent vasodilator. We wanted to really explore that in an appropriate way, so we understood the attributes of the drug. We are looking at 6-minute walk, but you'd have to power it in a much larger study, which we would do in the future.
But I feel pretty strongly that there's a great opportunity for those things to correlate over time. And there are other data points we're looking at to triangulate. For us, we will really just be looking for some form of a trend here to give us some confidence alongside, I think, what will be other hopefully very positive data.
Great. Thank you. Doug, over here.
Doug Tsao, H.C. Wainwright. If we look at the data, we saw a very nice response for both the 2 and the 4-milligram dose in terms of PVR. We really saw a separation for the 4-milligram on cardiac output. And I'm just curious if you sort of understood or had a sort of hypothesis on what we saw there.
It's a good question. Carlos, do you want to?
Yes. The things that are interesting, this is like single-dose studies. And when you think about the importance of cardiac output in pulmonary hypertension, that's normally what you'll be expecting from a really strong vasodilator. And that's one of the reasons we believe there is something there related to like the 4-milligram dose. And the expectation is that you may be able to see the effect on the right ventricle because of that effect as well. As Drew was mentioning, there was a difference in the patient population. We had CTAP and PAH. This may have played a factor in some of these results, but that's exactly what we're trying to investigate as part of the PH-ILD Phase II study.
And I think as you know, but others may not be aware, our protocol calls for an escalation of patients to the highest tolerated dose or goal is to get as many people to 4 as can tolerate 4, and we think actually the vast majority of them may well be able to do that.
Thanks, Doug. Corinne?
Maybe looking forward to that, you highlighted a combination program as well. And so as you think about a registrational program, how would you prioritize monotherapy versus combination? And how do you anticipate kind of this market playing out with respect to polypharmacy. And then kind of a last one to that. What do you need to show for this to be sort of the frontline treatment and background of therapy in PH-ILD?
Yes. Thanks, Corinne. I think you did a really nice job laying out some of this in the presentation today. Obviously, in parallel, the PAH were polypharmacy is the name of the game. I want to be clear, we are not seeding frontline to anybody else. We think we have -- look, 1 inhalation once a day is a big benefit.
The fact that cough is an on-target effect for Prostacyclin, treprostinil is a downside to that mechanism. Obviously, it will depend with the clinical data show, but we think we absolutely have a path to frontline use and -- remember that in a variety of geographies, treprostinils aren't even approved.
And so I think it's important for us to have good robust monotherapy data for global use as well as for frontline use. Obviously, the study that we're running now, which these guys talk a little bit more about will help us generate some data on top of Tyvaso and I think our general sense is, over time, there will be a lot of mechanisms in PH-ILD and that we'll wind up in combination, multiple of them. But Frank or Carlos.
I don't think there's much more to say on that.
You got it, Matt.
Great. I think that's it for questions. We're going to go to a 10-minute break for those on the web.
Great. Final session we come back. Thanks, everybody.
[Break]
All right. Great. Okay. So this is the last section. So we're going to talk briefly about the LNP litigation, which I know is topic on some people's minds. We'll wrap up with some concluding remarks from me and then a final Q&A. So thank you again for bearing with us, and there's a lot of content here. We really appreciate all of you joining.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about the LNP litigation. I introduce Lindsay Androski, who is the CEO of Arbutus and a special counsel to Genevant on the litigation has been at Roivant for a really long time, done a whole bunch different things with us. That's a pattern across our leaders these days, and we're really proud of it. One comment on this before I hand it over to Lindsay to speak and again, I'll do a little bit of intro is as we get closer to the trial, which is set for March, we're probably going to just be a little bit more sort of focused on how we talk about this and careful. And so we're not going to take Q&A on the litigation itself today.
Look, in terms of overview here, this is a big and important moment for us in a part of the story that's a little bit peripheral, but also obviously a huge opportunity or something that could matter. Look, we believe that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine, both infringe on multiple Genevant and Arbutus patents. There have been $145 billion worth of combined sales of the Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. So there's an implication there on the overall size. We've now had marketing rulings in both cases. So claim construction is complete in the U.S. cases for both Pfizer and Moderna, I think we view those outcomes Genevant/Arbutus outcomes as favorable.
Probably most importantly in the coming months, there's a U.S. jury trial now scheduled in the Moderna case for March. And so we're looking forward to and doing an enormous amount of work to prepare for that. We're looking forward to that opportunity. And outside the U.S., in the Moderna litigation, we initiated proceedings last year -- earlier this year, and they'll begin having hearings and outcomes in 2026. So 2026 will be a big year for this as Lindsay will talk about.
So with that, I'll ask Lindsay to come up on stage, and Lindsay will take you through the state of this and where we're headed.
All right. Thank you Matt. Hello, everyone. Good to see you all this morning. This story actually begins 25 years ago at a predecessor of Arbutus, where our scientists were pioneering the field of lipid nanoparticle delivery. Our inventions change the landscape of biotechnology. And alongside our partners proved that you could get nucleic acids into the body in a way that would be therapeutically useful. Seven years ago, Roivant got more directly involved in this space when it teamed up with Arbutus to launch Genevant Sciences, which freed up Arbutus to focus solely on its chronic hepatitis B development programs.
Today, Genevant continues both to pioneer in the LNP space with a large team of scientists and to partner with companies with proprietary nucleic acid payload technology to develop innovative medicines. There are a number of patents that issue in the pending proceedings against Moderna, globally and Pfizer, BioNTech in the U.S. The patents in these cases fall into 3 categories. First, we have what you could call the particle composition patents, and you can think of those as the recipe you need to follow to produce lipid nanoparticles with optimal characteristics. We have asserted some of the particle composition patents in each of the Moderna and the Pfizer and BioNTech cases.
Pre-COVID, Moderna admitted that it was practicing some of our particle composition patents and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to rule 2 of the patents on this chart invalid. Moderna did not succeed. Moderna appealed and it did not succeed on appeal either. We have now asked the court to limit what Moderna can argue about those patent's validity at our jury trial, and we're awaiting the court's ruling on that.
Second, also in both cases, we have an mRNA LNP composition patent. And you can think of that as an invention that protects the mRNA cargo that travels inside the LNP into the body. And third, we have asserted against Pfizer and BioNTech specific methods used to manufacture our lipid nanoparticles. So as Matt mentioned, our U.S. Moderna trial is scheduled for March. This is a big base and it's an important event for us. At the same time, the U.S. revenues for SpikeVax, which is the dark blue wedge in this pie chart, represent just 10% of the total global revenues for SpikeVax and Comirnaty combined. In other words, 90% of those revenues are not going to be impacted by this first trial. The March trial is really just the beginning.
I'm going to talk a little bit more detail now specifically about the Moderna case. We filed the Moderna U.S. lawsuit in February of 2022. So we're now almost 4 years into that case. Our position then as now is that Moderna accomplished something incredible by developing the SpikeVax vaccine in record time. Our position then is now is that the reason Moderna was able to move so quickly in developing the vaccine is that Moderna had access to our LNP delivery technology, including through a pre-COVID license. It did not, however, have a license to use our LNP in the COVID vaccine and unfortunately, it became necessary for us to protect our rights through litigation.
A lot has happened since we filed this lawsuit. Initially, Moderna asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit as to a significant portion of the infringing sales. Moderna argued it had permission from the U.S. government to use our patents and that we should be required to sue the U.S. government for all sales that were made through a government contract. This is under a statute called Section 1498. The court denied Moderna's partial motion to dismiss.
Later, the U.S. Department of Justice during the last presidential administration filed a brief weighing in on this issue on Moderna's side. The court reconsidered the issue, but it again denied the partial motion to dismiss. The Section 1498 issue is not quite done yet. It's pending again before the court right now in a stage of the case called summary judgment. We have just concluded our summary judgment briefing and Daubert briefing, and I'll explain what both of those things are shortly.
In early 2024, we received a claim construction ruling, which is when the court decides disputes between the parties over what certain terms in the Asserted Patents mean. And earlier this year, as Matt mentioned, we sued Moderna in many other countries globally. Now we are fully immersed in getting ready for the U.S. trial. Pre-trial briefings will be due in January. And that includes things like voir dire questions, which you use to pick a jury, jury instructions, the verdict form that the jury will fill out at the end of the case, lists of witnesses who will testify and list of exhibits that might be shown in court, trials scheduled for March. Later next year, we expect to have public hearings in some of the international cases as well.
So summary judgment. Juries decide facts. When parties can't agree on the fact, it goes to the jury and the jury effectively decides here's what actually happened. Summary judgment is a stage before trial where the parties say, "Hey, we don't need a jury to decide this issue." We all agree what the facts are. You, your honor, you should decide this issue based on the law and then we can save time at trial because we don't need to talk about it to the jury. There are a number of summary judgment motions pending before the court right now.
I already mentioned Section 1498, which is the issue of whether we were right to sue Moderna or whether we should have to sue the U.S. government instead. There are several other summary judgment motions pending and all of those deal with specific issues under the patent laws. We expect the court to rule on these motions before trial, but we don't know exactly when that will happen. After we received the rulings, we and Moderna may have to adjust what we will present to the jury at trial. And in addition, though we initially filed suit on 6 patents, we were ordered to narrow our case for jury presentation purposes, which is customary. We currently intend to present infringement arguments on 4 patents.
So turning to Daubert. We've also just finished Daubert briefings. The name Daubert comes from a Supreme Court case, and it basically set the rules for how judges should determine if expert testimony will be helpful and appropriate for the jury to hear. It is standard in these kind of cases for each side to try to keep out the other side, most important expert witnesses through Daubert motion and this case is no exception. So there are a number of Daubert requests pending, including to exclude both sides damages experts, which are the experts who analyze how much money Moderna should owe Genevant and Arbutus if the jury finds infringement and as well as other experts who are offering opinions on various aspects of infringement and patent validity.
So as one example, we have an expert who conducted fractionation testing on Moderna's vaccine samples which involved separating out the vaccine particles to make it easier to determine the molar ratios of the particles in the vaccine. Moderna is asking the court to rule that the jury cannot see those test results. So what's going to happen from here?
As I mentioned, we expect the judge to rule on Daubert and Summary judgment motions at some point before trials. Then we're going to head to Wilmington, Delaware for a while. Trial scheduled to begin on March 9, and we estimate it will be a 2-week trial, give or take a few days. The way trial proceeds is that we first pick a jury, each side does its opening statements, then we present our case with Moderna cross examining our witnesses. After we finish, Moderna presents its defense, and we get to cross examine Moderna's witnesses.
Once both sides have presented their cases, we'll have a chance to put on a rebuttal case where we can put on additional witnesses and evidence to respond to Moderna's defense. After that, there are closing arguments and the jury retires to deliberate and decide. We wait at the courthouse the entire time the jury is deliberating just in case the jury has a question or, of course, so that we're there when they return with their verdict.
The jury is going to decide, are our patents valid? Did Moderna infringe the patents? If yes, did Moderna willfully infringed the patents as opposed to doing it by mistake or out of ignorance. And what dollar amount should Moderna be required to pay Genevant and Arbutus to compensate fairly for its infringing.
After that, we'll all go home but it's not over. There will be a period for post-trial briefing to the court, which is when the parties act the judge to fix things, they think the jury got wrong. It also involves some financial decisions like if there was a damages award, how much interest should be added? Should Moderna be required to post a bond and if infringement was willful, should the juries damages award be increased? It is also likely that one or both sides will appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the international proceedings against Moderna 2026 will also be a busy year.
And a few key differences between our international proceedings and the U.S. proceeding is that because we filed the international proceedings this year earlier in 2025, long after the COVID pandemic ended, we are seeking injunctions to stop Moderna from continuing to sell vaccines that practice our technology without permission. And in many international jurisdictions, we have the possibility to recover Moderna's profits rather than a reasonable royalty if we prevail in the infringement and validity phase of the case.
Now I'll turn to the Pfizer and BioNTech case. The Pfizer and BioNTech litigation starts from a similar place in that BioNTech also had a license to Genevant's LNP technology and have been using it since well before COVID. Like Moderna, BioNTech did not have authorization to use Genevant's LNP in its COVID vaccine.
We did have a question submitted earlier today. So thank you for that, about whether -- what is the status of Genevant's license with BioNTech? That license remains in effect today. BioNTech did recently provide notice of termination for the oncology portion of the collaboration, but we are still in the notice period. We filed this lawsuit in April 2023, so a little bit more than 2.5 years ago. And so we're a little behind where we are in the Moderna case.
Last December, the claim construction hearing, which was, again, where the court decides the meaning of terms in the patents that the parties dispute that claim construction really issued in September now we're in fact discovery, which happens before you get to expert discovery, and we're waiting for future case deadlines to be set. We don't know exactly when that's going to happen. We found the lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech because public disclosures indicated that they were in fact using our LNP. In addition to the pre-COVID license that BioNTech had obtained from Genevant, Pfizer and BioNTech's emergency use authorization filing with the FDA disclosed a recipe for the LNP that was covered by one or more of our particle composition patents.
And in addition, I mentioned that we are also asserting patents on manufacturing methods in this case. That is because a CNN feature that toured Pfizer's manufacturing facility and showed them using our patented manufacturing equipment, which is known as a T-Mixer. So in closing, I'll just reiterate that this is a very long road, but it's a very important road for us. We are fully committed to ensuring that our scientists seminal contributions to LNP technology and the important role that our scientist inventions played in the remarkable COVID vaccines are acknowledged and rewarded properly.
Thank you. As Matt mentioned, I won't be taking any Q&A. So I think, Richard, I'm handing it off to you for a financial update.
Thank you, Lindsay. Just wanted to lay out the opportunity from a financial perspective that's in front of us. Looking at the portfolio across Brepocitinib, Immunovant and Mosliciguat, we have clear untapped high-value growth drivers with $15 billion peak revenue potential.
If I look at the bottom part of this graph, you can see Brepocitinib, where we anticipate our first launch in 2027. Ben highlighted the phenomenal data we had in dermatomyositis across 10 very important endpoints, the high unmet need. And remember, this is a once per day pill for a very devastating disease as we heard from patients. So I'm very excited to sort of -- this will be the bottom part of the launch. And then about a year later, you have the noninfectious uveitis launch for Brepocitinib.
Moving on here, which again is supported by very strong clinical data we have seen in the Phase II study. We know that the study is fully enrolled, and I'm excited to see that. And then we're waiting for the POC study for CS, which will add a third layer of potential growth to that base layer. As we look at sort of the middle part of the graph here for IMBT-1402, that's comprised of 5 pivotal studies that we have ongoing for 1402, and we obviously have 1 POC study there.
The biggest opportunity is in Graves' disease. As Eric laid out, there's an incredible unmet need there, a very motivated patient population. And as I reflect on the data and also Dr. Lupo discussion, we clearly have disease-modifying benefit. We really have been pioneering the Graves' disease space, and we have disease-modifying potential. We're way in front and have the best presentation with auto-injector.
So that's an incredible potential opportunity of growth. Obviously, myasthenia gravis, as Eric talked about, we have proven and shown that greater than IgG, 70% suppression has a meaningful impact on efficacy. We saw the same in Graves' so we have an opportunity to differentiate there with the best-in-class efficacy profile. And then I'm excited to see the data in difficult-to-treat RA and also in CLE, which are wildcards right now. But again, where we could potentially differentiate and then, of course, we have Sjögren’s and CIDP. So that's for the middle layer.
Then thinking about our latest broad announcement from Bayer for mosli, again, we have shown incredible data in PAH. This is, again, a very easy once-a-day GPI. We know that this market is just at the beginning of forming, and I'm excited to see the data in 2026 to inform the potential there. But we're -- again, a third layer of growth. I think if you take all of this together, you can see $15 billion plus of stacked launches in potential revenue peak sales, and that's probability unadjusted.
Going to the next slide, how are we going to actually fund this. We're in a very unique position with $4.4 billion in cash as the last reported September quarter that everything we talked about today is fully funded. That includes the programs we talked about, that includes the launches. And we're very happy to also invest in the winners like we announced this morning, where we put $350 million into Immunovant in gross proceeds ourselves, along with $550 million in total with some great investors, and that has extended Immunovant's runway now to the Graves' disease launch. That leaves $2 billion available for new opportunities, either in the current portfolio or externally.
And just to remind folks of our 10-year history here, we have done -- we have a very high bar for deals. We usually will take up small upfront, run a POC study. If it doesn't work, we kill it. So we have a lot of opportunity to drive additional value and to deploy that capital very carefully. We have also, as Matt talked about, returned very meaningful capital back to shareholders, reducing our share count by 14% at roughly $10 and we have an additional 500 million left over in that purchase authorization to deploy opportunistically.
We've been -- moving on to sort of kind of how we're modeling the business over the next 3 years. Look, as Matt talked about, these are very tractable launches. So I anticipate over the next 3 years, we'll have modest growth in SG&A. Obviously, as we are launching Brepocitinib that NIU and then get into the Immunovant launches, you can see that SG&A is growing to the low mid-400 range in 2028. The R&D programs are fully funded in the low to mid-600 range. Essentially, as the Phase IIIs get completed, and we have some readouts for the POC studies that will sort of move up and down. But again, that should be fairly stable. And look, we, I think, are in a very unique position here to have generate data, have very meaningful launches and have the incredible discipline to execute as you can see with the focus on the financial metrics. I'll pass on to Matt.
Thank you, Richard. Okay. We have some non-GAAP disclosures in here. And now home stretch. So thank you again for listening all day today. We have a lot that we wanted to get through. We're really excited, as you can tell about a bunch of different aspects of our portfolio and what's coming up. I just want to come a little bit back to the heart of this, which is to talk about where we are and where we're headed. Look, we think we're really well positioned for the next year, for the next several years.
We think we have created development programs with well chosen indications. We think we're capitalized and funded through profitability, which is something that so few of our peers can say confidently. We think we have the ability to successfully commercialize launches, especially commercialized drugs in the kinds of indications that our peers have shown a good ability to do it, and we think brepocitinib DM is a perfect first example of exactly that sort of thing.
And we think we have the ability to reinvest into the next generation of our pipeline, including indications for our existing programs that we haven't announced here as well, some new things that we are truly excited to get going on and to share.
2026 is another great year for us now, especially with some of the major data catalysts pulled in. We have, obviously, the brepo DM NDA filing kicking off the year. But also in brepo, we now have another, as you heard from earlier today, equally large indication, reading out a complete pivotal program within 2026. I think this has the potential to be DM like in scope and it's data that's now coming next year. We obviously have the Phase IIb data in PH-ILD, which I think has the potential to add a further leg to the stool that we feel really good about. We have the D2T RA study reading out next year, which you heard Eric talk a little bit about, but which, again, interesting upside opportunity, if that works out the way that we'd like it to. We have a couple of POC studies, proof of concept studies reading out for CLE, for 1402 and for cutaneous sarcoidosis, also important programs. And then we have certainly, not least of all, the LNP jury trial that will take place in March.
So a lot going on in 2026, frankly, a very busy year ahead, daunting to look at it on a page, but we'll get there. In terms of what we're focused on, look, we're obviously focused on preparing for the brepocitinib launch. We want to make sure that team has everything they need and that's an opportunity that we can't afford not to nail. We are looking to progress 1402 development across multiple pivotal studies. There's an enormous amount of work going on there. Obviously, Graves' is a top priority in getting that study fully enrolled, getting that study set up for registration or the study set up for registration is high on our list.
We want to convert a few different proof-of-concept studies into later-stage programs. Obviously, for PH-ILD, that would be ideal. And then for some of the other earlier studies, CS, CLE, if the data supports it, looking forward to moving forward there. We'd like to execute on the LNP litigation. And finally, we'd like to add to the existing pipeline. So a lot for us to focus on in the next 12 to 18 months.
Richard put this slide up, it's schematic. We had extensive debates on how much revenue guidance to provide at this stage. The truth is we're doing our best, and we think these are really great programs. I think the point is, as a portfolio, I think there is -- there aren't very many other biotech companies in the portfolio with this breadth and this magnitude of overall opportunity, and we are really privileged to have each of these programs playing nicely together with each other and adding up to something that we think is synergistically pretty awesome.
So we're looking forward to executing across all of this and to building something really large and hopefully, entering that graduating class we talked about earlier.
I'm not going to go through all of these catalysts. It's a really rich period for us in the next 36 months. This is only the stuff we've already disclosed. We've already gotten that portfolio. Sorry, mic, still on? Okay. So look, I think we've got a very busy stretch ahead. We are enormously grateful, obviously, to our patients, to our investigators, to the team at Roivant who work on these things, so I can't tell if my mic is still on. Am I good? Good.
We're enormously grateful to the patients, the investigators, the team at Roivant who is working tirelessly on this. We're grateful to the investor community who has supported us along the way here. And hopefully, you're all going to be with us on the journey from here. So that concludes the prepared portion of today. We have an opportunity for a little bit more Q&A. I just want to say thank you again. There's a lot of content here. Thank you to the team that put this together. Thanks to all of you for listening. It's a real privilege to be able to get in front of all of you, and I'm looking forward to a little bit of Q&A and then some lunch.
Great. We are going to go first to Brian Cheng. Brian is over there.
Brian Cheng from JPMorgan. I think one question that I have has always been on the BD front. There's a lot going on now across the Vant portfolio. How do you think about that? Richard, you mentioned your messaging around your potential spend on BD is very consistent. You want a small upfront, you're going to acquire something that has really strong upside potential. Where are you on that now? Given Priovant is working out and their multiple Vants are really slowly moving your company into commercial stage. So are you still actively looking for the next BD assets? And do you still have capacity to bring in newer assets in your story today?
Yes. Thanks, Brian. It's a great question. I'm not surprised to get it. Look, I think, first of all, Roivant's DNA has been built around opportunism and careful asset hunting since the very beginning, and there is definitely no change there. We have a phenomenal team of people. My wish they could be here today, it was under the weather, but we have a phenomenal team of people working across both BD and R&D on identifying those opportunities. We are active, we are out in the world hunting.
I think it's important for us to acknowledge that the profile of the company has changed in the past year that we are cruising for commercialization across a handful of large important programs and that we need to make sure we nail those launches that we need to build a business that matters not at the scale we were at 2, 3 years ago, but at the scale we're hoping to be at in 2 or 3 years. And so I think, look, we're looking at late-stage programs. We're looking at things that move the needle.
We're looking at opportunities that can truly add another leg to the stool that we talked about today. But I think there are a lot of things that meet that description. And we are always in late-stage discussion on multiple of them. It's hard to know what's going to convert when it happens, we'll be happy to talk about it. The truth of the matter is, in the meantime, we've got so much going on in the existing portfolio and so much opportunity with what's in hand, but we're mostly focused on that without waiting.
Thanks Matt. We're going to got to Sam next.
Sam Semenkow. I'll just add another big picture one. Brepocitinib you have 3 indications, Immunovant 6, but there's a lot of opportunities beyond those. What is your capacity to maybe take on additional indications, maybe some more that are riskier or some more that we know that FcRns might work in? Just curious any thoughts there?
Frank is the Chairman of the Vant Boards and also runs our R&D organization and is responsible for that capacity. So I'll hand to him.
Thanks, Matt. So look, the answer is we have more capacity and we have more ambition. There are both some late-stage programs or later-stage development programs we have in more than concept and pretty well defined right now that we may well roll out, depending kind of on the last few weeks of those programs across first brepocitinib probably. And then secondly, the FcRn franchise. Look, the FcRn franchise and brepocitinib share some similarities is there's kind of boundless opportunity there. And in a way that's very unique actually mechanistically.
And so I think you have to pick your spots and say, where do we think we can have a unique scientific advantage? Where do we think we can have a unique commercial advantage? And I think we've been good at finding things that are unique like Graves, bringing them forward to the floor. We have some ideas for brepo that I think we'll continue to expand that franchise. We have ideas in the FcRn franchise where there's a lot more development, frankly, I think you're looking at '23 to '25 current indications in development in that field. And so we have both the opportunity to kind of pioneer our own indications. And frankly, part of the reason we don't talk about them so much is because people have the opportunity to follow us when we do.
And so we try to get them a little bit more advanced, especially in FcRn before we talk about them publicly. But I think there is absolutely the both active work and intuition to bring these -- these are going to be with -- if we're fortunate that they are what we think we are that they're going to be giant commercial franchises, and I think the ability to add on indications that can layer on not hundreds of millions, but billions of incremental sales is really where we're focused.
We go to the center over here, please?
This is Iris Gao from Guggenheim here for Yatin Suneja. It is going to be a quick one on brepo. So is there a schedule for registration and launch in Japan? And if so, is there -- like how is the market like there?
I'll let Frank take that one as well.
We have spent less time thinking about the Japanese market than the U.S. market. The honest truth is our focus -- our initial focus has been the U.S. market just given the kind of tangible opportunity that's there and then the unmet need and so that's really where we've spent the bulk of our time to date.
That's because there are Japanese patients in our clinical program. And I do think we will get the program registered in Japan. It's just second in priority behind making sure everything goes the way we wanted to in the U.S.
Go to Corinne, next.
Corinne Johnson, Goldman Sachs. Maybe another big picture one in terms of commercial infrastructure, as you think building -- I think about building that out for multiple products across multiple launches. And what are some of the aspects of the commercial program you can leverage across these different products? And what do you have to build out distinctly? And as you think about like timing and team of bringing that on board.
Yes, perfect. And look, I think we've learned an enormous amount from the field on how to commercialize drugs that look like these. And I think we're standing on the shoulders of giants truly. There's some people who have done a phenomenal job with this that have a lot to teach us. I think there's a few things that are generally common among successful commercial launches in these general categories these days. I think among those things are a lot of medical affairs and patient connectivity. And I think that's underway now with all of our important programs.
I think a lot of patients support post launch in terms of helping with coverage, helping with sort of managing the complicated U.S. health care system. I think some of that is probably shareable between programs, and I think we're focused on thinking that through. That said, most importantly, we're building something that we think is going to work for the brepo launch in DM. And then if it works, I think there will be a lot of opportunity and interest in extending it to some of the other programs, practically speaking.
Obviously, there are some other things that are obviously shared. Some of these things we either built during the Dermavant era and have managed to maintain some expertise or have learned about enough to know what we need. Obviously, there's a layer of market access where it's important. We'd be able to approach the payer community with a portfolio, and I think we're thinking through exactly what we need to do there.
And then there's actually just like for lack of a better word, just like some boring nuts and bolts stuff, distribution and 3PL agreements and pharmacy agreements and things like that, where if you set them up right at the beginning, you can make sure that you benefit from volume across the portfolio, and that's the kind of infrastructure that I would say we are focused on generalizing now.
Notably, and I think this is important. There's a kind of commercial infrastructure that I think we won't generalize, which is the laser focus on the patient and the prescriber for each of these indications, the field force, the medical affairs organizations you just need to be in those communities to be successful. And I think that belongs at the tip of the spear as close to each program as we can possibly put it, and that's where it's being built for brepo in DM right now.
These are places where we've really invested in kind of understanding to the individual clinic level. Where are the patients? Where is the need? Where are the doctors, who do they treat, what health plans serve those patients in those clinics at that physician level. And I think that kind of preparation will serve us well. And these are also reasonably tractable indications. They don't require enormous sales force build, but we will invest in them aggressively because we think they are remarkable opportunities.
It looks like Matt, we've exhausted all the questions. So with that...
Fantastic. Awesome. Well, thank you again, everybody. I really appreciate you being here. Lunch is out there. I'll catch up with as many of you as I can. Have a great day.
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Roivant Sciences — Analyst/Investor Day - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — Jefferies London Healthcare Conference 2025
1. Question Answer
Good afternoon. Welcome to the Jefferies Healthcare Conference in London. My name is Dennis Ding, biotech analyst here at Jefferies. I have the wonderful pleasure of having the CEO of Roivant here with us. Matt, welcome.
Thanks. Thanks for having me. I feel like I am everything that is standing between these people and a drink.
That's true. I guess, look, 2025 has been quite a transformational year for the company. A lot of pieces that you guys have set up over the last several years have played out this year positively for the company. But maybe just highlight some of the progress and some of the data that you guys have reported this year that have generated so much excitement.
Yes. Thank you. Yes. Look, it's -- it's always fun. Look, the stressful thing about biotech is you plant seeds and then it takes a long time to see what's going to come out of them, and it's always fun to kind of see it actualize. So Roivant is a transformed company relative to earlier this year. So we are -- for those who don't know us very well, we're about a $14.5 billion market cap now, public biopharma company, mostly focused on developing late-stage drugs that we think should matter for underserved patient populations. That's probably what half the companies on the stage have said today.
And this year, in particular, our portfolio has moved forward in a really meaningful way, probably across 2 programs. The first earlier this year is we generated some data in our FcRn franchise that we think helped underscore that we have a potential best-in-class drug with deep IgG suppressions leading to better clinical benefit in myasthenia gravis and CIDP.
And then more recently in that franchise as well, showing that we can drive clinical remission in Graves' disease, which we think sets that program up for enormous success. Now that's probably nonetheless, not the main event of the year at this point because after that, in September, we just put out some Phase III data for brepocitinib, our dual inhibitor of TYK2 and JAK1 in dermatomyositis, which is just one of these great horrible orphan indications where there's enormous unmet need from these patients are very sick.
It's an inflammatory disease marked by a terrible skin rash and a bad muscle inflammation that leads to wasting. These patients can't climb stairs. They can't lift things. They can't live their daily lives. The rash is itself debilitating. And we demonstrate -- this is like basically other than IVIg, which has been approved in use for a long time. This is really the first novel drug to succeed in a dermatomyositis study, and we generated data showing extraordinary benefit, hit every primary and every secondary endpoint across muscle and skin and different parts of the disease and showed that all while on a background of reducing steroid burden, which something docs really hear about. So just a transformative moment for us in terms of being able to bring a drug like that to patients, which now we're on a path to registration for. So we're really looking forward to that.
Sure. And what has the feedback from doctors been like around brepo?
Yes, one of the great things about this program is there's so much unmet need. We had docs literally in tears the day the study came out because these docs have all been trialists across multiple failed programs in dermatomyositis. And for them, it's such a remarkable moment to see a study finally succeed, to see clinical benefit coming for these patients. So just unbelievable feedback. To be honest, it's one of the things where investors tell me they've done doc calls and I immediately know it's going to be a good meeting because the docs are just like the doc community is so far behind this drug.
Okay. So you guys will file the NDA in the first half...?
Yes, that's what we've said. But really drafting the clinical section is really what's involved at this point, and the team is hard at work at doing just that.
Okay. And then how should we think about the launch trajectory once you guys get approved? And like are there any good analogs or that are relevant to brepo that you should point us to?
I'm looking out across the room for my Head of IR and CFO, whom I know are sitting in the room because the answer I'm supposed to give is slow and steady. The launch is going to be slow and steady, gradual. Look, If think the nice thing about this launch is it pattern matches to a lot of the great recent launches in biotech. It's an orphan disease. It's got 40,000 currently treated patients. Some of our competitors say 70,000 from an epidemiological perspective.
It's a good-sized market. It's going to have a sort of orphan rare disease price point. We haven't obviously decided on price yet, but the other therapies in the category are sort of orphan price point. And so we feel like we have an opportunity to learn from Verona and Madrigal and Horizon and Bridge and Argenx and Insmed and so many others and to try and learn from all of those examples.
And so I think we're doing the best we can to understand what happens in new markets like MG where patients -- where companies bring drugs to market in an area of high unmet need without a lot of other drugs. I think that's sort of how we're thinking about trajectory. Obviously, for a new-to-market category and a new-to-market indication, we're going to need to educate the doc base. That part's been going well. We're going to need to sort out market access and payer dynamics.
There's a lot of work to do. So I think I don't have specific guidance to point to, but I think there's a huge opportunity here at peak penetration. And I think it work for us to do in front of us to build to that. The only other thing I'll say is in the best possible sense, and this analogy is not a guarantee of anything. But look, I think there's nothing you could have said about myasthenia gravis in 2019 before the FcRn showed up that you couldn't now say about DM in terms of size, in terms of opportunity, in terms of unmet need, in terms of severity. And so I feel like there's just like some really good analogs in the world for situations where -- launches like this have gone well.
Okay. And where do you see the most amount of adoption happening once you get launched? Do you see yourself being like a post-IVIg sort of option or pre-IVIg? And just give us some color there.
Yes. So IVIg. For context for those who aren't super familiar with dermatomyositis is the only -- the only recent trial that has been successful in DM has been an IVIg study, and there are approved IVIgs for use in DM. Among the standard treatment paradigms in -- for IVIg and DM, the probably most common is 40 hours a month of infusion, sometimes spread out over 5 consecutive days. So these are patients who are giving a work week a month to going into infusion clinic.
IVIg is a tough therapy for these patients. It is only used in about 13% of the DM market now, in part for the reasons I just said, it's just a tough drug to use for that patient population. And then there's another, call it, 11% who are using off-label stuff, including a lot of things that have failed clinical trials, Remicade, rituximab, et cetera. I think the short answer is, if you ask docs, they talk about writing brepo very broadly. They talk about using it in 30%, 40%, 50-plus percent of their treated patients, which obviously is a stretch to believe on day 0.
But I think there's a huge opportunity across the patient population is, I guess, like the first answer to that question. There's obviously the low-hanging fruit, the severe patients, the refractory patients, the patients who are otherwise considering a course of IVIg or who are on IVIg and don't like it, the patients who are on very high-dose steroids or very high-dose methotrexate.
So I think like those are all kind of low-hanging fruit patients. But the honest answer is we're an oral therapy for a disease where the majority of patients are on oral steroids and immunosuppressants. I think almost every patient is conceivably eligible. And the question is really just where are docs going to start in terms of trying the drug out.
Right. And I think it does help that there is some usage of JAK inhibitors currently in DM just off label.
Yes, I totally agree with that. I think the docs are familiar with them. Look, the DM is treated -- in the U.S., there's about half the patients, a little bit more than half are treated at specialty myositis referral centers. At those centers, the docs are split about 50-50 between dermatologists and rheumatologists. Obviously, those are both subspecialties, rheumatologists especially, but both subspecialties that are intensely familiar with JAK inhibition as a mechanism.
And some of these docs are pretty heavy users of like off-label tofacitinib because, for example, some investigators have run studies of tofa that have shown like reasonably decent clinical benefit. And so I think we get to benefit from that tailwind. But even the docs using off-label JAK inhibitors. First of all, our drug is not pure JAK. It's a combination of JAK1 and TYK2, and there are good reasons to believe that TYK2 is contributing meaningfully to clinical benefit.
And these docs are just like desperate for an on-label option where they can get coverage, where they can get support from a sponsor, where they can do all these things that allow them to use the drug more reliably and more effectively. And so I think that absolutely, there will be a tailwind from docs converting like off-label tofa patients to brepo as well. And I think that's driven a lot of the doc familiarity with the mechanism and the doc enthusiasm here.
Yes. Okay. And I feel like DM is just a start. There's also NIU. You guys also started Phase II in cutaneous sarcoid. Should we be expecting additional indications over the next 1 to 2 years just...?
Yes. I think the short answer to that question for brepo is absolutely yes. Look, this is a great drug. I think like take a tiny step back from a historical perspective. We in-licensed this drug from Pfizer in 2021. And at the time, JAK inhibitors were on their back foot as a mechanism, right? The sort of the study had just come out that showed that they could cause elevated either cardiometabolic risk or other things.
And it sort of wasn't clear where the market was headed. And we were like, okay, but everyone's throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. We know these are incredibly effective anti-inflammatory drugs. And so we looked at this sort of orphan disease swim lane as ours. Now you fast forward to 2025, look, Rinvoq is now -- 2021, Rinvoq was a $3 billion drug, and I think everyone kind of thought it was going to flat line.
In 2025, Rinvoq is a $8 billion drug that's probably on a path to being a $15 billion drug. The market has spoken and physicians are obviously, in certain categories, very comfortable using these agents. And really, the orphan swim lane for JAK inhibitors is wide open. It's ours to inhabit. And so it just feels like a really big opportunity. Obviously, we have the program in DM that's now in registration effectively or will be filed soon.
We have NIU, which reads out next year -- or sorry, reads out in 2027, I should say. And then we have a Phase II study in cutaneous sarcoid that reads out next year. But absolutely, I mean, at some level, any orphan inflammatory disease with 20,000 to 100,000 patients for which there's high unmet need, not a lot of other approved options should be viewed as an eligible place for us to go. And you can imagine that we've pretty aggressively canvassed that landscape, especially for places where both JAK1 and TYK2 should play a role, and it feels like a really big opportunity.
Yes. Kind of sounds like Rinvoq for rare disease.
Yes, I'll take that as an analog. Rinvoq is a good drug.
Okay. So then if I can ask on NIU. Just remind us of some of the Phase II data you guys have shown and just what's standard of care there and what's the incremental benefit that brepo has?
So NIU is it's an eye -- it stands for noninfectious uveitis. It's an eye inflammatory disease and it is what it sounds like. It's for noninfectious inflammation of the eye. And it's got -- there's about 400,000 NIU patients in the U.S., of which the majority are front of eye inflammatory patients who are treated with steroid eye drops. So about 70,000 of those patients have inflammation in the back of the eye, and you just can't get there with topical therapy.
And so those patients are treated on systemic immunosuppressants and systemic anti-inflammatories. And what you should be thinking is. So ophthalmologists have very low tolerance for eye inflammation, and we'll do anything they can to get it under control. So these patients are on very, very high dose systemic prednisone, for example, like super high-dose bursts of systemic immunosuppressants.
And the idea there is to get the eye inflammation under control. And even then, it doesn't always work and also for those who have been on like a pred pack or whatever, like imagine doing that, but harder and longer. It's like a miserable experience for these patients. And if it doesn't work, these patients can go blind, which is one of the reasons why eye inflammation is so poorly tolerated by physicians.
So standard of care is high-dose immunosuppressants and steroids. HUMIRA is approved. It works okay, not great, and it's not very widely used for that reason because there's just not a lot of risk-taking among these docs. If something doesn't work, they don't want to use it. And so I think in general, the sort of field is open for a new entrant. And so you asked about our Phase II data. So last year, we generated Phase II data in a study. It was a blinded study, but there was no placebo. It was 2 different doses of brepocitinib.
And so as we calculated HUMIRA's treatment failure rate, for example, is about 2/3, a little bit less than 2/3. Our treatment failure rate was sub-30%. So it was about twice as many patients are succeeding on therapy on our drug as in the HUMIRA studies. And that just feels like a remarkable sea change for these patients and something we're really excited to see through. So that's now in 2 registrational studies that will read out, as I said, in 2027.
Perfect. And as we think about 2026, can you just outline some of the catalysts that you see through the year?
Yes, 2026 is a busy year. So we've got the cutaneous sarcoid study that I mentioned that proof-of-concept study for brepo. We have in FcRn land multiple studies reading out. We have a proof-of-concept study in CLE, and we have the first period of our rheumatoid arthritis study. We have a large Phase IIb study in PH-ILD for mosliciguat, which is our inhaled vasodilator for PH-ILD, which has really promising Phase I data in PAH patients, and that's another really large market where we get to be the first -- probably the first non-treprostinil mechanism, which feels really exciting. So that data will come next year as well.
And those are all the sort of major clinical catalysts. And then on top of that, in the Moderna litigation, we have the actual jury trial with Moderna that should play out in March. So just a lot going on in 2026.
Perfect. So which one of those do you think is the most underappreciated from investors?
I think investors are still only really valuing the most sort of first front and center indications for each of our programs. So I think for Immunovant, it's Graves; I think for brepo, it's DM. And even then, I think the DM opportunity is probably underappreciated today. But I think like NIU, which granted is not a 2026 event right now, I think is significantly underappreciated. I think very few people have done real work on it at this stage.
I think cutaneous sarcoid is a flyer as far as the world is concerned. And then, look, I look at some of our competitors in pulmonary hypertension. And for Insmed, which is a company we very much aspire to copy in life, has gotten an enormous amount of credit and value out of their PH-ILD, their treprostinil program. I hope a year from now, we're sitting on Phase IIb data that puts us in that league. And I think that could be a huge opportunity.
People are starting to ask questions about mosli, but it's really just starting to scratch the surface. In many ways, both mosli and NIU right now feel to me like DM felt, I don't know, a year or 18 months ago. So just a huge opportunity for people to come up on the curve on both of those.
Yes. So I guess maybe we can double-click on mosli a little bit for PH-ILD. I feel like that is quite an important catalyst that's not really in the stock at all. And it's a sizable market opportunity, too, where you already have pretty promising PVR data in Phase II. So just talk about that readout. What is -- what does good data look like and then maybe next steps after that?
So one of the great things about pulmonary hypertension is, look, in Graves' disease, for example, I think there is a very much a growing appreciation for how big Graves' disease is as an opportunity. But we took education. It's a new indication for people. There's not like an established investor community of Graves disease investors. Pulmonary hypertension, if you've worked in the buy side for more than 10 years, you've made money on pulmonary hypertension companies.
You've been following this space. You know it well. PAH is a well-developed market with many different categories working successfully in tandem. Several companies have been built and grown. Merck today [indiscernible] up meaningfully on data in a related field. This is like a well-understood area. And PH-ILD as a subset of that area was a difficult to invest in new frontier up until a couple of years ago when United Therapeutics, one of the real pioneers of PAH, demonstrated efficacy with Tyvaso -- what is now Tyvaso, with treprostinil in a way that has created the category.
And we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those companies. That's an enormous step forward. But I think at this point, it's, I think, clear PH-ILD is a market that looks a little bit like the PAH market, to be honest. It's a large patient population. These are -- pulmonary hypertension is what it sounds like. It's hypertension in the lung, and it's devastating. I mean these patients die ultimately, it's a really, really bad disease.
And these are patients who have pulmonary hypertension by dint of interstitial lung disease. So things like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. And for the first time, we can treat that pulmonary hypertension with Tyvaso. And now our view is it's time for that market to go the way of PAH that is to have other therapeutic categories, other opportunities to treat these patients, which will be used on top of Tyvaso, earlier line, later line, like across the board, just a huge opportunity for new kinds of therapies in PH-ILD. And we think we have a great shot.
Now the way these studies are usually run in Phase II is that you study PVRs like right-hearted blood pressure, which is our primary endpoint is measured in these patients, you can tell how sick they are because they're doing this for clinical trial, under general anesthesia through a heart catheter. And you measure that and you show that you are improving blood pressure in the relevant vessels.
But ultimately, the clinical endpoint in a registrational study will be either 6-minute walk or time to clinical worsening. It's a measure of like clinical benefit for the patient. And so in this study, the primary endpoint is PVR. And based on what we've seen in PAH in group 1 patients, I expect we will hopefully see meaningful reductions in PVR in this Phase IIb study.
What we're really looking for is how that translates into 6-minute walk or time to clinical worsening in terms of seeing clinical benefit for these patients. And I think stat sig is obviously nice, but just like seeing a real benefit for these patients will matter a lot.
Okay. In terms of PVR, I believe the Phase II data in PAH had around 37%, 38% PVR...
That's exactly right. Some of the deepest -- I think the deepest PVR reductions ever observed in a clinical program.
Yes. And then in terms of placebo, there's really sort of minimal improvement in placebo.
You wouldn't see a lot of -- again, this is -- 6-minute walk is a difficult endpoint. It's a measure of how far people can walk in 6 minutes. Obviously, there's a lot of things that drive that. When you are anesthetized on an operating room with a catheter in, there's not that much that's going to drive a placebo response on blood pressure. And so you don't see that much placebo response on PVR.
Okay. So [ 38% ] is pretty much 38%. That's a good number. But then I guess, talk about the translatability...
That's really -- the whole question is the 38% is in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension, those are different etiology of patients than the PH-ILD patient population. And so you just don't know for sure exactly how that will translate. And the truth is only treprostinils have really been studied in both. And so what do we know?
We know that treprostinil showed good PVR reductions in PAH and also good PVR reductions in PH-ILD and that translated to clinical benefit when they were inhaled. We know that systemic vasodilators, both treprostinils and actually our drug, I don't think I've even said this is an SGC activator. It's a different mechanism. There in the past has been a similar drug to ours, an SGC stimulator studied systemically in PH-ILD.
And like systemic treprostinil, it's not very good in PH-ILD. It turns out in pulmonary hypertension patients with lung disease, systemic vasodilators have an issue, which is that while you treat the healthy lung tissue well, you wind up vasodilating the diseased lung tissue as well, and you wind up basically giving back all or sometimes even more than all of the benefit at the same time. And so what you really need is an inhaled, targeted vasodilator that only gets into the healthy lung tissue and drives better like cGMP production and oxygenation in the healthy tissue. And so I think that translatability, we know that inhaled vasodilators work in PH-ILD in general, and we've seen that mostly with inhaled treprostinil. So not a huge end, but that's what gives us confidence to try.
Yes. Okay. In PAH, I believe anything north of 20% PVR is considered pretty positive. Do you think that's also a similar, I guess, I don't want to call it bar but for PH-ILD?
As a biotech CEO, I've come to hate the word bar. Look, I think the answer is, if anything, in PH-ILD, it's a little bit of a lower number because these patients have lower baseline PVRs generally, like whatever in PAH studies, the baseline are like whatever, maybe 9 or 10 Wood units, whereas in PH-ILD, it's maybe more like 7. And so I think even somewhat lower number than 20% would be good. But again, 38% is much higher than 20%. And so my hope is that we're not coming close to here either.
Okay. Got it. That's super helpful. And then another 2026 catalyst is the Immunovant RA data. So talk a little bit about that. I believe it's an open-label readout in '26.
That's right.
Just help us understand the interpretability of that data and what do you consider to be positive?
Yes, perfect. Look, RA was always a stretch indication for an FcRn, right? RA is clearly not a vanilla autoantibody-driven disease, multifactorial. There's a bunch of different reasons that people get RA. What we know is that in some RA patients, there are significant IgG autoantibodies. We know that in early line patients that J&J with nipocalimab was able to show clinical benefit, modest but meaningful clinical benefit that, that clinical benefit was higher and more interesting if they looked only at the autoantibody positive, ACPA-positive patient population.
They then ran a different study. They ran a study combining an FcRn with a TNF which was a tough study for them. It didn't pan out the way they wanted it to. We've decided to go a different direction, which is to study ours in a late-line RA patient population, a fourth-line difficult-to-treat RA, where the bar for clinical meaningfulness is lower.
These patients don't have a lot of options and where we're focused specifically on the ACPA positive, the autoantibody positive patient population with the hope that we can make a difference. The study is a randomized withdrawal design. It's a Phase IIb 1 of 2 pivotal programs, if successful. The readout next year is the sort of run-in period, if you will.
So all of the patients are on drug and then responders will be randomly taken off, hence randomized withdrawal. So look, what we're going to get is an open-label response rate, which means the bar for us being excited in starting that second Phase III is high. If whatever, [indiscernible] 20s are low, it's not going to be that exciting. But if we see like a really meaningful response rate where docs are excited and patients are excited, I think that's the kind of thing that gets us moving forward. I don't have like a numerical number, but I think the answer is because it's open label, because it's RA, the bar is high. And this is really -- although it is structured as 1 of 2 pivotals, it's really a signal finding study.
Got it. Got it. And I guess that kind of answers my next question, which was just the rationale behind designing a trial that way. But I guess it to get a signal before committing...
Yes, exactly. And I think the idea is that there's a very patient-friendly design, right? Like you get -- everyone is on drug at the beginning. So this has been among the easiest studies that we are running to enroll.
Perfect. And I think we have 2 more minutes, but would love to pick your brain about BD. Just thoughts on the landscape and what you're seeing. I feel like it's been a little bit over a year or 2 just since your latest announcement. So what are you seeing out there? What are you most interested in?
Yes. Look, I think one of the most interesting things about the moment that we're in as a company is we don't -- I don't mean that we don't need BD, right? I think like the thing that carries us from here to a $30 billion or $40 billion or even $50 billion market cap is our existing pipeline. It's launching well in DM. It's launching well in NIU. It's stacking these things together. I think brepo could be a large, large drug. I think FcRn could be a large, large drug -- a large, large category for us.
Like these are big opportunities and the don't mess it up bar or imperative is high. So I think, therefore, correspondingly, the opportunity -- look, we are historically a transactional company. We have, at this very conference, people running around meeting with pharma companies, talking through ideas. There's lots of things we'd like. But I think the bar for actually transacting is high because we don't want anything is going to distract from the sort of core job of making these existing programs successful.
And bluntly, we want things that if we become a $30 billion or $40 billion or $50 billion company are going to be needle moving, are going to be sufficiently important that they add a real leg to the stool. That said, we absolutely 100% see things that meet that description within the portfolio of big pharma companies. Some of those things we have been excited about at this point for 2 years, and we've been doing the slow, steady, important work of bringing our would-be partners along and helping them get excited about us as a partner, helping them get excited about the opportunity, seeing their own businesses evolve, seeing the need on their end evolve.
And I think look, a big part of our business is sitting around outside big pharma companies like a puppy, waiting for just the right moment to transact. And I think we're -- we continue to focus on that kind of activity because we see a lot of opportunity to be a good effective partner to our -- to big pharma companies.
Got it. Well, I think that's all the time that we have. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Excited for 2026 and hope you get that drink.
Thank you. Yes. I hope you all get that drink.
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Roivant Sciences — Guggenheim Securities 2nd Annual Healthcare Innovation Conference
1. Question Answer
All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Guggenheim Healthcare Innovation Conference. My name is Yatin Suneja, one of the biotech analysts here at Guggenheim. It is my pleasure to welcome Roivant Sciences here with me. From the company, we have the Chief Financial Officer, Richard Pulik. Richard, why don't you make some opening comments. You did the earnings call yesterday. There were some incremental updates. Why don't you just make some comments, and then we'll go into the Q&A.
Great. First of all, it's great to see everybody here, especially surprised to see people from the audience given some of the travel issues. So nice to see that there's actually some bodies here. Look, we've had incredible momentum since we read out the brepo dermatomyositis data and also the Graves' data. I think people are finally starting to see brepo as an asset that will be a large commercial asset that we plan to file next year and launch in '27. So I think there's been a lot of excitement around that from the KOL community, from patients. And I think the data speaks to itself that this is an incredibly devastating disease that impacts both skin and muscle, and we have data now with an oral solution that showed very strong efficacy across 10 endpoints that were statistically significant. It's probably in my 25-year career in health care, one of the cleanest trials I've seen.
And so I think that's brought a lot of excitement into the brepo story or JAK1/TYK2 inhibitor. And then, of course, we have some POCs reading out next year around CS, CLE. We're going to see the difficult-to-treat RA data. We have also the TED data readout. So lots of very interesting POCs to go in 2026 and then, of course, getting ready for the brepo launch. And then, of course, mosli, right? So that's also reading out in 2026. There, we had some very exciting data in PAH, and we're developing that for PH-ILD, where there's a large unmet need and very little competition right now.
Very good. I think there was some incredible momentum both for Roivant and Immunovant perspective this year, but I think next year is going to be even more catalyst-rich. So I want to spend some time on the Immunovant story first. I think yesterday, you sort of provided a little bit of an incremental update on the TED strategy in terms of when you'll disclose the data. Can you just talk about what is the strategy now? Will you disclose the data? How much of a disclosure would you do? And then is there a particular bar in TED that you are looking for if you were to sort of move ahead as a stand-alone indication for 1401?
So maybe just to step back a little bit, we had data with batoclimab in TED, where we saw roughly doubling of response rates, proptosis response rates between the high dose and the low dose. So the high dose ends up lowering IgG at the sort of 80% mark. We're pretty much alone in the field to be able to do that. Then -- and this is before we actually had our second asset, 1402, then we quickly moved into a Phase III study with TED. 2 Phase III studies. The first study will be reading out sometime at the end of this year and then the second study in the first half of 2026.
Look, when we talked about that study and the data, a competitor quickly sort of follow up a year later to move into a pivotal there. That same competitor moved to announce a pivotal in Graves', where we also had a pretty incredible data where we showed disease-modifying benefit. Frankly, I found it a little bit of a head scratcher given that we're the only ones who can get IgG at 80%. And if you look at the cutoffs of the data points across even 70% and greater, there's very meaningful efficacy deltas. So I think that's going to be just a hard space for competitors to compete in, given the much better efficacy data we've seen. And look, I think we learned our lesson there a little bit to keep some of the stuff closer to the chest. And then we'll talk about it when we see the data in the first half of next year.
Got it. Yes, I think that makes sense. But would you have -- is there a path forward for batoclimab in TED in the sense that I understand we are -- you are all prioritizing 1402, which I think is a superior molecule. But if the data in TED meets the internal bar, could you go ahead and file and get that asset commercialized?
Look, it's hard to say without seeing the data, but I think -- look, if I just think about it holistically, we're very focused on what makes most sense for the patient. 1402, we have a clean molecule that didn't have any impact on albumin or LDL. We are obviously bringing that forward with 2 Graves' studies. If I think about Graves', that usually -- there's roughly 40% of patients who have TED in the Graves' population.
We know that when we looked at the batoclimab data, we saw an impact on proptosis reduction by looking at the VALOR data in our Graves' study. We're actually measuring proptosis also in the 2 Phase III studies. So I think we're approaching this pretty holistically to look at the disease sort of to look at this earlier in the disease across a much larger patient pool. And I think, look, as we see the Phase III TED data, then I think that will be insightful in terms of how we approach the entire treatment paradigm much earlier. And certainly, we'll make a call there based on the risk benefit that we see.
Got it. So I think -- you have put more data, more Graves' data out in public. How has that helped from an enrollment perspective in the ongoing Phase III study? When exactly are we going to see the data? And any -- it's maybe probably a little bit early to set the expectation, but in general, like what are you looking for in that data set?
So look, we showed data that essentially had a -- we kept patients on a 680 mg dose of batoclimab for 12 weeks, and we reduced them to the lower dose, the 340 mg dose for another 12 weeks, and then we took patients off drug and then we follow them. When you look at many of these patients are on high ATDs and we had complete disease control on very low ATD, so 2.5 mg or lower. And then some patients were entirely off ATDs, which is pretty unheard of. I mean, when you think about the population that we went after, these were patients that were not controlled on ATDs. That's roughly a prevalent population of 330,000 patients.
If I think about the incident population, that's roughly 30,000. And these are usually working age women who are motivated. It's a large commercial segment, but there really has been no innovation for these patients for the past 20 years. So I think that was really eye-opening to many KOLs and patients to finally provide a treatment option. Look, this is a disease that causes very increased risk factors across basically thyroid cancer and other diseases that have high mortality benefits trying to control these patients on ATDs causes weight gain, weight loss, then mood swings. It is a really difficult disease. And so I think it was eye-opening to see the disease-modifying data we saw really without ATD support. And it's been a very exciting as we go to KOLs and enroll the study, we didn't update anything. We said we're going to see that in 2027.
Okay. All right. So from the POC standpoint, what are some indications that could be unlocked with this -- with anti-FcRn next year from the study that you're running?
So we had done a sort of quietly in the background, did -- saw a couple of patients in CLE that had good response rates with anti-FcRn. I think that data reads out next year. That could be another area where we'll be first. Look, if you looked at the skin resolution there, it looked very good. And I think some of the investigators were excited. So we're essentially running a smallpox study that readouts next year.
I think another one that sort of -- look, people were not crazily excited about the J&J RA data. And obviously, they killed their combo study. I would -- look, we're still -- we still think it's a very interesting place to go because you actually saw direct correlation between IgG reduction and efficacy. We decided to go and explore this in a much later population, so fourth-line population and where there's really not much for these patients. And we have the period 1 of that data, which is a potentially registrational study reading out next year. So that will be another interesting place to go where really nobody is going right now and nobody can follow given the IgG suppression we have.
And then look, the following year in 2027, you're going to have the MG, Graves' and CIDP potential registrational studies. And then you have Sjogren's the following year. So I think a lot of readouts. We have 6 different trials ongoing in 1402.
Got it. Got it. Let's move to brepo. Obviously, the data are now out in the public. What has been the physicians' feedback on the data? And then what is needed or what are the gating factor to the NDA filing?
So on the filing, it's easy, just pulling it together in writing, which obviously takes a little bit of time, but that's underway. So we should have that ready for the first half of next year. And then look, if you think about the population here and you just look at the script data, there's roughly 40,000 patients and most of them are being treated with high-dose steroids. So they're actually -- this is, again, largely commercial age patients who end up exhibiting a full body rash or muscle weakness usually in the periphery sort of around the shoulders and legs. So pretty severe and scary symptoms.
And then usually, they'll get treated with high-dose steroids, small percent -- maybe 10%, 12% get treated with IVIg. And when we were thinking about the patient population and the study design, look, being on high-dose steroids for a long time is very difficult. And so we wanted to make sure that we saw a significant benefit here with on very -- with meaningful steroid reduction, right? So we had, by the end of the study, very low steroid dose with, I think, 40% of patients completely off steroids. And still, we had some of the best data we've seen across muscle skin, quality of life endpoints. And I think we have a really exciting package to bring to physicians here, right?
The primary is sort of this composite endpoint. So we wanted to make sure that as we were designing the study and delivering this solution for patients, we had an arsenal of data points to show the benefit of this once-a-day oral drug. Also on the safety side, look, when we got this drug from Pfizer, we had it in 1,500 patients. They were exploring this in much more prevalent diseases. And so we feel very good about the data set we have from a safety perspective and also the safety that we saw in the study.
What would be the infrastructure needed to launch this given that it's more of a niche indication?
So perfect question. Look, we didn't provide exact guidance yet in terms of the dollar amount or the numbers of sales reps. But again, very concentrated launch where the prescriber base is concentrated and these patients are treated in fairly niche centers.
Yes. And then so you have a follow-up indication, right, NIU, where you had generated Phase II data first, the pivotals are going to read out relatively soon. How are you thinking about the NIU, noninfectious uveitis market? I think the feedback that we are getting is a little bit mixed, much more positive on the DM side, but love to hear from you the opportunity there. And also, I think from a price point, both indications are a little bit different. So how are you thinking about the price in DM and NIU.
So personally, I thought the DM study was scarier, right, because we were relying on investigator studies for hypothesis. When we did the NIU study, I was actually -- look, there's one drug right now that's used and approved in NIU, which is innovative HUMIRA. We showed essentially -- it was a placebo-controlled study. But if you just look on a cross-trial comparison basis, you see data that is really not comparable there. I mean you have no edema, you have edema resolving.
This is actually a disease that is one of the leading causes of blindness in the U.S. We know that the eye [ bleeds ]. Again, uveitis is treated in specialty centers. You usually have to do 1-year fellowship after your off the residency to treat these patients. So it's very specialized. And we showed essentially data that was twice as good in terms of treatment-free remission, actually more than twice as good than HUMIRA. And all of the important ophthalmic endpoints were also incredibly positive.
So actually, that was one where I felt very comfortable to move that quickly to Phase III. That's reading out in 2027, and we've had very strong KOL feedback and excitement around that given this devastating disease that causes potentially blindness in quite a lot of patients.
If you think about the dose in that study, it's 45 mg versus 30 mg in the DM. So certainly, I think there's some flexibility to think about from a commercial perspective. But these are sort of similarly sized rare disease patient segments. So obviously, we will be priced appropriately.
Got it. Other areas that you are considering with brepo, I think that is a cutaneous sarcoidosis study happening or going on, expectations there?
Yes. So that's -- I would kind of thought about that very much like the CS, the NIU study where we essentially did a smallpox study. That's reading out next year. Look, I think there's a lot of rationale there given the data we've seen an impact on skin and inflammation now with DM and 6 other positive studies that we received from Pfizer. So 7 positive studies now with the JAK1/TYK2. So I think -- look, let's see what that looks like. I think there would be another interesting indication. And then, of course, we have a pretty high bar in terms of what we bring forward. So if that makes sense from a commercial perspective, we'll flip that into a Phase III.
Got it. Very good. So then we'll quickly touch on mosliciguat. What are the expectations there? I think you have a readout coming up next year in PAH-ILD.
So look, we had seen data here in a Phase I study in PAH, where we had PBR reductions of 38%. So those are the -- this is a once-daily DPI. And so that proved out to us that, look, when we were doing the deal with Bayer, we had seen that this mechanism had a very long half-life. It had -- look, the data we saw was in the Group 1 setting versus PH-ILD is in Group III. So there's certainly a little bit of a risk in terms of having that data read out positive in the Group II setting. But because we saw such high PVRs, we were still confident to do a Phase II here. It's over 100 patients that's reading out next year.
There's obviously one competitor, United Therapeutics. And I think there's -- this is, again, a disease where people have a lot of trouble even just walking from here to across the room. It's pretty devastating. There's not a lot of options. And that will be -- given the data we saw in PAH, I think it will be interesting to see how this develops in PH-ILD and there's, again, a very large unmet need, and we're excited to see that data for potentially third leg of a commercial franchise.
Got it. Very good. So yesterday on the call, I think you provided some incremental color on the LNP litigation that is ongoing with Moderna and Pfizer. Could you maybe review for us what are some of the key milestones there? What happens in March? Anything before March?
Yes. So I want to be a little bit careful to comment on ongoing litigation. But if you just look at what's on the docket, we're going to -- the U.S. portion of the Moderna trial is going to a jury trial in March. So pretty soon, we'll see there'll be a jury decision, and we'll see how that plays out. I think, look, we have -- if you look at some of the documents, we have a very strong case, and we're excited to see the outcome there. I think, look, in our damages asked in that was $5 billion. That's excluding willful infringement. So it could potentially be an event that means we -- our cash balance increases even more than we have, which we're at $4.4 billion as of yesterday. And then the Pfizer trial is roughly a year behind. We just had the Markman decision there, which was very favorable.
Obviously, that drug did a little -- their COVID drug did a little bit better in terms of sales. So that's even a bigger pie. And look, if you just sort of think about Genevant, I mean, we have spent about 20 years developing IP around LNP and how to -- I think if you step back and think about the challenge here was how do you get these large mRNAs into the body without them just to put it simply falling apart and getting to the target. And so there was a lot of science that went behind the thinking there and encompassing that mRNA. From that, you can see we have multiple partnerships in the -- from the mid-single digit to low teens royalties, and those were with no clinical data. So I think we have -- there's a lot of precedent here across many different partnerships and with people who used and needed our technology to actually make mRNA functional in the body and be of therapeutic.
Got it. What about the OUS piece from a litigation standpoint?
The OUS Moderna trials are expected to start next year. Again, that's -- I think if you think about the OUS sales, they're more than 50%. So I think that's -- we'll see some progress there. And then obviously, Pfizer is -- we don't have a time line yet on the jury trial or the court dates yet.
Got it. Then final question on the deployment of cash that you have, $4.5 billion close to. I think in the past, maybe a couple of years ago, you used to put in 3 buckets: internal R&D, BD and sort of buyback. Where are we on that? How are you thinking about BD and deploying some of the cash that you have on the balance sheet?
So when we did the Telavant deal, we had roughly $6 billion. We said 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So $2 billion for BD, $2 billion for buybacks and $2 billion for internal pipeline. So we're funded through profitability. And we have a lot of cash. Look, if you look at our 10-year history, the upfront we usually did were [ $14 ] million. So that's -- you can do a lot of deals there because you usually do a fairly modest upfront and then you're really just paying for the Phase II study to validate the hypothesis, just like we had done in NIU, just like we are doing with CS, CLE. So that just gives us lots of capacity to do additional deals.
And then, look, given the readouts we expect in the POCs, I have plenty of cash to fund those additional development areas. And we're proud of reducing our share count by over 14% and $10, roughly $10 a share, and I have another 500 million share buyback authorization remaining.
Got it. So very good, Richard. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Roivant Sciences — Guggenheim Securities 2nd Annual Healthcare Innovation Conference
Roivant Sciences — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Roivant's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call.
[Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your first speaker Stephanie Lee. You may begin.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review Roivant's financial results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2025. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant.
Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I'd like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Steph, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for listening. I appreciate all you dialing in.
So not at all a quiet quarter for us and that we put out both the Graves' data and obviously, the Phase III data for brepocitinib in DM. So sort of just a tremendous moment of transformation for the business, but a relatively quiet earnings call as we're looking forward to getting everybody together in December for a more fulsome telling of where we are as a business, more about the future on our Investor Day on December 11. That registration link is live on our website. So look forward to seeing you all there. Today will be more of a review of what's happened in the recent quarter, and then we'll talk much more about the future when we get together in December.
So looking forward to that. I want to start out on Slide 5, just by taking a short victory lap because it's been a pretty wild year for us. Obviously, starting with and probably most notably the VALOR data for brepocitinib in DM, which hit on all 10 ranked endpoints and just a phenomenal data set that we think is going to transform the lives of DM patients. So that NDA filing remains on track planned for the first half of next year, and it will be the first novel oral therapeutic in DM, if approved. We also put out data in this quarter from the durable remission sort of portion of the Graves' disease trial for batoclimab, which sets us up for the future there in our 1402 Graves' program. That demonstrated disease-modifying potential for 1402.
And then we think earlier this year, we put out some data in MG and CIDP that we can do a pretty nice job of validating the deeper is better idea for FcRn from an IgG expression perspective. We also have initiated at Immunovant this year potentially registrational trials in Graves', myasthenia gravis, CIDP, difficult-to-treat RA and Sjögren's as well as a POC trial in CLE. So some really exciting progress there with IMVT-1402, which we hope will take us to a first-in-class in many cases and best-in-class, and we hope all -- in all indications potential.
We got a favorable Markman ruling this quarter for Genevant in the Pfizer case and just overall continued progress in the LNP litigation, with the jury trial and the Moderna case scheduled for March of 2026. And our capital position remains very strong with $4.4 billion of cash, cash equivalents, which will get our current pipeline to profitability and support pipeline expansion and potential additional capital return, including the $500 million that we have currently authorized.
On Slide 6, and we've been showing this slide for a while, but it just -- it feels realer and realer with each passing quarter, just a late-stage pipeline that we are really excited about with 11 potentially registrational trials and indications with blockbuster potential. Obviously, the first of those dermatomyositis now behind us, but many more to come, setting us up for a slide that we've been showing since June on Slide 7, which is just a stack 36 months ahead of us between multiple registrational data sets, first DM and NIU and brepo and then the beginnings of a long list of them in 1402, lining up for a series of launches, again, first DM and brepo and then NIU and brepo and then very shortly thereafter, 1402 across multiple blockbuster indications, including Graves'.
So look, as I said, a moment of real change and transformation for the business. I think we recognize that. We're excited to talk more about it when we get together in December. It's something that the team internally is excited about. It's excitement that I hear from investigators, certainly and patients and docs in the DM landscape and from investors as well. So looking forward to the next leg of our journey here.
I'm going to do just a brief recap of the 2 major data sets from the quarter. So I won't spend a ton of time on either of these because we've talked about all of them in this setting before, but they bear rementioning just because of how exciting both of them are. Starting with the brepocitinib VALOR data on Page 9. Again, we've gone through this all before, but VALOR succeeded with really highly significant, robust and consistent data across the primary and all key secondary endpoints with a nice clear dose response that sets us up for 30 milligrams to be the optimal dose here. Responses were rapid, deep, broad, clinically meaningful across the board, a statistically meaningful and clinically important delta to placebo on mean TIS with deep responses occurring quickly and across a range of endpoints, including muscle and skin.
And as a reminder, on Slide 10, this is a patient population with very significant unmet need, and this is a story that has been underscored over and over again as our team has been out talking to physicians in the field after this data. This is a patient population that is significantly underserved by therapeutic options. 75% of these patients are on only either steroids or ISTs and are struggling to get well controlled. And many of them are requiring high doses of oral prednisone in order to be sort of be treated appropriately and are all looking for options or many of them are looking for options.
Only a relatively small percentage, only 1/4 of the market is currently on other therapies at all. And of the ones that are, some of them are on very demanding IVIg regimens, multiple days a month, spent entirely in the infusion centers and others are on a series of off-label therapies, many or most of which have failed DM programs before, but are used simply because there are no better options. So we're getting a predictably enthusiastic response from all of the physicians we've engaged with on this data already and are obviously looking forward to continuing that as we go through the registration process in the coming year.
Looking at Slide 11, again, a recap from before, but this is the primary endpoint. This is mean TIS. And this is a textbook picture from my perspective of positive clinical data, statistically significant at the high dose starting at the earliest time point, nice clear separation, nice clear dose response. And one thing that bears mentioning, and we said this we put the data originally, we had originally been focused on the steroid taper as a risk mitigant in order to make sure we saw a clear benefit from the drug against the background of not really placebo, but actually actively managed background therapy. And we did that.
But the other thing we were able to show is a real dose response on steroid reduction as we were able to get a significantly greater portion of patients to lower steroid doses or off steroids on high-dose brepocitinib than on placebo. And I think that actually with the doc community has been enormously resident finding. It's something that the docs are really, really focused on DM getting these patients off high-dose steroids, and we are very excited that we were able to show this in the study, including as a part of at least one of the key secondary endpoints.
On Slide 12, more than a 1/3, and this is the key secondary where we were able to really hit both the TIS improvement -- or the TIS, I should say, and a minimal or no steroid burden. More than 1/3 of brepo 30 patients were able to get to both major TIS responses and minimal or no steroid burden at week 52. So that's just a really exciting finding across the board. And more than half of patients were able to achieve a TIS40, a moderate TIS response with very low dose of oral steroids at the same time. So just a phenomenal outcome there on the combination of endpoints.
On Slide 12, again, without going through them all, just a statistically robust data set, I'll say, with really low p-values across every secondary we tested benefit on muscle, benefit on skin, benefit on patient-reported outcomes like the HAQ-DI questionnaire on disability, just a terrific across-the-board outcome here.
In terms of what's next year, I think everyone is clear. The NDA submission, we're moving as fast as we can. The only real gating item here was drafting, and it's ongoing right now. We expect to get a file in the first half. Data readout from that proof-of-concept study in CS that we have ongoing will be next year. And the NIU study, which is enrolling very nicely, is currently anticipated to read out or say, guided to the first half '27 around the same time as potential registration of brepo and launch in DM. And then we submit the sNDA for NIU shortly thereafter with potential further indications and so on to come.
So that's brepocitinib. I'm sure we'll get some questions about it. And like I said, we'll talk more about that program and what it could represent commercially on the 11th. But suffice it to say, a tremendous quarter and something we're really excited to carry forward from here.
Next up, I'll just recap the Graves' disease remission data that we put out earlier this quarter as well. Starting on Slide 16, with just a reminder, this is a very large patient population with a significant unmet need. And there's been -- I think this is an important point as people are doing their work here, a shift away from ablation over time as patients don't want to go through the surgical procedure or the radioactive iodine, but really a lack of new medical therapies that's left something like 1/4 to 30% of Graves' disease patients who are relapsed, uncontrolled on or intolerant to ATDs. It's just a very high proportion of patients who are unable to get well controlled.
As a reminder, on Slide 17, this is a bad disease. These patients are at much higher risk of cardiovascular events, much higher risk of preeclampsia, 4x higher risk of preeclampsia and a 7x higher risk of thyroid cancer than the general population. So these patients are really sick or at a high risk of developing severe comorbidities. They often go on to develop thyroid eye disease, about 40% of patients go on to develop these eye symptoms, some of which get optic neuropathy and other issues that can be pretty significant for vision.
And then there's a bunch of other complications here. 16% are diagnosed with thyroid storm, which has -- in patients with hospitalized for Graves' disease, 16% are diagnosed with thyroid storm, which has a 20% mortality rate. So again, potentially sort of very sick patients and again, a relatively high risk of thyroid cancer, including a high risk of progressive thyroid cancer. So disease that makes people quite sick. Again, more to come on the 11th, but just wanted to highlight that fact.
And then on Page 18, in addition to being a severe disease, it's a disease affecting a lot of people. And so you've got every year, call it, 65,000 newly diagnosed patients, of which 20,000 of those wind up in that sort of refractory bucket. And then there's 880,000 diagnosed U.S. patients, of which 330,000 in the prevalent population are walking around in that intolerant or unable to get well-controlled bucket. So they're just a huge patient population with a significant unmet medical need.
What we showed earlier this year in the batoclimab study is a pretty interesting result. We showed real disease-modifying benefit in these patients. Of the 25 patients who came in at baseline, as a reminder, the way the study worked, patients were treated for 12 weeks of high-dose batoclimab followed by another 12 weeks of low-dose batoclimab and were then followed for another 24 weeks off drug entirely. And what we saw is after that first 12 weeks, 20 out of 25 of those patients were responders to therapy. After dropping to low dose after another 12 weeks, 18 out of 25 of those patients were responders. And truly remarkably, after being off drug for a further 6 months, 17 out of the 21 patients we were able to follow up with at week 48 were responders to therapy. So these are patients who were uncontrolled on standard of care at the beginning of the study and 17 out of the 21 of them that we were able to follow up with remain responders to therapy, having been off drug for 6 months. So a pretty remarkable disease-modifying benefit.
Of the off-drug responders on page -- of the off-drug responders on Slide 20, nearly half of them were fully off ATDs and over 75% of them were on only the lowest doses of ATDs or off ATDs. So not only were we able to deliver a disease-modifying benefit for patients who are uncontrolled on ATDs before, we were able to significantly reduce or eliminate ATD need for those patients.
Now this was underscored on Slide 21, not just by the sort of clinical data on T3 and T4 and so on, which is obviously what's most important to the patients. But you can also see it in the TRAb reductions on Slide 21. And as you can see, as you'd expect for FcRn therapy, these patients showed a rapid decline, both in general IgG and in TRAb levels, especially on high dose. The IgG levels came back a little bit as you'd expect during the lower dose period. And then what is maybe unique to Graves' disease or at least unusual among FcRn indications is while IgG bounces right back when you come off therapy, the only time points on this graph are week 24 and week 48. But by week 48, these patients were effectively back at baseline from IgG. The vast majority of these patients still had basically sort of reduced or no TRAbs. And that is a pretty remarkable finding around the durability of the benefit here.
On Slide 22, the next period is absolutely stacked for us in 1402 with data coming in a variety of indications, D2T RA and CLE next year, the second part of the D2T RA study as well as Graves' and MG in 2027 and then Sjögren's in CIDP after. One small update just to flag for today. The TED study remains on track to conclude this year. Our last patient last visit is very close to today. But we're going to hold off reporting the top line data from that first study in all likelihood until we see the top line data for the second study in the first half of next year. The evolving competitive landscape in TED and especially in Graves' disease has led us to take a more prudent path there. And so we're going to collect that data together and report it when we have it all.
Moving on to the -- briefly to just a reminder of where we are in the LNP litigation, which I know some people are following. In the Moderna case, we are in a pretrial process around the narrowing of claims and defenses and around summary judgment, which is happening now, the judge is reviewing summary judgment briefings and there's sort of a calendar on the docket that we're hoping will take us through trial in March. The trial is scheduled for March and the first international proceedings are also expected in the first half of 2026. The Pfizer case is ongoing in discovery, and there was a favorable Markman ruling issued in September that certainly sets us up nicely for what we think we need to do from there.
So I'll conclude before we go to Q&A with a brief financial update. Overall, a straightforward quarter from a financial perspective, loss from continuing operations net of tax of $166 and cash, cash equivalents of $4.4 billion with no debt on the balance sheet. And obviously, a share count reflective of the significant share buybacks we've done over the last 18 months. So a strong position overall that, as I said, is expected to carry us through profitability.
We've got more of our financials in here and the catalyst sort of road map on Slide 28. But again, just a really exciting 6 months or 12 months behind us and a really exciting 12 months or 36 months ahead of us. So feeling great about where the business is, feeling great about the significant transformation in our profile that we've been through in the recent months and looking forward to carrying that forward from here.
Once again, as a reminder, we have an Investor Day in New York City for those that can make it in person on December 11, 2025, that registration link is live. It's in the presentation we put up as well as on our website. I hope to see many of you there to round out the year and talk about the future. So with that, I'll say thank you again for listening. Again, a relatively quiet earnings call, but not at all a quiet quarter. And I will pass it back over to the operator for Q&A. Thank you, everybody.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question coming from the line of Dave Risinger with Leerink Partners.
2. Question Answer
Congrats on all the progress, Matt, and looking forward to the event on the 11th. So my question is, could you please comment on what we should be watching next with respect to Pfizer litigation? So specifically in international markets and then in the U.S.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate the question. And obviously, it's something that a number of people are watching. It's tough as always, to comment on ongoing litigation. I have nothing to say about any potential timing of any kind of international cases. Look, it's a busier moment coming up. I think there should be a sort of scheduling process for the Pfizer case underway, and we should learn more about the exact time line, including hopefully a trial date in the near future. And I think that's probably what I would be most watching out for in terms of what's public at this point is just getting that schedule together and progressing from here.
Our next question coming from the line of Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
Just 2 quick ones from us. How do you feel about argenx stepping into Graves' and whether that has any impact on your strategy of 1402? And then we have a quick follow-up.
Thanks, Brian. It's a great question. And look, I think you heard my comment on the timing of the intended sort of production of the batoclimab TED data. Obviously, we're acutely aware of the competitive landscape in Graves' disease. And look, I think to make a gentle comment, whatever, imitation is the finest form of flattery. I think it's great to see others recognizing the importance of Graves' as a disease. It's great to see more people working on treatment options for these patients. Obviously, in our Phase II study, we studied both high and low-dose batoclimab, and we saw a great benefit to the higher dose batoclimab in the study.
And then also, we reported in the past data breaking out the patients between that 70% cutoff below and -- above and below 70% IgG reduction. And we had 3x as many patients getting off ATDs at the above 70% group than in the below 70% group. So we think we should have quite a competitive profile there. But most importantly, to be honest, it's a big patient population. There's a lot of sick people. And I think a rising tide there will lift all boats. And like I said, argenx is a formidable company with a wide following and has done a great job of execution. And I know there's at least some people out there who find it, although it might be frustrating to us validating of our strategy that they're following in our footsteps. And so we'll always take it. Thanks, Brian.
Great. And just one quick one. So on the Investor Day next month, just curious if you can talk about what do you want investors to get out of the Investor Day? Is this more of a broader recap of your current strategy? Or do you think that there will be some unveiling of completely new data or a new strategic direction at Roivant?
Yes. Look, it wouldn't be a fun Investor Day if I revealed all of it now. But I think most importantly, this is just -- it's a moment of huge transformation for our business. I think the type of investors who are now along for the ride are different. And obviously, a lot of other things about the business are different. So I think we want to make sure we're telling that story fully that we're helping people see the course from a commercial perspective, from a patient need perspective in these indications so they can see at least the reasons why we are so excited about these indications about the certain nature of the blockbuster opportunity. There might be some other new things we're able to share by then in terms of updates or other things, but we'll see where we're at in a few weeks here or a month. But I think it will be an exciting opportunity to get together and take stock of the business and to talk a lot about the future and the opportunities in front of us.
Our next question coming from the line of Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
Just for Graves', when thinking about the remission data, is there any way to tease out the impact of starting on the high-dose batoclimab in that study? And how much that actually contributed to the remission rates you saw? I'm just wondering if there's anything that you could share that you were able to tease out from the data when you analyzed it so as we think about the competitive landscape?
Yes. Look, thanks. That's a -- it's a great question. And I do think we're going to, like I said, be a little bit careful about some of what we say here because of the evolving competitive landscape, and we're going to learn more about this from the hypothyroid TED patients and so on in that study as well. But look, I think in general, remission is about TRAbs getting normal for longer. And our view is that deeper IgG reductions are going to drive towards exactly that outcome. And so both in terms of the speed of responses that we saw in the bato trial and the depth of responses that we saw in the bato trial in terms of TRAb lowering, I think that's going to be a significant driver for us. So I think we feel good put this way about our level of IgG suppression in that program at high dose. Thanks. It's a great question.
Our next question coming from the line of Yaron Werber with TD Cohen.
Great. Maybe a quick question. We've been getting a few questions about the ongoing preliminary -- the summary judgment against Moderna with respect to the U.S. government involvement in the EUP -- I'm sorry, EUA and whether the government ever took "control" of the vaccines for distribution and whether that made them a commercial party and whether that impacts their involvement and as a result, would potentially provide Moderna some venue to make an argument. Any thoughts about that, if you can comment at all would be great.
Yes. Thanks, Yaron. And again, as usual, it's difficult to comment in depth about an ongoing litigation, and it's ultimately going to be the judge's decision on the 1498 question. I'll point out that the 2 things that are worth keeping in mind. One is the Moderna case in the U.S. Moderna sales of COVID vaccines in the U.S. in total is a bit less than half of Moderna's total global COVID vaccine sales and Moderna's total global COVID vaccine sales are a bit less than half of the total, inclusive of Pfizer.
And so -- and then what Moderna has claimed in their own briefings is that we asked for about $5 billion in damages in the U.S. case, and Moderna has claimed that a little bit less than half of those damages could be subject to 1498 in Moderna's view. And so I think you're talking about a little bit less than half of a little bit less than half of a little bit less than half of the total is the issue in summary judgment on 1498. Our position is pretty clearly laid out in our motions. And frankly, Moderna's position has also laid out in their motions. Obviously, we feel like we have a strong case to make here, but it's ultimately going to be up to the judge to determine. But I just wanted to sort of scope out the magnitude of the question as well.
Our next question coming from the line of Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Congrats on the progress in the quarter. Maybe firstly, on
Sjögren's disease. Recently, there has been a lot of excitement around Sjögren's market opportunity, especially with the recent data from Novartis' BAFF drug, ianalumab. Maybe you can contextualize how FcRns can differentiate on ESSDAI scores or other specific endpoints? And do you think you could be first-in-class in this indication? And secondly, just quickly on Brepo and DM, do you plan to apply for FDA's National Priority Voucher for Brepo?
Thank you. Those are both great questions. Look, I think on Sjögren's, we are also excited about the market opportunity. It's a large patient population with a very significant unmet need and just a lot of people kind of going through it as it were. There have been a variety of therapeutic classes that have shown some benefit. Obviously, the in-class data was positive and the J&J data, in particular, showed that lower is better. So we think we have a real shot at best-in-class. We are working to launch as close to first-in-class as possible. I don't think we're here to commit that we'll beat our competitors. We obviously got a little bit of a head start on us, but I think we're trying to be kind of within a window small enough such that it shouldn't matter who comes first, and we can differentiate based on our profile.
And I'll just say, I think, first of all, I think the Novartis data was positive, but probably left room for even better as I think have all of the Sjögren's data produced to date. And I think the FcRn data to date has sort of been competitive with other classes of drugs. And so if our deeper IgG expression yields a better benefit than other FcRns, I think we should have a truly important opportunity in the space. A lot of excitement about new therapies from KOLs and from our investigators. The unmet need is significant. The overall market is a significant number of patients. So it's a great place for us to be in our view.
And then sorry, you asked about the CNPV program for brepo. We haven't said. Look, this is an orphan population with high unmet need. So I think we're thinking through all of the different ways we can get through FDA and out to patients as quickly as possible and thinking about the puts and takes of them all, but stay tuned.
Our next question coming from the line of Corrine Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
Maybe following up on an earlier question about competitive intensity in Graves' disease. I think it goes beyond argenx in terms of number of companies that have announced plans there. So how are you thinking about the kind of competitive clinical landscape that's evolving? And what do you expect to inform sequencing decisions in that space over time? And then maybe separately, just on business development. Curious if you could give an update on what you're seeing on that front.
Yes. Thanks, Corinne. Look, I think the first question -- and obviously, we see the competitive landscape. Similarly, there's a number of people trying different things, which is exciting. It's exciting Graves' space. It's exciting to be there. One comment about that is, I think we've watched the myasthenia gravis landscape play out, and there's a lot of competitive intensity and a lot of new mechanisms and also that FcRn has been, a, a pretty undisputed king so far; and b, that the first FcRn to launch with the quality of that data has been a tremendous head start. And we think we've built something similar in Graves' disease, which is a market obviously a multiple of the potential size of the MG market.
So we feel great about our position, both from a timing perspective as well as a mechanism. It's a well-understood mechanism, FcRn. And it's pretty exquisitely well suited to treating the biology of Graves' disease. So you think about some of the other mechanisms outside of FcRns have something in common with ATDs, which is that at high doses, they will cause patients to go hypothyroid, which is a miserable thing as well. And so I think one of the great things about FcRn biology is other than maybe for a very short period of time, because what you're really doing is getting at the root cause of the disease with these autoantibodies, you're not going to like cause the thyroid to react in the other direction sort of directly. It's not like a TSHR targeted mechanism or something like that.
And so I think that will be a big benefit to FcRn. The other thing that I think is maybe underappreciated in some communities about FcRns is just how safe and well tolerated they are. And I think in a Graves' patient population, that is going to be an important fact that I think will be great for FcRns as a mechanism. So I think that those will all be sort of good guides towards FcRns being important and early line therapy for these patients who can't manage it with standard of care today.
In general, as I said, I think lots of activity in the space is actually going to be good for everybody. These are docs who haven't run a lot of clinical trials. These are docs who haven't had a lot of new treatment options. And I think the more voices there are out there talking about this stuff, the better we'll be able to get out to the patient population. So thanks. It's a great question.
And then you asked for BD update. Look, we remain extremely well capitalized. We remain very excited about the opportunities for pipeline expansion. We are incredibly excited about the things we currently have in our pipeline. And obviously, you hear that in our voice. You see that in the way that we're talking about our data. Obviously, we're thinking about indication expansion for those programs and then always looking in the world for programs, especially programs that are of a size and scale that can move the needle against the backdrop of our existing pipeline. And I think we've got some exciting ideas.
The next question coming from the line of Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
We have 2, if we may. Number one is on Pulmovant. So you guys will have Phase II PH-ILD data in the second half of next year. I guess, how confident are you about the translatability from PAH to PH-ILD? And how should we think about that update? And what's the positive delta on PVR? And secondly, on the LNP litigation, I'm curious if you've done any work on what percentage of the U.S. doses were given to actual federal government employees as we think about a middle scenario for summary judgment?
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate it. Both great questions. Thanks for the question about Pulmovant. We're obviously super excited about mosli. Look, I think -- you have correctly identified the risk that exists in the mosli data that is we don't have data in the PH-ILD patient population, and that's sort of the nature of this study. In general, PVRs have translated well. And so I think that's an important backdrop fact between these indications. And where they haven't, it's mostly been, for example, because of the VQ mismatch issues associated with vasodilation in lung disease patients. And we think the format of mosli addresses that issue.
So we are, I'd say, cautiously optimistic about that translation, but obviously, I feel a lot better when that Phase IIb data is in hand. And my hope is that we see pretty significant PVR reductions and pretty significant clinical benefit in those patients. So looking forward to that data in the second half of next year. That's another area where there's quite a lot of enthusiasm for the program and for new opportunities, especially with the overall growth from the prostacyclins in PH-ILD, leaving plenty of room for additional mechanisms.
The other thing I'll point out is just the 38% PVR reduction we saw in pulmonary hypertension, even if PVR reductions are for some reason a little bit lower in PH-ILD, obviously, there's still a lot of room for a very significant amount of benefit for these patients.
Your second question, what percent of doses given to federal employees? I don't think our best estimates of that are in any of our motions. But I think you can imagine, as you think about the number of federal employees that it's a relatively small percentage.
Got it. And if I can sneak one more in about the LNP litigation. Maybe remind us what's the status in terms of the OUS trials. We're not that familiar with the OUS process. So I guess, can you remind us how many cases you filed, which one is the furthest along? And can you get an initial decision in 2026?
Yes. So thanks. It's a great question. In the case of Moderna, we filed a number of OUS actions, including in the UPC in Europe as well as in Canada and Japan and a couple of other places. Those litigations are all ongoing. There are important hearings in 2026. And the nice thing about some of these European jurisdictions is they can move quickly. So it is possible that we would get outcomes of various kinds within 2026 in some of those jurisdictions and obviously look forward to saying more when there's more to say.
Our next question coming from the line of Yasmeen Rahimi with Piper Sandler.
Congrats on a great quarter. This is Dominic, on for Yasmeen Rahimi. We just had a question going into the TED data. Could you help us understand what you're thinking about with the expectations for the studies that are reading out here soon? And what do you hope to see to consider development considering the competitive landscape?
Yes. Thanks. It's a great question. We're looking forward to having that data relatively shortly for sharing it next year. Look, I think the competitive bar in TED is relatively high with IGF-1Rs being pretty efficacious. That said, they certainly leave room from a safety perspective, et cetera. And so I think we're looking to see data that makes sense in the context of the competitive landscape there.
The other thing that I think -- and this is part of the reason why we're focused on the sort of competition in Graves' disease, I think we'll learn a lot about hyperthyroid Graves' patients from this study as well as the possible ways in which Graves' and TED might interact with one another. And so I think we're looking forward to the data from that perspective as well. We'll obviously make a final decision on a launch in batoclimab once we've got the TED data in hand and in consultation with our partner.
Thanks. It’s a great question. Thank you.
Our next question coming from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright.
I guess, Matt, maybe as another follow-up on Graves' and TED. As you referenced, the 2 diseases are obviously sort of very interrelated with interplay. And I guess when we think about argenx, they will potentially come to market with VYVGART being both Graves' and TED hypothetically. Obviously, you have a big head start with 1402 in Graves'. So I'm just curious how you're thinking about potentially pursuing TED with 1402 versus, as you just noted, potentially thinking about batoclimab and the sort of disadvantage of maybe sort of coming at those dual markets with 2 different molecules.
Yes. Look, thanks. It's a great question. And a couple of comments about this. One is it's -- we'll be speaking in the abstract now. We're going to know a lot more about the TED data that will inform the answer to this exact question, and we will be in possession of more information than anybody else will have at this moment in time on the sort of overall treatment landscape and on what FcRns can deliver. And so I think that will set us up really nicely to think about the possible options. They're totally different call point in terms of the physicians who treat these things and there are different stages of disease. And so I think they get treated at different times in different ways.
And I think being able to talk to endos who are treating Graves' patients about the benefit in forestalling TED, for example, is an important potential thing to be able to discuss when we get to it. In terms of thinking about the sort of TED versus Graves' market dynamics, I'd say let's just wait and see what the TED data looks like, and then we can talk more about it. As a reminder, the Graves' population is meaningfully bigger and it's upstream of the TED population. And so I think there's a reason that was our first focus once we got into the clinic with 1402. Great question.
Okay. Great. And Matt, if I can, on a follow-up with brepo. Obviously, incredibly impressive results in DM. I'm just curious if you have given thought just given sort of somebody alluded to sort of the competitiveness in Sjögren's, have you ever thought of that as an indication because I think there is a mechanistic rationale and obviously, an oral option would be very attractive.
Yes, thanks. I appreciate the question. Look, I think the short answer is, we have thought pretty exhaustively about possible indications for brepo. We have a number that we think are exciting beyond what we've talked about. I think if you look at the indications we've chosen so far, they've been indications where we can really chart a market-defining course. And I think there are maybe more to do in that story. But the short answer is there's an embarrassment of riches in terms of the indication set available for brepo, and we feel very privileged with the data we have in hand for what we've got. As a reminder, it has worked almost everywhere it has been tested. And so I think we feel like it's a great molecule and with a lot of great places to go. Thanks for the question.
Next question coming from the line of Derek Archila with Wells Fargo.
This is a Hao, calling in for Derek Archila from Wells Fargo. I guess we have a question on brepo. We were at AACR. So very positive feedback from all the KOLs. So question is about really the competitive landscape. I guess we've seen VYVGART having data next year and the CAR-T is also starting their pivotal trials. How do you see the kind of the treatment paradigm evolve over the years? And brepo, do you have also plan to explore in other subtypes of myositis like [ IMNM and AS ]?
Yes, perfect. So look, I think on the deal on competitive landscape, similar comment to, frankly, my comment in Graves', which is that I think it's a great opportunity to be able to get out in front of it. And obviously, first and foremost, it may be the easiest. And oral is always going to have a huge place. The majority of these patients are on oral therapy now. And so I think just like the overall profile that makes us unique. I'll say the CAR-Ts, that's not, in my opinion, going to play for the same patients mostly that we are. That's obviously a much different sort of intervention. And there's still plenty of open questions about benefit there. Look, I think that's also sort of a little bit about that landscape. FcRn could be a compelling option. Obviously, IVIg is used.
But I'd say, first of all, it's good to have what we think of as a multiyear head start in DM. And we think the patient population that we have access to, given the nature of our therapy is really basically the entire DM patient population, which gives us a lot of room to go. So we think, again, similar to VYVGART and MG, we think we get to define that market and be the heart of it. And so I think that's all great. We also suspect that the data we have in DM specifically may be just the best overall, and that's the biggest part of the myositis market. Obviously, argenx is studying in other subtypes of myositis as well, and some of those may be more directly appropriate for an FcRn.
As to your question about other subtypes of myositis for us, I'll just say again, we thought about a whole bunch of different places to go. There's a lot of exciting places to go, and we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of where we can take the molecule from here.
Our next question coming from the line of Tess Smith with Leerink Partners.
Congrats on the progress. Just with respect to the TED program and the competitive landscape, could you comment on some of the data we recently saw from the IL-6 class, whether you think Sat is approvable with that data set and sort of your expectations for batoclimab relative to those results? And then secondly, is there any update you could provide from the overseas study that you're running with 1402? And any sort of timing guidance for when we might see data from additional indications from that study?
Yes, thanks. Those are, look, obviously great questions. I'll say, obviously, not our place to make comments on the approvability of other mechanisms. There was a notably high placebo response in the IL-6 study, which is something we've paid attention to. But overall, no specific comments on where that program goes from here. From a competitive landscape perspective, I think the competitive intensity in TED is real, as I said earlier. And the IGF-1Rs are efficacious, although they have safety and tolerability concerns associated with them. And so I think we're sort of focused on where we could play in TED. And then as we said a minute ago, thinking about Graves', an opportunity to impact the disease much earlier in its course. And I think that's an important thing to the way that we are approaching that with 1402.
On the sort of second overseas study, look, I think we, obviously, at this point, have a number of large registrational programs running in 1402 that are big global studies. We continue to like the option of small, fast POCs overseas and feeding that information into bigger studies. If and when we have anything to share from those ongoing efforts, we'll share it. But mostly, it's being used to inform either indication selection or design decisions of the bigger studies.
And our next question coming from the line of Brandon Frith with Wolfe Research.
This is Brandon, on for Andy. Have you provided any analogs for the DM launch? And we're curious to know what to expect for the cadence out of the gate in longer term?
Yes, perfect. Look, I think DM is an area with high unmet need, but also not a lot of novel therapies recently launched. So first of all, there aren't great analogs to look at, specifically in DM. And second of all, I think the appropriate course for any public company is to guide cautiously on launch speed and to say that we're going to do everything we can to get this drug out there and to get docs excited about it. And the thing that we're most confident in is that the overall market opportunity is large, that there is high unmet patient need and that when we get to peak penetration, there's a really big and exciting opportunity. Exactly how long it takes to get there, I think we're going to see is the answer, and we're going to do everything we can to make it as successful as we can. Obviously, the real value add is the stuff to get the long-term trajectory here right. So that's probably how I think about the launch.
Our next question coming from the line of Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital.
This is Gaurav, on for Sam from LifeSci. So just a question on Graves' here. Based on all the market research done to date, as you compare the uncontrolled Graves' disease opportunity versus what FcRns have shown in the MG market, I guess, how do you size these up? How are you thinking about the opportunity? Is it bigger, smaller, similar as we think about MG for FcRns?
I mean, look, it's hard to -- the MG market has been tremendous. And so I think it's hard to call it one way or another. But obviously, there's a lot of uncontrolled Graves' patients, and it's an exciting place to be. And I think we have a real opportunity to build something big. There's just lots and lots and lots of uncontrolled patients is the answer.
The other thing I'll say is we'll talk more about the commercial opportunity in Graves' disease on December 11. And I think we're excited with what we see. And I think we can make -- I think the most important thing is there are hundreds of thousands of patients for whom we could make a meaningful difference and a lot of different ways for us to get into that market and establish different toeholds in places. And so we're looking forward to all of that. We're also learning, and I want to highlight this as an important advantage that we have from being first, so much about the Graves' opportunity by being out there with these docs enrolling patients in the study, looking out at what we're finding. And I think that competitive benefit is going to set us up really well to make sure we've got the right product on the market as well.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Matthew Gline for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for listening this morning. Once again, a phenomenal quarter for us in terms of the results we delivered. And super importantly, looking forward to getting together on the 11th to talk about the future and address in further detail some of the very same questions we got on today's call. So I hope to see many of you there. And I hope you all have a great end to your year apart from that. Thanks very much, and have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect Goodbye.
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Roivant Sciences — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Roivant Sciences — Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2025
1. Question Answer
We're at time. So, we'll get started here. So, welcome, everybody, and thanks for joining us here at the BofA Global Healthcare Conference in London. My name is Jason Gerberry. I'm one of the mid-cap biotech analysts. Pleased to be introducing our next company presenter, Roivant, and CEO, Matt Gline. So, Matt, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for your first fireside since the brepo data.
I think that's right. Yes. Thank you so much for having me here.
Imagine you're sleeping a little bit better. I know you're a little nervous about placebo effects and things like that going into the data, but now that everything is sorted out and you've got the result that you wanted.
Maybe that's a good place to start is talking about that data. And if you want to maybe just contextualize that data, what it means for patients, how doctors you think will interpret the data and what that means for the practice ultimately of DM.
Yes. Thank you. And I was sleeping better and I was like this doesn't feel right. And so I decided to do a day trip to London instead, which will mess up my sleep. But, look, so this was a big moment for us, obviously, but I think even more than a big moment for us, to be honest, it was a huge moment for the DM community. And we have a slide in our data presentation.
DM is just a graveyard of drug development. And so we went out to physicians and we were like, hey, the study works, this is what the data looked like. And we literally had physicians choking up on some of these calls because they've been through decades of everything, rituximab and Stelara and all these other things like ran studies and we're not able to get across the line. And IVIg, there was positive Octagam study, but I feel like that's viewed as an old medicine by the DM treatment community largely because they've been using it for a very long time.
And so I think this is really -- this is the first time a novel targeted therapy has been successful in a registrational late-stage study for DM. And so I think like that in and of itself is a major moment for patients. It's a sick patient population with a lot of good options. When you think about IVIg, like among the popular treatment regimens for IVIg in DM is a one week a month, five hours a day regimen. You think about like what that means like halt a job or whatever. It's very difficult to make work with most people's lives.
Now there's a one-pill once-a-day sort of compelling alternative. I think that's going to be important. And remember, the majority of the 75% of the patient population that is treated, is treated on steroids immunosuppressants. And what we were able to show is a meaningful benefit against the backdrop of steroids immunosuppressants while getting patients down significantly on their dose of background therapy.
So, I think important in the sense that it's a novel option for the first time in a long time, important in the sense that the data was clinically meaningful, important in the field without a lot of other options. And so I think like all around, just a really exciting package.
Yes. How do you see brepo getting adopted by clinicians, right? Do you anticipate they'll still easily start with steroids and ISTs, and then at some point, look to down titrate the steroids and onboard brepo and that IVIg is kind of this last-line thing because you said it's really cumbersome. It's hard to give somebody IVIg on the schedules and the IV infusion dynamics.
Yes. Look, practically speaking, for a variety of reasons, including that it's the right place to start. These patients will go on steroids and ISTs first. And they'll do that for whoever long. I think in general, the answer is any patient who's pushing 10 milligrams or more of steroids on a relatively regular basis is going to be thinking, how do I stop doing this? It's an unpleasant experience. And frankly, it means that some level of treatment is not working the way they want.
I think that entire patient population is sort of brepo eligible. I think people who are on IVIg are probably looking in some cases for a path off just given the sort of regimen they're on. I think patients who are contemplating IVIg will want an alternative. And then there are a handful of patients on other things, off-label JAKs or off-label rituximab or something like that. And I think, look, those docs, in addition to the fact that each of those drugs has own individual issues and the JAKs that are currently used are not particularly good compared to what I think brepo should have done here. I think the docs are doing a ton of work to keep patients on those therapies. And the fact that the sponsor is going to come in with an on-label drug that has really compelling clinical data, I think, is going to create a positive opportunity for us.
So, I think we track, call it, 35,000 to 40,000 treated patients with dermatomyositis. And I think much of that universe, to be honest, is like eligible for treatment with brepo. And I think docs will be thinking about it for a huge portion of that population.
Okay. So you kind of see it playing in kind of both segments of the world, the IVIg segment as well as like those who are on high-dose steroids and in need of an alternative. Is there an analog you can look to, to sort of a steroid-sparing benefit in the I&I world? Like Tepezza is like one example I could think of a drug that docs hate steroids, right? And they went to Tepezza for TED.
Yes. Look, I think Tepezza is a great example because it's been so successful in TED and the docs don't like steroids. And frankly, the steroids don't work as well. And I think that's also sort of what we saw in our clinical data. I think we will see something similar in NIU actually. Those will die inflammatory diseases.
I also think like lupus is a good example of a condition where steroids are aggressively used as background therapy, and you've got things like Benlysta, one of the labeled benefits of Benlysta is steroid reduction. I think a lot of what people are trying to accomplish with novel therapies for lupus now is getting patients off heavy steroid regimen.
And I think it's true for other. I think it's -- I mean, I think it's true for patients with big systemic skin like psoriasis or whatever. I think it's like other conditions where patients have sort of systemic inflammatory disease where the name of the game has been getting patients off steroids.
Yes. Okay. Maybe just how do you think about the prescriber base? Because you have derms, you have rheumatologists, you have a dermatologic aspect of the disease, right? You have a muscle aspect of the disease. Rooms have historically been much more liberal about using JAKs in RA and comfortable with the risk profile of derms, historically, biologics and immune agents. So, I'm just kind of wondering, do you see this more as a drug for rooms or both? And I just wonder how that...
Yes. So, the first thing is DM as an indication is treated in a pretty concentrated fashion in the U.S. There's about 200 referral centers, some derms, some rooms that wind up treating more than half of the patient population. And the first thing is we just know all of those docs at this point, like we've engaged with them. They've engaged with us. Whether they are derms or rooms, they are familiar with JAK inhibitors. Again, there are JAK inhibitors used in derm, too, obviously, abrocitinib and some of the others that are approved in AD and there are analogs. I do think it's trivial for rooms, obviously, They, as you said, use it all over the place, and I think are sort of itching for it.
I think in DM specifically, both derms and rheums are excited for JAK inhibitors as a mechanism. I think it is helpful that the safety table for this specific study, I think, sort of showed the picture in a useful way, which is, look, the truth is this is a JAK inhibitor. It will have JAK class labeling. It will have -- over the fullness of time across the fullness of patients, it will have many of the JAK class sort of issues that those things will present in this patient population.
But what I think the safety analysis of this data set showed is this is just a sick patient population. And frankly, many of the sequelae either of dermatomyositis itself or of the use of heavy steroids are similar to the sequelae of the safety and tolerability concerns for JAK inhibitors. You look at our safety data for this trial and bluntly, placebo or background steroids looked worse than the drug arm in the study. And I think part of what that is a reminder of is these patients have a lot of these issues anyway and treating their underlying disease and getting them off steroids will improve their profile on many of the same axes people worry about with JAKs. And so I think that is a message that has already resonated with derms that we've talked to about the data set. And I'm just not that worried about it.
I guess the other thing is it's not like derms are otherwise reaching for SKYRIZI for dermatomyositis patients. It's not available, it doesn't work. And so I think like derms are just itching for things that will treat these patients well. And I think the magnitude of effect on CDASI, for example, will just be the thing that matters most.
So, fast forward a year, a year plus, you're back to being a commercial company again. This is, I would assume, a pretty capital-efficient sort of call panel reach, if you will, in terms of promotion and promotional outlay. And how do you see this? Maybe VTAMA had its own challenges, right, because of gross to nets and payer access dynamics and challenges, right? But I imagine here, how you kind of see the go-to-market outlook?
This could not be more different than VTAMA in terms of like the way the business is built. And look, I think Organon is going to do -- is doing a nice job with VTAMA. I think there's like a real market there. But that's a low-price ground game where you're shooting for high volumes and you're trying to get -- this is a rare disease launch. So, what do I think matters for this launch? I think the sort of physician relationships matter, the patient relationships matter. And I think we've invested very heavily through the clinical trial making sure we're build those relationships they're familiar the drug. They're familiar with medical literature, they're familiar with we're doing. So, I think that's like one piece of this, and we've had sort of medical professionals engaging with the doc community since we started the study.
And then the other thing that clearly matters in these launches is patient support, right? This is -- I'd say like the lesson -- if the lesson from argenx and MG has been that doc engagement matters, I think like the lesson that Horizon taught the world is that the way these launches go best is from day one, you're building a patient support organization that is helping these docs do the work to get patients covered. And we've built a phenomenal team already to begin that process, and we've got people who ran that effort for Horizon working for us now. And I think that will be the other sort of built-up piece of this.
In terms of sort of traditional sales reps or whatever, the truth is that you don't need very many. It's a concentrated prescriber base. And it's more of a medical engagement conversation than like a promotional conversation.
A focus on those 200 referral centers primarily.
First and foremost, yes, although look, I think there'll be a long tail of docs excited to use the product.
Okay. And as we think about the pipeline and the drug aspect of brepo, what derisking DM does in terms of your thought process in terms of other areas to go?
And just remind us your IP runway on the drug and you feel like does this afford you now an opportunity to interrogate some other indications and go more broadly with brepo?
We have competition with extensions through 2039. So we got plenty of room to run here. We are studying brepo already in two other publicly disclosed indications. We have a registrational package currently sort of under study for non-infectious uveitis, and then we have a Phase II study running in cutaneous sarcoidosis.
What I'm supposed to say is, obviously, the DM data is massively derisking. The truth is that brepo was an active agent before. It has positive data in six or seven other indications under Pfizer's ownership in IBD, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's and in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and vitiligo. And so we knew that it was an active drug irrespective of the outcome here. And so medically, I'm not sure this like makes a huge sort of scientific difference. But I think it gives us confidence in what we're going to be able to deliver in rare disease settings, which is really where we have decided to take the product. And I have a ton of confidence now in the Priovant team that ran the study, and I think they enrolled fast, and they did great work with the docs. And obviously, the data speaks for itself.
So, I think we feel really good now looking down the barrel at the NIU data, which should come first half '27. As currently guided, that study has enrolled really well. I'm excited to see what comes out of the cutaneous sarcoidosis proof-of-concept study that we're running. And then we have other indications in mind already where we're excited to get going.
Okay.
I think one of the cool things about brepo is, in 2021, when we partnered with Pfizer on the drug, it was just this like sort of tumultuous moment for JAK inhibitors where the Enbrel study has recently come out and everyone was worried about the black box warning and Rinvoq was a $3 billion drug at the time, and I think people kind of thought it was going to sort of flat line. And now Rinvoq is an $8 billion drug on a path to $15 billion or more. And I think the market has kind of spoken about JAK inhibitors, but a ton of baby got thrown out with the bathwater the first time around.
And so we not like literally 100% uniquely, but almost uniquely are occupying this sort of rare and orphan disease. And I think we're the only JAK1/TYK2 combination that's focused on that or generally JAK1/TYK2 dual inhibitor that's focused on that sort of portion of the world. And that just feels like a really privileged position to be right now. I mean imagine how different the DM conversation would be if rheumatologists were gun shy about writing JAK inhibitors. They still might write it here, but it will be a totally different conversation than what we're having now where they're bluntly giving Rinvoq out like candy.
And your point on sort of the landscape of JAK1/TYK2 combination, I think Galapagos might be the only other company in the field. Is there anyone you're aware of that competitively that deals?
Biohaven has a JAK1/TYK2 that's CNS penetrant that they're doing something totally different with. Galapagos has a JAK1/TYK2 that I don't think they're studying in any the overlapping indications. And then they have an allosteric TYK2 that I think they're running in dermatomyositis study. And although it's hard to tell exactly how committed they are to that program. So, I think the truth is we don't really have competitors in the dual mechanism that are late stage.
Okay. And then with NIU, can you just remind us how you arrived at the 45-milligram dose, what discussions you had with FDA, getting them comfortable you're going up in dose and not wanting you to maybe interrogate a lower effective dose. Just.
Remember, we did run a Phase II study in NIU where we interrogated 15 and 45 on a blinded basis. And I think that was like helpful for understanding what the full picture looked like there and what the sort of range of dose benefit was going to look like.
I think the view for NIU, so NIU, it's an eye inflammatory disease. There's about 400,000 NIU patients in the U.S., of which about 70,000 have back of the eye inflammation that can really only be addressed with systemic therapy. About 40,000 of those patients wind up on some kind of biologic or advanced therapy, and that's kind of the population that we see as our -- as eligible.
I think our view was more so in DM, you said yourself, we're brushing up against the dermatology community and sort of think about this from their angle. In the sort of ophthalmology community, the tolerance among ophthalmologists for eye inflammation is very low. And I think they're just looking for the biggest guns to get these things under control. And I think, look, I think NIU is one of the leading causes of blindness in America. If these patients don't get under control, they lose their sight. And so I think there's like a lot of willingness to try aggressive therapies for these kind of patients. You see this with Tepezza as well, where Tepezza is not a walk in the park, but people are using it all over the place because it's effective and ultimately, they want to get the disease under control.
So, I think our view was it was a good opportunity for that. I think our view is from a pricing perspective, from a patient severity perspective, especially HUMIRA is approved in NIU. And so there's a chance we wind up kind of living in a HUMIRA refractory setting. We just felt like it was going to sustain the sort of bigger gun dose. And then obviously, the Phase II study showed 45 worked extremely well.
So, it sounds like probably a comparable size market opportunity to DM ballpark.
That's about right. Yes.
Okay. Maybe we'll pivot to Graves. And you guys had a recent update on Graves. And I guess as we think about the primary endpoint selection in Graves, euthyroid and ATD free, I would imagine that these patients are in a clinical trial setting are unlikely to show any response of getting placebo.
Yes. I think placebo response will be very low. I mean the truth is that given that these are all patients who were selected for being uncontrollable on ATDs, they're like not going to spontaneously remit and be able to get off ATDs. Like that ATD-free prong is going to dramatically reduce the placebo response rate.
And so was the decision to go with that endpoint versus sort of a lower dose of ATD or just euthyroid, T3, T4 normalization, like was it -- this is the most impactful sort of endpoint for providers? Was that -- or is it a regulatory discussion? How did you arrive at that as the primary endpoint selection?
So, we're measuring all of the above. We're measuring reductions in ATD dose. We're measuring people who are not fully euthyroid, but have T3 and T4 controlled, like we're measuring a lot of things. And I think the combination of them is going to be relevant to different patients and different prescribers.
I think it was a relatively easy choice to pick the big gun endpoint as the primary because it's just going to hit -- sorry, it's likely to hit. And I think it felt like a reasonable place to sort of drive the study. And obviously, FDA is not going to have any issue with an endpoint. It's obviously clinically meaningful to these patients. So I think it was a reasonably straightforward decision.
And so some of the early data, if we could go back to Phase II, I think half the subjects on the 600 mg through 12 week where I think half the subjects had gotten to this endpoint response.
The definitions were a little bit different, but we had sort of -- I think at 600 milligrams, we had about 56% of patients at week 12 who had T3 and T4 below the upper limit of normal and were off ATDs.
Yes. Is that -- because I know that when they dosed down after that because of the design of that study...
The number then went down.
It went down to like mid-30s or something like that, right? So, would you expect that rate to just hold based on what you've learned through the evaluation period, the open-label extension? And is that kind of 50-ish percent kind of what you internally think is a likely 26-week response rate?
I think apples-to-apples on the sort of endpoint measured in the Phase II, which didn't include TSH, I think the answer is, if anything, I would expect that number to get larger the longer the duration of therapy. Like as we look at these patients, the longer they're on deep IgG suppressing data, the more of them get controlled. And so my expectation would be, if anything, longer duration therapy at higher doses shows a better outcome is what I would expect to see.
And then I guess, talk a little bit about how you think this study will inform how doctors will use this -- if the trial is successful and it gets out in the field, right? Is it going to be a 26-week treatment course, a year and then, hey, the patients should be in remission? Or do you think some doctors will use it longer term because they still haven't gotten into remission? I'm just kind of wondering how you see the 26-week data and then the remission data sort of informing the ultimate long-term use case.
Yes. So, and there are -- in practice, there are patients treated for a full year in the Phase III and then there are patients treated for half a year and then off therapy for half a year. And then the second Phase III study is just a six-month study.
What I think we will see in practice is that the sort of algorithm will look a little bit like the methimazole algorithm that is you'll put patients on drug, you'll monitor T3, T4 and TSH. I think some patients, just as some patients are sick enough that methimazole just doesn't get them there, and so they stay on methimazole for life. I think there will be some subset of patients who like are sick enough that we are not able to get them fully controlled with this therapy. And I think those patients will be on it chronically. They'll stay on this drug. And when I say controlled, like maybe they'll get T3 and T4 in controlled but TSH will still be elevated or whatever, like I think it's just going to be different depending on the patient.
But I think -- what I think docs will look for is they'll look for thyroid normalization. And if they see thyroid normalization, I think they will start to have a conversation with their patients about whether they want to try a holiday based on the data that we've seen here. And I think some patients will say, I've lived through uncontrolled thyroid hormone levels for many years and no, I just want to stay on a drug that's working for me. And I think some patients will say, yes, happy to stop taking a weekly shot if I can. And I think that's how it will get used in practice. I think like after six months, docs will start to like track thyroid hormone levels and some patients will need to stay on and some patients will choose to stay on and some patients will choose to take holidays.
That what you said reminded me of something I've heard from some doctors about methimazole or ATDs, which is that they're keeping patients on longer than they should be on. Basically, like in the hope, and hope is never a good strategy, but in the hope that like they maybe have a response after a year or two. So when I think about your patient numbers, right, and how you characterize, I wonder how you estimate that dynamic, right? Because if 1402 is approved, I imagine this is a paradigm change, right, for these doctors. And so perhaps some of that practice stops, right, where doctors are like, you know what, I'm not going to keep somebody on an ATD beyond a certain time point. How does that paradigm shift?
What I think is definitely, in my opinion, going to happen is right now, if you're a patient on methimazole and you're not controlled. Your thyroid hormone levels are still moving around, you're just on methimazole, to be honest, like -- and what I think happens to a lot of patients is they're not controlled. They go up, and up, and up, and dose on methimazole and they get to 20 or 25 or whatever. And then they're unhappy on methimazole and still not perfectly controlled. And so they go back down to 10 or 15 and they just like live with it. And the ones who are really unhappy, then go get thyroidectomies and things like that. But otherwise, they're just sort of living, bouncing around and whatever, some six-month period, they decide to go back to try and higher methimazole dose and they deal with those consequences and sometimes they take a break and they deal with the consequences of the thyroid hormone levels being out of whack.
What I think will happen after we're approved, knock wood, is after whatever, after six months of methimazole not working for a patient, the doc will say, hey, I've got another option for you and it may work better. And so I think we will see is instead of patients being on these sort of long duration bouncing around methimazole kind of regimens, they will transition to 1402 as a last line therapy.
Yes. Okay. And so you have these two buckets. You have an incident kind of bucket, right? And so those patients may get determined to be candidates in a more expeditious manner than you have the prevalent pool of patients and perhaps they're lingering on methimazole for...
330,000 of those were just walking around effectively on methimazole and uncontrolled all the time. So, yes, there's a huge patient population in that prevalent bucket.
Who's taking care of these patients right now? Like how do you kind of understand kind of where these patients are at in the treatment system? And is this all generally a primary care kind of setting?
It's not. It's endocrinologists is the answer. It is a range from academic endocrinology practices to community endocrinologists do treat Graves' disease, including chronic patients. And so it's a mix.
Interestingly, the academic docs tend to believe they can control any patient. And the patients don't always feel that way. That is like some of the patients are like, my doc put me on 25, methimazole, and he or she thought it was going to work, and I hated it. But the academic docs tend to feel like they can, whereas the community endocrinologists who often, I think, live with more of the chronic patients they live with the more standard chronic patients, right? They like dealing with this for many, many years. They're not like always going to an academic center. I think those docs are like obviously receptive to new options for those patients. But anyway, they're treated endocrinologists. It's a bigger prescriber base than in something like dermatomyositis because these community endos, there's like a lot of them, but that's who treats it.
And I think there's -- the data that we showed earlier this month, the like sort of disease modification data has clearly been an eye-opener for docs in terms of like value proposition because a doc who previously was like, yes, I can drive response from high-dose methimazole, I think those docs were like, so why would I try something new? And I think the answer is, well, if you do this for six months or a year, you may get your patients off methimazole is a very compelling answer.
Yes. Okay. So you'll have some data for the previous generation of FcRn, 1401, and TED.
Yes.
I think toward the end of this year.
Yes, that's right.
So, let's just say you see fabulous data, right? I think you've shown some data through five week, I think, was what I recall.
A little bit more than that. Yes, yes.
And it looks directionally similar to IGF1R approaches.
Yes. Directionally is a good word for it. Look, I think IGF1R...
Well, small sample, right?
That's right?
But as someone who would cover Horizon, I remember looking at that and handicapping that as a competitive threat. But if that data are encouraging and support the FcRn hypothesis in TED, how do you think about maybe would you adjust your Grave study to include a stratified subsegment of TED? Would you want to elucidate the benefit for 1402 to get some label language around treating specific thyroid eye disease manifestation.
So, we thought a lot about this over time. And I think initially, we had contemplated stratifying in the Phase III to make sure we got TED patients. What is immediately clear even from the Phase II study that we ran is we don't need to stratify. There will be plenty of TED patients in the study no matter what. And we absolutely -- TBD on exactly which, but we absolutely will have key secondaries on proptosis and the development of TED that will allow us to make, hopefully, label claims, if successful, about the development of TED.
And I think that is, first and foremost, as far as Graves is concerned, one of the things we'd like to do is be able to tell endocrinologists if you put patients on this drug, it will forestall the development of TED, it will slow the development of TED. If they have early signs of proptosis, it will help them. I think one of the things Graves' patients worry most about is developing TED and having either risks to vision or it's just like a tough aesthetic thing. It's uncomfortable. And so I think being able to say this will help there is good.
Obviously, if the TED data is extraordinary, if it looks like every bit is good in an IGF1R, but without some of the side effects, there's certainly an option to launch batoclimab or an option to add either a stratification that allows us to get a label for TED or a separate TED study. That's certainly like an option if that data is extraordinary. But I think we prefer in some ways the angle of like going after the endos and helping keep these patients out of the ophtho office.
Okay. And maybe just a few other topics within the FcRn realm, RA. What underpins the confidence here? I think J&J was supposed to have some Phase II data for nipo here in the ACPA plus population. I don't think we've seen it yet. We have. You've seen it.
Yes. So, J&J put out the data from the combo study this summer, I think, and they didn't show separation from -- so as you remember. So, J&J showed data in the monotherapy setting like two years ago, and it showed activity. It was clearly an active drug. And it was clearly even more active in the ACPA-positive population than in the general population. And it was also clearly more active in patients with deeper IgG suppression.
What J&J then went and did with that data is they ran a combo study with Cimzia to show sort of -- ideally to show adjunctive benefit on top of TNF therapy in a relatively early line of patient, and they didn't see what they were hoping for.
I think our view is, first of all, and that was enriched for the ACPA-positive population to your point. I think our view was, first of all, J&J has dosed nipo in a way that does not suppress IgG as deeply as we do. And second of all, that showing performance on top of a TNF was always going to be a little bit tricky just given how well TNFs work in this patient population, which is why we went later line and why we went -- why we always believed that deeper matters. It would have been nicer if they had seen more separate. I think it's data referring to. It would have been nicer if they had seen more separation from the TNF-only group, but I don't think it materially changes what we're trying to do. You asked about confidence.
Look, I think this is the bar -- the bar for excitement is relatively high for us in that it's an open-label portion. It's a run-in portion of a randomized withdrawal study. And so I think like you got to sort of discount it from that perspective. And then I think it's a tough patient population. But if we're successful, it's obviously a big opportunity.
Yes. So, this is probably in the higher risk of your portfolio of indications.
Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely, yes.
Then what would you just need to see then in this open-label trial?
We haven't set a -- but again, this is the open-label run into the randomized withdrawal study. We haven't given a number. But I think you'd want to see response rates that look obviously, highly compelling for a fourth-line setting is what I would say. Like I think unambiguous is what we'd want to say.
Yes. And then with MG and CIDP, there's great validation commercially now, right, the lead. And so I know that there was some data that you guys had with your first generation, and it's obviously difficult for the comparisons to be made across trial because there's some different metrics that are out there around super responders. And, so ultimately, as we kind of fast forward, where do you see that fitting within the broader portfolio? I imagine Graves is the anchor. Something like RA is -- I don't want to call it a moonshot, but it's the higher risk, big opportunity. And then MG and CIDP feel like low risk and maybe don't have the upside opportunity unless maybe you ultimately end up differentiating on the form factor and/or the IgG suppression gives you some directional unique data points to market?
I don't think I get much benefit from disagreeing with that point of view now. Look, what do I actually believe? I really like the data we showed in March. I think it did show that deeper IgG suppression matters. I know there was debate over that point. I know not everyone agrees. And I think if we can move the field as every other immunology field has moved towards remission endpoints, towards MSE endpoints, towards sort of deep responders, I think we will be better able to deliver those kinds of endpoints than our competitors because of the depth of IgG suppression, I think it will matter.
I think that is correctly viewed as an upside scenario commercially in that. Look, the truth is argenx has done an amazing job building support and understanding in the doc community. And I think kudos to them. I think that efgart is an enormously popular therapy, and it will be difficult to unseat in any meaningful sense.
I think the truth is with the size of MG as a market now, even if we take relatively little share, the drug is going to work in MG. It's got a nice form factor. Maybe some people will find the extra benefit of deep IgG suppression compelling even if others don't. And it does not take a lot of share for it to make lots of economic sense to run the study. So, I feel really good about it as an indication. But in terms of like what I think is going to capture the hearts and minds of investors at this stage, I think MG is just going to be whatever it will be in people's models, I think it will be MG positive in people's models, but it's not like the thing that's going to drive the story. And I think that's fine.
I think CIDP is a little bit different in that I think it's clear I think argenx is also doing a nice job in CIDP. I think it is clear there is more room left on the table in CIDP than in MG, right? You see some of these like articles that suggest that docs are washing patients off IVIg and are not happy with sort of the lull in the middle. And I think our early CIDP data looked pretty good. And so I think if that continues, I think we have an opportunity to be a bigger sort of obvious player in that market. But I think we've got to hit that bar.
Okay. Maybe I'll come back to some early pipeline, but I wanted to hit on LNP litigation because it seems like we're in a very actionable phase here in 4Q with the Section 1498 government contractor defense and whether that's applicable, I guess, the consequence of it could sort of fragment the litigation pathway a little bit if it was deemed applicable. But I guess, will we get clarity on 1498 applicability? I know that we have to size that applicability in trial, right, as I understand.
Well, yes. So, what Moderna in their own frame has said is their view is that 1498 in the U.S. trial, they believe it should cover a little bit less than half of the sales. Obviously, we believe it shouldn't be applicable. So that's sort of the dispute as it were.
And the most important parts of that dispute will be settled by the judge in summary judgment in all likelihood. So we will know the answer to that question. Now half of what is still a question that will be decided in a trial. We've asked for $5 billion in damages before enhancement for woefulness. And so Moderna has said about $2.4 billion would be covered by 1498. The denominator there, whether it's $5 billion or $4 billion or $6 billion or whatever will be decided by a jury. Whether 1498 applies will mostly be determined by a judge in the summary judgment phase. And I say mostly because there are some corner cases in which parts of that question go to a jury, but I think the most likely thing it is mostly decided by the judge here.
And just so I know, is there -- is it tied to a specific hearing for summary judgment or we just don't know more specifically when within this time between now and the March trial, like when that would.
At this point, the issue is briefed. That is there was a schedule for -- we both got to submit summary judgment briefs and then motions and then there were sort of briefing and counterbriefing and counter counter-briefing, and that's all largely done now. So, the judge could, in theory, rule tomorrow, although that doesn't seem very likely, the briefs just went in.
The original time line for the case set forth by Judge Goldberg, who was the previous judge on the case, which is the time when we're currently on. I think it was clear that Judge Goldberg intended to rule on this issue in October, November. There's a new judge on the case now, and he's new to the fact, so he may take a little bit longer. It's sort of at his discretion. So, I don't think we know specifically, but it could be this fall, it could be early next year. That's kind of where we're at, right.
And any clarity on the OUS legal proceedings? I know that, that's kind of kicked off. And just like generally, how should investors think about that? I imagine OUS litigation tends to be a little more fragmented.
It does. I mean there's more jurisdictions. It moves faster in a lot of other jurisdictions than it does in the U.S. So we started these proceedings last spring, this past spring, and I think we will start having like real infringement hearings next spring, so within a year of launching the proceedings. And I think that means there'll be sort of a good drumbeat of progress between the U.S. trial in March and then like the sort of surrounding months where there will be actual infringement determinations made by courts in other jurisdictions next spring.
And I think that's mostly -- look, I think the fastest path to a resolution is that somewhere along the way, we have Moderna have a productive conversation and reach an agreement. And I think the existence of the ex U.S. trials give everyone clarity on like what the picture looks like sooner.
Well, it seems like you can't have a conversation until 1498 is decided.
I think that's mostly true.
And then you have the Pfizer matter where there's been claim construction. Is 1498 still a similar relevant consideration or not?
Pfizer has not asserted 1498 in their case. Remember, their facts are a little bit different in terms of like how much government funding Moderna to versus Pfizer, but also Pfizer just hasn't asserted it. And so it's still possible they could raise it later. But at the moment, it doesn't appear to us that Pfizer has decided to go down that road. They certainly haven't sought a dismissal on that.
And with respect to the claim construction rulings in the Pfizer matter, do you feel like there are any material difference in outcomes on the interpretations of key claims?
We were obviously very happy with the Moderna constructions. And my view bluntly is that there was more downside risk than upside for Pfizer just because simply getting the same outcome as Moderna would have been a good outcome. It was probably on the margins better in the Pfizer case in that there were a handful of issues in which one in particular, most of the issues, the Pfizer judge went the same way as the Moderna judge. In one case, he literally just excerpted a piece of Judge Goldberg's opinion and said, I find this compelling here it is. But there was one specific case, which is probably too technical to go into full detail in a minute in 26 seconds.
But on the meaning of encapsulation in the 651 patent, the Moderna judge chose a relatively complicated definition for fully encapsulated and the Pfizer judge gave us a much simpler and more straightforward definition for fully encapsulated. And I think that will be helpful to us, specifically as it pertains to 651.
Okay. Maybe coming back to pipeline. Your sGC. I cover United Therapeutics. So, PH-ILD is a very interesting high-growth market. And so, just kind of curious, as you advance the program, I think you have some Phase II data next year, second half. Is the focus really concordance of both the hemodynamic aspect of the benefit on PVR as well as six-minute walk? I know six-minute walk can sometimes be considered a little noisy in these trials. PVR a little bit more of an objective measure. So, how do you kind of think about those data and informing steps?
Look, I think there's really two questions in the Phase IIb. I think the first question is just does PVR -- we saw very good PVR reductions in the PAH Group 1 population. And I think like there's a question of like what does that and tolerability look like in the Group III PH-ILD population. I think it is extremely likely that if PVR translates from Group 1 to Group 3 that the clinical benefit will follow. I would hope that we get a pretty clear picture of what that looks like in terms of six-minute walk and time to clinical worsening in this study as well.
Okay. Well, we are at time. So, Matt, I appreciate you taking some time to talk on the latest developments. I appreciate it.
I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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Roivant Sciences — Bernstein 2nd Annual Global Healthcare Conference
1. Question Answer
I cover U.S. biotech at Bernstein. Very pleased to be joined this afternoon by Matt Gline from Roivant. Matt, thanks so much for coming. And maybe if I'll hand it over to you for some opening remarks on the company.
Yes. Thanks for having us. I'm very aware there's like a large 40-minute timer here that's counting down slowly. So I'm aware of the time to fill. We have a lot to say, though. So look, I'm the CEO of Roivant. We are a biopharma company. I think most are probably at least somewhat familiar with us. We mostly focus on development-stage drug development, clinical stage drug development. And today, we have a portfolio of several quite late-stage clinical programs, one of which now in sort of registration with the FDA after some positive data last week. Really excited about all that. I'm sure we'll talk about all those programs. We've been around about 10 years. We've got about a $10 billion market cap, about $4.5 billion of cash after the sale of the drug to Roche a few years back. And one of our programs is a public subsidiary, Immunovant, an anti-FcRn antibody. I'm sure we'll talk about that one, too, but that has about a $2 billion market value for our stake. So that's kind of the general profile of the company.
Great. Why don't we start with the dermatomyositis data that you had last week, really exciting. Would you like to just share some of the highlights and also some of the feedback that you've gotten from investors over the past week.
So I can talk for a long time about this program. So this was a Phase III data that we just generated last week in the VALOR study in a drug called brepocitinib, which is a dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2 that we acquired from Pfizer a number of years ago.
Dermatomyositis is a rare immunological inflammatory disease that's marked both by a very bad skin rash and muscle inflammation and wasting. These are very sick patients, 5-year mortality of somewhere between 10%, 30%, lots of disability and lifestyle issues associated with it. And frankly, just like an untreatable disease up until recently. The vast majority of patients are really only on either corticosteroids or immunosuppressants like old immunosuppressants or some combination of the 2.
IVIg is used in a relatively small minority of patients, and a bunch of stuff is used off-label. But no new therapy successfully developed in a long time. There have been a number of failures, rituximab, others, in -- Stelara, et cetera, in clinical development. And this was the first study to succeed for a novel mechanism in dermatomyositis really in decades. Again, there is an IVIg got approved recently.
We -- it was a 52-week study of 2 doses of brepocitinib against background meds against steroids and methotrexate and other things. We showed beautiful separation from placebo at week 52 on TIS, which is the endpoint total improvement score. It's one of these sort of composite immunology endpoints that measures quality of life and skin coverage and muscle enzymes and a whole bunch of other things. And just a lovely data set, really clean separation sort of textbook quality. We had 9 key secondary endpoints. We hit all of them.
Dermatomyositis, as I said, both muscle and skin presentation, we hit on both muscle and skin. I think as we've talked to docs since data set came out, I think just an enormous amount of positivity coming back to us. Obviously, one piece of this is -- I mean, there were some of these docs were like literally tiering up. There just hasn't been a successful study in so long that to see a novel mechanism approved was quite meaningful. But just like the breadth of the data was impressive in terms of the number of things we hit on.
And then the last point I'll make as a framing point is the study was run with a steroid taper. So we had a mandatory taper of background steroids starting at week 12, going out to week 36, and we sort of required patients to get below 5 milligrams and then encouraged patients to go even lower. And we viewed that in the same way that you might for like a lupus study as a risk mitigant really, a way to encourage separation from placebo.
What I don't think we fully understood until we sort of looked at the data and lived with it is the extent to which -- we showed very significant clinical benefit on the primary and secondary, but we also showed a very significant delta in the amount of steroid taper possible at high-dose brepocitinib versus on either low dose or placebo. And I think that actually has been viewed by the doc community as like another benefit of the drug. It's something the drug has delivered.
These patients are eager to get off steroids. If you've ever been on high-dose oral prednisone like a pred pack or something like that, it sucks. It's like not a pleasant thing. And these patients are on 10-plus milligrams of prednisone in many cases, for like a significant portion of the year. The idea that you can get them down by 70% and still offer a clinical benefit above and beyond what they were seeing on steroids is a huge asset and something that docs have really responded to.
And these immunology composites, as you said, they can be kind of hard to understand what that means in the real world. You brought up the steroid example. Maybe just say a little bit more about some other examples of what this drug could mean in the day-to-day lives of patients.
Yes, sure. So we measured a whole bunch of things. Again, sort of TIS is a composite of a whole bunch of things, and we measured a bunch of things specifically. One key measure of skin disease is the scale called CDASI. It's a gold standard for measuring skin disease in dermatomyositis. We caused a very significant reduction in CDASI for these -- improvement in CDASI for these patients. So the rash goes way down, and rash is one of the most sort of complained about quality-of-life symptoms of dermatomyositis.
There's this thing called the HAQ-D. It's a health assessment questionnaire. It's a disability index. And it measures things like -- there's measures of muscle function in TIS that are things like manual muscle testing where like a doctor literally puts out his hand and says, push up on my hand. And they're like, you seem like a 2 today. That's like a way that this is formally measured.
But in some ways, these disability questionnaires are better. They measure -- they ask patients things like, do you have trouble walking up the stairs? Do you have trouble carrying your groceries? Do you have trouble loading up your fridge? Do you have trouble cooking dinner? And we saw a very statistically significant benefit on that disability index. I think those are actually the kinds of things that really matter to patients living with the disease on a day-to-day basis. And so we're particularly pleased about some of that data.
Great. Great. You'll have an important first-mover advantage in this space, but there are some other companies that have drugs in late-stage development. Like based on your own data and what you've seen from the Phase II from those other companies, like what do you believe are going to be the key differentiators for brepo in a competitive market?
Yes, that's obviously a hard question to answer. We don't know what the profile of those other drugs is going to be. The first thing is basically all of the drugs in late-stage development differ from brepo in one pretty important way, which is the brepo is an oral medication. It's one pill once daily. So it should have a significant, especially again, you think about the 75% of these patients who are only treated on background steroids and immunosuppressants, that's their regimen now is pills every day. And the idea that they can replace those pills with something that will give them better benefit and better tolerability is a huge asset.
Of the other mechanisms in development, probably the 2 that are "furthest" along, there are some anti interferon antibodies. There's dazukibart from Pfizer and then AstraZeneca has an ongoing study of anifrolumab. There was some Phase II data for dazukibart that looked promising. But first of all, it was 2 separate very small studies, one in skin and one in muscle and the patient population let's talk about like single-digit end. So it's just hard to know.
Interferon-directed therapy should work in dermatomyositis. It's an interferonopathy. I don't know that you get as broad coverage as you do with the JAK1 TYK2 because, for example, with TYK2, you also get expression of IL-12 and 23, which we know is also separately active, especially in the muscle disease. So I think there is reason to believe that we have sort of broader coverage. But I think the mechanism of those anti-interferon drugs makes sense. We'll just have to see what the full data sets look like.
And then the other mechanism that's in late-stage development is anti-FcRn antibody, efgartigimod from argenx. That drug put out Phase II data in June in a study, not specifically in dermatomyositis, but in a sort of multiple myositis population. It didn't have a steroid taper. It was a very different patient population. So I think you probably can't apples-to-apples compare the outcomes. It looked like it was somewhat efficacious. As you would expect, it's a disease that is also treatable with IVIg and should be a viable option. I do think in this disease, like DM-treating physicians will gravitate towards a drug with data specifically in dermatomyositis. So I think we will have an advantage in that direction. And it's possible we'll have an efficacy benefit as well, but it will be a little bit hard to compare because, again, I think like the steroid taper dynamics and things like that make it sort of hard to directly read through.
And you have your own FcRn with Immunovant and you could have chosen to develop that in DM and you chose instead to go with brepo. So like what were some of the considerations around that decision?
Yes, I'll say we still could develop 1402 in DM. I think we're happy with the portfolio of indications we're currently studying. But I do think the data is promising from efgartigimod, and we like dermatomyositis and myositis more generally as a commercial market. So I wouldn't say we've ruled it out. Having said that, look, I think what do we like about DM for brepocitinib? First of all, it's a disease where the biology is pretty well suited to dual inhibition of JAK1 and TYK2. So as I mentioned, there's both sort of interferon components, which are actually signaled by both JAK1 and TYK2. And then there's things like IL-12 and 23 contributions to the disease that are signaled specifically by TYK2. So I think there's sort of a benefit to the breadth of coverage. I think there was something nice about going after an oral medication for this disease.
And then the other thing that's been a big boon to us bluntly is the docs who treat DM patients are rheumatologists and dermatologists. They are familiar with JAK inhibition as a pathway. They're familiar with it from all the rheumatological disorders. They're familiar with it from atopic dermatitis, from abrocitinib and other things. And so I think there's like a lot of enthusiasm. And there's like some off-label use of JAK inhibitors already. And I think a lot of these docs are like eager to see an on-label JAK inhibitor to add to their practice. And I think they're primed to believe that brepocitinib may even be better than the kinds of JAK inhibitors they've been using because it is such a sort of specific gun that hits both JAK1 and TYK2.
And then like where along the patient journey would the doc consider prescribing brepo and kind of what percent of all the DM patients would that encompass?
So we track, call it, 35,000 to 40,000 dermatomyositis patients in active treatment. There's more, some of whom may come into treatment with the addition of a novel option as you see a lot in these rare diseases. But we talk about 35,000 to 40,000. Of those, 75% of them only use steroid in old generation immunosuppressants and then about 25% sort of split between IVIg and a soup of other things.
To be honest, I think every -- roughly any patient with DM should be interesting as a potential brepo patient. And certainly, any patient with DM who is on, call it, greater than 10 milligrams of oral prednisone should be interesting because I think that's a pretty crappy experience and often those patients are not being well controlled. So I think the whole market is eligible. I think especially the moderate-to-severe population that are looking for new options is going to be interesting. I think a patient who is -- first of all, like a "incident" patient that is a patient who's on steroids or methotrexate or whatever and is looking for a change.
Previously, IVIg might have been the thing. Some of the standard regimens for IVIg and DM involve like 5 consecutive days a month of 5- to 6-hour a day infusions. This is no joke. I think the idea of a once-pill daily regimen will be an appealing alternative even against the backdrop, whatever, I think like you also could argue for differential efficacy and things like that, but like just on form factor alone. And frankly, I suspect there are patients on IVIg who would like to switch things up. Also, obviously, patients who are on off-label therapies who are struggling with coverage, whose doctors don't have support, et cetera, like I think like there's options for those patients as well.
So I think the entire market, I think certainly, we could exist in a sort of refractory third and fourth-line setting against the stuff that's used. But I also think just patients who are not getting fully controlled on steroids and there are many, I think, are great patients for us. So I think a huge percentage of the market is addressable. If you listen to some of your competitor banks have done KOL calls in the wake of the data, and frankly, like the numbers that docs on those calls use to describe like whatever they say they're going to use 30% or 40% or 50% of their patients to start on brepocitinib. Obviously, if that were true, we'd be very pleased out of the gate.
Let's say a bit about the safety profile you observed and how you think about JAK class risk in the context of this disease.
It's a great question. So first of all, brepocitinib is a relatively bog-standard JAK inhibitor from a safety perspective. It's probably unlike the more benign end. We have about 1,500 patients in the safety database. Pfizer studied the drug in a whole bunch of indications. I think it looks like it's on the more benign end of a typical JAK inhibitor, but we'll have all of that stuff. And I strongly expect that there will be a class warning on the drug, although we don't know and it's an FDA determination. It's a different patient population.
There are a few truths here. One is, look, I think when we first in-licensed the drug for Pfizer in 2021, I think this was a big question. The truth is the market is kind of spoken. I think if you look in like less severe diseases or diseases with more treatment options, let's say, like ulcerative colitis or whatever, where you could go through ENTYVIO and you could go through HUMIRA and all these things, those drugs are widely used in IBD. There are still many, many patients who go to RINVOQ for the level of efficacy that it provides.
So I think like given that in those populations, docs are very happy to use JAK inhibitors, I don't think there's going to be that much of a debate specifically about JAK class safety. There's a couple of other things to keep in mind. One is many of the safety issues associated with steroids and immunosuppressants overlap with the ones for JAK inhibitors. And so it's a little bit of like you're helping to reduce the dose of those things and so therefore, there's at least some positive aspect to the trade-off. And in fact, many of these same issues are also just sequelae of dermatomyositis.
These patients have many of these same issues, heart disease and malignancies and things like that, that are sometimes associated at very low levels with JAK inhibitors. And in fact, if you look at the safety data in the study itself, it looked extremely clean actually. Placebo in general looked worse, placebo looked worse than the drug arm. Some of that's just -- it's -- compared to the thousands of patients that we hope to treat eventually, it's a relatively small patient population. Frankly, JAK class issues are real, but infrequent.
But some of it, to be honest, is you treat these patients, you make them healthier, you actually reduce the number of cardiac events related to the disease. You reduce the number of cardiac events related to high-dose steroids, and there's some like balancing act where actually some of these patients actually like overall get better. And that's before you even think about like the risk-benefit analysis of like the benefit of the drug on treating the direct symptoms of the disease. So I think overall, I think the risk-benefit is going to be just fine and not an issue here.
Do you want to give a high-level overview of the other indications that you've got on deck for brepo?
Sure. Yes. So we have 2 other indications that we've announced publicly and a whole host of others that we've thought about or are actively thinking about. The next major indication for us is non-infectious uveitis, which is an inflammatory disease of the eye. There's about 400,000 NIU patients in the U.S., of which about 70,000 have the sort of problematic back-of-eye version of the disease, where if you have front-of-eye inflammation, you can usually treat it with a topical steroid of some kind. But if you have back-of- eye disease, you really have to do something systemic generally. And eye inflammation is considered a very high priority by ophthalmologists. If you don't treat it quickly, it can lead to blindness. NIU is one of the leading causes of blindness in the U.S. So it's a serious disease.
And again, it's marked by a few options. Really the only novel approved medicine is HUMIRA, which doesn't work great in this population on their primary endpoint -- or on their major endpoints, more than half of patients failed treatment compared with less than 1/3 for our therapy. And in fact, if you do the apples-to-apples comparison, theirs is more like 2/3 and ours is less than 1/3. And so it's -- that was based on our Phase II study that we ran that gave us a lot of conviction in the indication. That's in a pair of pivotal studies that will read out on current guidance in the first half of 2027. Those are enrolling very nicely.
And then the other indication that we're studying is cutaneous sarcoidosis, which is a really bad skin inflammatory disease that again has basically no approved therapies and where JAK inhibition has been shown effective in some small open-label studies and where we are running a Phase II study that will read out next year.
How do you think about the level of clinical development risk for those indications versus you know for DM now, it worked, right, like your ingoing view?
My going-in view was that DM was a riskier proposition than NIU because we had our own Phase II data in NIU, while we didn't have any kind of Phase II data in dermatomyositis. And so I feel pretty good about that study. There's still risks. There are some failed studies out there in NIU in different mechanisms, including a study that failed last year from Acceleron for an IL-17AF or something. And so there's a variety of difficulties there, but I feel pretty good based on the quality of the data we generate in Phase II.
Look, cutaneous sarcoid is riskier in that all of the data sets that exist today are not placebo-controlled and pretty small. We'll know a lot more after we generate the data set. If I had to guess biologically, brepocitinib almost certainly will improve the sort of pathophysiology of cutaneous sarcoidosis patients. I think there's a real question about like how easy or hard that's going to be to show in a clinical trial setting, and we'll find out based on this Phase II.
And for that patient population, what's the -- like how many of these patients are there? And what portion would be addressable for sarcoid?
Yes. It's broadly similar in size, what I'd say, tens of thousands of patients with cutaneous sarcoidosis with no good options right now. So these patients are really sick. So I think it's sort of not so dissimilar an opportunity for dermatomyositis.
And then what are the right pricing comps to keep in mind?
Yes, it's premature to talk about pricing until we have an approved product, and some of that's in FDA's hands. Look, I think DM is a rare disease. I think access is going to matter. But I think there's a pretty good blueprint these days for how companies handle rare disease launches in terms of a lot of patient support and a lot of work by the doctors and the patients and the sponsors to try and help each patient make their way through the payer process. Dermatomyositis as far as comps are concerned or whatever, I mean OCTAGAM, which is the approved IVIg is $250,000 a year-ish, maybe a little more. And if efgartigimod gets approved, the range of pricing for efgartigimod is call it, $250 to $300 in MG up to $500,000 or $600,000 a year in other indications. So all of which says a rare disease pricing is what seems appropriate for dermatomyositis according to what our peers think. And look, our view is these are patients that have a lot of other options. And we will be -- it will be important to us to make sure that whatever price point we choose that all the patients who need the drug have good access to it.
Great. Could we shift over towards Immunovant? Would you like to just give an overview of 1402 and bato and what you transfer?
Yes, sure. So Immunovant is a subsidiary of ours developing a portfolio of anti-FcRn antibodies. This is a class of drug that's pretty widely followed. Obviously, argenx is the class leader and has efgartigimod that's doing on an annualized basis, probably $4 billion now in MG and CIDP. We have 2 anti-FcRn antibodies. Our lead at this point is a drug called IMVT-1402. And the thing about our portfolio of antibodies is they suppress IgG, we believe, more deeply than argenx or efgartigimod is able to suppress IgG. There's various reasons why we believe that to be true. And we think they, in practice, suppress IgG as deeply as anybody in late-stage clinical development or deeper.
And we just think -- so the way these antibodies work to take a super quick step back is they regulate FcRn, which itself regulates the recycling of IgG in the body. And so when you affect -- when you block FcRn in this way, you deplete IgG, in our case, by close to 80%, which, as it turns out, has relatively few safety sequelae, but it's very efficacious for treating diseases marked by pathogenic IgG autoantibodies. And so that's the areas in which this is studied, MG, CIDP, we're studying Grave disease, et cetera. And our hope is that by depleting those antibodies more deeply, we will see greater clinical benefit. Also in most of the indications we're very excited about, we are sort of first in those indications for, in some cases, any mechanism and certainly for an FcRn and think that will give us a real opportunity to do something interesting.
You've been looking to settle this debate around deeper is better. Would you like to summarize what you've shown so far and kind of what the feedback from investors has been around that?
No. Not real, though. Look, the honest answer is these debates start to feel silly at some point and that we're ultimately going to generate data for our drug in the indications in which we commercialize it. And the debate will be what patients choose and what doctors choose and what the data look like. We believe we have consistently over and over again demonstrated that individual patients with deeper IgG reduction get better treatment benefit in MG, in CIDP, in Graves' disease, in TED.
We believe we have shown in MG, where we have large placebo-controlled Phase III studies that we're able to provide better sort of absolute MG-ADL improvements than other drugs with lesser IgG expression have been able to provide. There are other people who quibble with those opinions, especially in MG, where market dynamics have changed and placebo rates are different than they used to be. And so it's just like hard to do good apples-to-apples comparisons.
Ultimately, when 1402 is developed in MG, we will have a label, and we will focus on things like effectively disease remission, our ability to drive minimal symptom expression in patients. And I believe we will be able to do that better than other agents. And I think that will matter to those patients. But to be honest, like MG, where that debate is most acute, is a knife fight anyway at this point. There's 1 million different drugs being developed in MG and many of them work well. And I believe that we should be able to take reasonable share in what looks like a very big market and that we will have a really compelling option.
But I'm much more excited, frankly, about indications like Graves' disease, where we are out in front. We have paved the way on this biology. We have demonstrated pretty conclusively in Phase II studies that this biology works really well in these patients and does some interesting things. And we will be the first in that indication. And I think that will set us up really nicely for telling our own story and not getting mired down in the bog of a point here and a point there kind of debates, although, again, I think we'll do better than a point here and a point there when push comes to shove.
And that's like looks to me like hands down your largest opportunity in terms of addressable patients for that drug.
The beautiful thing about Graves' disease is it's almost not a rare disease. It's got like 300,000 to 350,000 sort of prevalent patients -- there's millions of patients with Graves' disease. Many of them are treated well on existing options from the 1950s, but about 330,000 of them are just not. They can never get controlled on methimazole or other antithyroid drugs. And so they just live uncomfortable. There's actually no other good option for them other -- well, there's no other good therapeutic option for them.
So their choices are either live uncomfortably while cycling on and off methimazole, a drug with lots of side effects, or have their thyroid surgically removed or radiated and then live the rest of their life on synthetic thyroid hormones, which has its own issues associated with, including that you have to be on synthetic thyroid hormones for the rest of your life. And so these patients have no good options, and we're studying only that sort of most refractory patient population. I just think there's a huge opportunity to change what standard of care looks like for those patients.
Why do you think other biotech companies, some of your FcRn competitors have not gone after that indication before?
First of all, I think that is changing rapidly. Like, for example, Biohaven with an Ig degrader has a program. There's a number of TSH receptor programs now out there, Kinetics, a couple of others. I do think like -- look, I don't want to pat ourselves on the back. I think we've like paved the way in Graves' and people now see it as an interesting opportunity. In terms of like specifically FcRn competitors, I don't know and you have to ask them. The obviously self-serving answer to that question is that we have shown that deeper IgG suppression yields better treatment benefit in these patients, and we suppress IgG more deeply. And so it seems to me that we would be a tough act to follow.
And others like argenx, for example, is going after TED, which is a sort of downstream of Graves' kind of an indication. So there are like different approaches to this. That said, would it surprise me terribly if some of our FcRn competitors ultimately show up in Graves' disease, it would not because I think it's a really big opportunity with a lot of unmet need. And frankly, with a patient population of this size, the 330,000 untreated patients, we're not even really competing with anybody else. We're just competing with ourselves and our ability to get out and tell the value proposition story and put good data in front of those docs and patients.
How would you compare and contrast 1402 with the Biohaven degrader?
Well, that's a hard question to answer because 1402 is an FcRn antibody, which is a class that has many thousands of patients worth of data at this point. So like we understand how anti-FcRn antibodies work in the body. We understand their sequelae, their PAx, their -- all kind of things, tissue penetration issues, everything, whereas IgG degradation is much more experimental at this stage. And I think there are approximately 0 patients worth of data on IgG degradation. There's subjects in healthy volunteer studies that show they can degrade IgG generally.
There's like you can talk to around Biohaven's lead IgG degrader. You can talk to like it spares IgG3, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on the specific indication that you're going after. But they will -- they have engineered other degraders that don't do that or do different things and they will engineer others. To me, it looks from the outside like IgG degradation is a comparable mechanism in terms of what you can do with it versus anti-FcRn antibodies. And with a bunch of unknown unknowns about how that sort of acts once you get into larger patient populations, it's behind. But other than that, it seems reasonable as a thing to try.
The one thing I'd say is I know Biohaven is doing this. Like if I were in that space, I would be focusing on a thing that they can do that we can't, which is to attempt to engineer specificity to specific IgG autoantibodies, in which case, instead of suppressing them by 80%, you could suppress them by 99% because there's going to be no sort of safety issue associated with just only the autoantibody. That's a different molecule. It's a different approach. Some diseases have great homogeneity of autoantibody, and so you should be able to do that. Some diseases don't. But I think like those are things they'll be able to do that we can't.
One of your other indications is difficult-to-treat RA. Could you compare and contrast what nipocalimab showed in RA versus what you expect to show and why you expect your results to be different?
Yes. So nipocalimab is the J&J anti-FcRn antibody they got after acquiring Momenta a number of years ago. They show -- in effectively a first-line RA study or that sort of allcomers RA study a couple of years ago, they showed clear activity that is they showed that there was a dose-dependent improvement in RA patients from treating with FcRn. It wasn't like extraordinary activity, but it was clear it was dose dependent and maybe most encouraging to us it was correlated to the level of autoantibodies in the patient which seems constructive. The rub is twofold. One is the way that J&J is -- we haven't talked at all about [indiscernible] and that's just fine but like the way that J&J is developing nipocalimab clearly underdoses the drug in order to sort of optimize for safety and tolerability and so they typically suppress IgG in their studies by maybe a little under 60% or thereabouts, which is just a different profile than our drug from an IgG suppression perspective.
And then they ran a quite different study than the one we've chosen to run. The study that you're referring to they ran was sort of as adjunctive therapy alongside a TNF, which led to Cimzia because doesn't have Fc binding reason, the whole thing. Look, I think part of this is TNFs work quite well in RA. And so you're adding that as a therapy. It's going to be like difficult to sort of piece apart the benefit of the FcRn versus the TNF. They studied in earlier line patient population. What we've chosen to do is to go after the most recalcitrant patients, the sort of fourth-line D2T patients to go after them with the deepest IgG suppression that we believe can be delivered now and to try and sort of generate a different result that way.
So it's a different study. I believe FcRns are active based on the data that J&J showed last year. It would have been nice if they had shown a little bit more numerical separation together with the TNF. But overall, I think we've got a real shot at helping. And obviously, it's a very different patient population if we succeed in terms of like we will not be in the competitive scrum with all of the other RA stuff. We will play sort of after it. And I think if we're successful, that will be a great place to be as an FcRn. But it's a high bar. And frankly, I think we are not given a ton of credit for it right now, and that's just fine. We'll see what the data looks like next year.
How would you rank order the different indications you're going after for 1402 in terms of your overall level of excitement?
Yes. I mean -- so I'm incredibly excited about Graves'. It's just this huge white space opportunity. I'm excited for some of the other more white space opportunities we're going after like CLE, but that's a Phase II study. It's early. We'll have to see the competitive bar is high. So it really depends a lot what that Phase II data looks like. I'm excited about indications like Sjögren's because we will not be meaningfully behind. And so I think if we can sort of catch up there and establish private place with deeper IgG expression, that may feel different.
And then like I think sort of necessarily at the bottom of that stack have to be things like MG and CIDP, where I like MG and CIDP. And the truth is if MG turns out to be a $10-plus billion market, we will be a big drug in MG. But how big will depend a lot on what that Phase III data looks like. And to be honest, argenx has just done a really nice job establishing themselves as the agent of choice for MG treating physicians. And so I think unseating them in that bar is a challenge.
Do you want to share an overview of the mosli and the PH-ILD program?
Sure. So this is our third program. It's definitely the pick your phrase for the sort of abandoned cast aside part of our story for the moment. Mosli is an sGC activator that was originally developed by Bayer. For those who are familiar with the history of this whole area, it's a drug called Adempas that was an sGC stimulator that was jointly developed by Bayer and Merck. Bayer is really the like father or mother or grandparent of sGC chemistry, and they still have sGC-directed agents for other indications, but they got out of respiratory disease a couple of years ago, and this was kind of their main bet in respiratory disease. And so we in-licensed it from them.
It is differentiated in mechanism from Adempas. sGC activators do something slightly different than sGC stimulators. But most importantly for us, it has been formulated successfully as an inhaled therapy in a simple DPI, one puff once a day, which is incredibly important, especially for PH-ILD patients for a number of reasons I can talk about in a second. Bayer generated Phase I data in many, many studies, principally in healthies and then also in pulmonary arterial hypertension Group 1 patients, which looked really good.
The sort of surrogate measure that people look at is PVR, right hearted pressure. And we showed, I think, basically the largest reductions in PVR seen across therapies. We are translating that over to pulmonary -- to PHLD, pulmonary hypertension patients sort of secondary to lung disease because our view is that's a wide open market. TYVASO has launched extremely well in that market and just more in need. It's less of a competitive area. And we think the inhaled format there is going to matter a lot because systemic vasodilation actually does not work very well in PH-ILD. You get this issue like a V/Q mismatch.
Basically, what happens is you dilate the disease lung tissue and you bleed out all the oxygenation benefits that you get from dilating the healthy tissue. And so if you can just hit the healthy tissue, which is what inhaled therapies do, you get a better effect, and we think it will matter a lot. So that study is ongoing now. It's a Phase IIb study that will read out in the second half of next year. And we've seen recently in some other companies that good data in pulmonary hypertension can attribute a lot of market value. And so my hope is that next year, people will start paying more attention to this program.
What do we know about how PVR translates to 6-minute walk?
In general, it translates quite well is the short answer to that question. Actually, it's funny. I think 6-minute walk gets a bad wrap as an endpoint from things like amyloidosis, where it's been a really tough endpoint, to be honest. In pulmonary hypertension, in general, 6-minute walk is actually pretty well behaved. Like most therapies that show a meaningful PVR reduction have been able repeatedly to show good 6-minute walk performance in PAH certainly and more recently in PH-ILD.
And so I think it should correlate. I think the translational question of Group 1 PAH to Group 3 PH-ILD is a real translational question. I think there are good reasons to believe the inhaled format will work. But until we see that data, I think that's probably the biggest risk in the study.
Do you want to talk about the status of your LNP litigation? You've had some positive news flow in the past few weeks there.
Yes. So the history here without going into all of it is we have a team of scientists who have been involved in lipid nanoparticle development for 20 years and were some of the original inventors of LNP for the delivery of oligonucleotides. And it seems to us that Pfizer and Moderna both are using our LNP in delivery of their COVID-19 vaccines. And so we've filed patent infringement lawsuits against both companies. They are progressing. Ultimately, it's mostly hard to comment on an ongoing court case. In the case of the Moderna trial, the jury trial is currently set for March of 2026, and we are in the summary judgment phase of the trial right now going back and forth with briefs with them.
It's ultimately up to the judge to decide the summary judgment issues. I don't know exactly when that will happen. The briefing is mostly done now. So it could be as soon as next month. It could be as late as early next year. It's clear that the original judge on the case seemed to intend to do that this fall. But with a new judge, it's hard to say. And again, it's up to the judge. There's some -- these are -- sorry, I just describe the phase. These are important issues that get to the scope of the case that goes in front of a jury, but that's "all they are." There's no possibility of the judge determining the outcome. Ultimately, a jury will decide on infringement, on damages and on whether the infringement was willful, and that will all happen in March.
But there's been a lot of interesting information as a part of the summary judgment briefings, including we've alleged that Moderna fraudulently misrepresented their infringement to the government. We have some evidence to point to there. Also, it looks like Moderna conducted testing similar to the testing that we've conducted and also found infringement in their own testing. And in fact, the scientist who performed that testing asked to do more of it and was told that they shouldn't do more of it because it posed uncomfortable questions, which is a nice e-mail for a jury. So that's the sort of thing that's now become public in the last couple of months. But again, this will all play out both with the judge and with the jury, and it's sort of up to those groups to decide the outcome.
And once this eventually reaches a conclusion, like what's the range of outcomes? And what could it potentially mean financially for the company?
It's very hard to comment on ongoing litigation. The 2 COVID vaccines together have sold $150 billion worldwide. Other COVID licensing deals that we have done in other settings have between mid-single-digit and mid-teens royalties attached to them and anywhere in that range is very significant on the total denominator. But again, it's really up to a jury.
Great. So at the company level, do you have a different framework in 2025 for thinking about whether to independently commercialize an asset versus how you've thought about it in the past?
We have learned a lot over time about that. We did it once before with a dermatology product, VTAMA that we commercialize ourselves for a while and then sold to Organon. So we've learned a lot about what we think we're good at and what we think biotech companies generally are good at. And as a spoiler, rhymes a lot more with dermatomyositis than with a psoriasis in terms of where people are succeeding who look and smell like us these days.
In terms of like whether to commercialize the drug, first of all, I really like DM as a commercial opportunity for us. I think it has a lot of nice features among them, a concentrated prescriber base, about 200 centers treat a majority of the patients in the U.S., a doc population that is inclined to be excited about our drug, who we know well from running the trial. I think it's like good features and just a patient population with very high unmet need is the bottom line. And so I think that sort of thing makes me excited about the commercial opportunity. And frankly, that then stacks with NIU and stacks with kidney sarcoid and other indications to come. And so I feel really good about the sort of go it on our own opportunity in front of us.
We have demonstrated historically that we are pretty economic and sort of whatever, economically thoughtful about these decisions. And I think the answer is like, is there a partnership construct or acquisition offer that would unseat that view? Sure. I just think the bar is very high because we think these therapies are really exciting.
And to be honest, I think this is truly the beginning of a new chapter for Roivant as a company, right? I think if you look forward, you think about a DM approval and launch and then an NIU approval and launch and then you start to see things like Graves' getting approved in the 2027, 2028 time frame. It's just like these things really stack on top of each other. And I think it's like not very difficult to convince yourself that these 2 drugs combined even before you get to mosli and other things are $5-plus billion commercial opportunities and then with room to run. So I just feel like we have an opportunity to sort of grow into the big leagues at this point, and I think that's a pretty exciting opportunity.
Talk a bit about capital allocation. You've got a very large cash balance. How do you think about what to do with that?
Yes. So we exited the TL1A sale with about $6 billion in allocable cash. And what we said at the time was it fit roughly into 1/3, sort of $2 billion set aside for funding the existing pipeline roughly to profitability, $2 billion set aside for clinical development associated with new BD, which is all still dry powder. We haven't done a lot of that yet. And then about $2 billion, we thought was sort of excess returnable to shareholders. And we've bought back $1.5 billion of stock. We've authorized another $500 million to buy back. And other than that, we're sort of plugging along on those other channels and continue to feel good about those broad buckets.
And on the dry powder BD angle, like what's your framework for what you think is interesting for Roivant?
What we are best at is aggressive creative clinical development of late-stage drugs. And so a lot of what we look at falls in that bucket. But we have indication ideas for drugs of a variety of mechanisms. We have targets that we like, and we're pretty opportunistic. So we don't do a lot of sort of true preclinical discovery work. I wouldn't expect that to change maybe around the margins, but not sort of down the fairway. There are certain indications and therapeutic areas that have been just less whatever, we mostly in-license our programs, a lot of that from big pharma. For example, like big pharma is not often out-licensing awesome oncology drugs and also those things often need to be developed in combo. And so that's been like less of a focus for us than some other therapeutic areas. But in general, we're open.
Great. I think that's all the time we have. Thanks so much, Matt, for joining us.
Thank you. It turned out to be no problem for us.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to VALOR Phase III study results [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining today's call to review the VALOR Phase III study results. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant; and Ben Zimmer, CEO of Priovant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com.
We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along. I'd like to remind you that we'll be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties. And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining this morning. These are always the fun calls to do. So I'm really excited today to take you through and to have Ben take us through the top line results from the VALOR study. I was going to start with a super quick reminder on Slide 3, which is that 2025 is a big year for Roivant. Earlier this year and up through actually even just a few weeks ago, we've been delivering a lot of data in our anti-FcRn franchise, establishing both the deeper IgG reduction matters and laying out some of the exciting opportunities that are to come in Graves' disease. But actually, in some ways, today is the main event [indiscernible] here.
And so today, we're excited to present the registrational data from our study of brepocitinib in dermatomyositis, which we think should enable, yes, a truly transformative new treatment option for these patients. So yes, really excited to give you that data. There's other things happening in the business as well, including continued progress with a lot of new information coming up in the docket on our LNP litigation. We'll talk about all of that in another time. But today, the focus is really on brepo and what we can deliver for DM patients.
On Slide 4, as a reminder, brepocitinib has been at the top of our pipeline chart for a little bit here, and dermatomyositis has been our next would be commercial program for a while. This really becomes an incredible anchor for us overall with the drug that matters for patients that lays out the beginnings of what we think should be a franchise across other indications for brepocitinib and that sets the stage for other immunology launches at Immunovant and then beyond mostly. So just the beginning of a tremendously exciting period for our pipeline and couldn't be more excited that this foot has been correctly planted.
On Slide 5, we will take more time again in the future to talk about what the next few years looks like for Roivant. But this slide felt aspirational when we first presented it in June that we just have an incredible wealth of opportunity coming in the near future here, starting with today's data and then next up in the not-too-distant future, the NIU data also coming for brepocitinib. Then shortly thereafter, a launch of brepo in DM, a launch of brepo, hopefully in NIU as well as indication -- data in multiple potentially registrational indications for Immunovant. So just a stacked period ahead and one that just obviously totally transforms the profile of what Roivant is as a company.
So a really exciting beginning to a really exciting moment, and I know our whole team is looking forward to the next steps here. Anyway, on to the main event for today. So we're here to talk about the highlights of the Phase III data for the VALOR study. I'll walk through just a little bit of that on Slide 7 as well as some background information and then hand it over to Ben to take you through full detail on the study and the data. Look, in short, this study did everything we could possibly have hoped for. It succeeded with highly statistically significant, robust consistent data across the primary and all the key secondary endpoints. We saw a nice clean dose response between 15 and 30 and 30 clearly established itself at the optimal dose in this setting.
The responses were rapid, deep, broad, clinically meaningful on both muscle and skin. We'll talk more about that. We had a mean TIS of 46.5%, a delta of over 15 points with a very low p-value. 2/3 of patients on brepo 30 had at least a moderate response at TIS40 and nearly half had a major response at TIS60. Onset was rapid. Median time to TIS40 was about 2 months and TIS and CDASI responses were significant as early as week 4. And we were positive on, as I say, every endpoint we formally specified in the study. So just a really, really good outcome.
Safety profile is consistent with prior clinical studies. We'll flash that up a little later in the presentation. I think that's pretty striking as well. And the FDA filing is planned for the beginning of next year. Just a couple of reminders on the backdrop here before we get into the data, starting on Slide 8. Look, standard of care for these patients really is a combination of corticosteroids and off-label immunosuppressive therapies, and it has been unchanged since the 1980s. There has not been a truly novel therapy approved in a very long time. And IVIg got formal approval not that long ago, but it's still used in a small minority of patients.
Only about 13% of patients are on IVIg containing regimens, and some of those are on IVIg, they've been on for a very long time. And there's just a ton of patient and physician need. These are really sick patients, high morbidity, high mortality, a lot of disability. We'll talk more about how our treatment has benefited some of those symptoms in the study. But there's been really no targeted therapy approved, and we're excited to be the first with this kind of data.
And then lastly, and this is also an important backdrop for all the data we're going to talk about today. These patients are on, and this is its own independent issue associated with being in dermatomyositis patients, high-dose corticosteroids, most requiring over 10 milligrams a day for a good portion of the year, which in and of itself is a problem. It sucks to be a patient on high-dose corticosteroids, and it has its own sort of complications and side effects. So given that backdrop, there's just a huge amount of room here for a new treatment.
And then on Slide 9, the truth is that DM has been a graveyard. Even many of the therapies currently used off-label have failed to generate statistically significant benefits in DM studies. And you can see many targeted therapies that failed in clinical trials on the left-hand side of this page across DM and other myositis. And that potentially makes brepocitinib the first approved sort of targeted medicine here. It's an oral once-daily selective inhibitor of TYK2 and JAK1. This is the first successful registrational trial for a targeted therapy in DM, the first successful 52-week placebo-controlled trial for any therapy in DM, the first successful placebo-controlled trial for any once-daily oral therapy, and it's the largest interventional DM study ever conducted.
On Slide 10, and I think this is part of what contributed, frankly, to that success. The biology here is pretty good for us. That is the number of things that we do across the pathobiology of dermatomyositis is broad, and many of these aspects are important from type 1 interferon activity to type 2 interferon activity, activity in IL-12 and 23, which we get from TYK2, activity from IL-6 -- and as compared with other sort of contemplated or potential therapies out there, selective JAK1 inhibitors couldn't do everything that we can do, selective TYK2 inhibitors can't do everything that we can do and targeted antibodies against type 1 interferon also cannot do everything that we think we can do for these patients.
I think it bears noting on Slide 11, and we'll talk about many of these endpoints in more detail and the full data set across them all later in the presentation. But just taking a step back, we hit on everything. This is a broad data set. We hit on muscle-specific endpoints. We hit on skin-specific endpoints. We hit on endpoints that show achievement of clinical response together with steroid reduction. We hit with, in many cases, extremely low p-values. This is a very statistically convincing broad study that shows meaningful improvement across a variety of really important measures for these patients. And I think that as an aggregate takeaway is going to be really important to docs and patients as they go through this. So that's enough sort of preamble for me. What I'm going to do now is hand it over to Ben on Slide 12 to take you through the trial design and many of the specific data points that came out of it. Ben, take away.
Great. Thanks so much, Matt. Really excited to share this data with everyone today. Starting quickly on Slide 12 with the study design. A few features of the design I would highlight that are distinct from some of the other completed or ongoing myositis trials. First is the 52-week placebo-controlled duration. Second is the fact that this is a study done in dedicated dermatomyositis patients, not pooled across multiple myositis subtypes. The third is a very aggressive steroid taper, which is not seen in most other myositis studies that have been completed. And then the fourth I would highlight is the inclusion of 2 doses. As you know, we went direct to Phase III in this program and really 30 milligrams was the dose that we were hypothesizing would be the appropriate one in this population, and we included 15 as well to further add to the robustness of potential efficacy in 30 milligrams and establish the minimum efficacious dose for an NDA filing.
Turning next to Slide 13. We have the background information. As you can see, the arms were well balanced across demographics, disease activity and background medications. Two other points I would highlight. First is this is a moderate to severe population, highly active on both muscle disease and skin disease. And the second is this is really a study against background standard of care, as Matt walked through earlier, you can see large numbers of patients on both steroids and immunosuppressants. And as you can see, the background steroid dose for patients is extremely high across all 3 arms, over 10 milligrams per day of steroids and approximately 3/4 of the patients on steroids. So this is really consistent with what we see in the real-world data in terms of how these patients are treated today and a big burden for the patients.
Turning now to Slide 14 with the disposition. I would highlight that the discontinuation rate we saw in placebo was more than twice what we saw in the brepocitinib 30 mg arm and the number of patients requiring rescue medication in placebo was also twice what we saw in the brepo 30 mg arm. So again, already here beginning to speak to the therapeutic benefit seen by patients in the trial from brepocitinib.
Slide 15, now turning to the main event. We see the primary endpoint results on the mean total improvement score over time. You can see very robust, clinically meaningful and statistically rigorous data here. That sig separation between brepo 30 milligram and placebo starting at week 4, so very rapid onset of action, sustained at every single visit thereafter all the way after the primary endpoint at 52 weeks where as Matt walked through before, we have an extremely low p-value, clear dose-dependent response at every time point, again, really establishing 30 milligrams here as the appropriate dose for this population as we think about benefit risk.
I would also highlight the table on the bottom right of this slide, which is that these results highly meaningful on their own, also occurred against the backdrop of the patients on brepocitinib 30 milligrams dramatically reducing their steroid burden during the trial. Over 60% achieved a minimal -- at least or most a minimal steroid dose of 2.5 milligrams per day and over 40% were able to come off steroids entirely. And both of those percentages are roughly twice what was achieved in the placebo group. So you really have 2 things happening here at the same time.
One is clinical improvement relative to placebo. And then the second is simultaneous steroid reduction relative to placebo. And we think that as we think about what actually matters to patients in the real world and what they're experiencing in the real world, which is both the direct symptoms of dermatomyositis and the toxicities of high-dose chronic steroids, this is going to be extremely compelling.
Slide 16 has the TIS response data. As you can see, over 2/3 of patients achieved a moderate response or TIS40 in the brepo 30 mg arm and nearly half achieved a major response of TIS60. So we're very excited about this result. Slide 17 contextualizes this a bit. As I mentioned upfront, it's really hard to think about direct comparisons of this data to other trials because the patient population and endpoints are so different. I think the closest endpoint duration are so different.
I think probably the closest assessment would be the ProDERM trial of IVIg, which had a pretty similar patient population. That study was only placebo-controlled for a much shorter time period, but open-label IVIg was evaluated out to 40 weeks. And you can see the response rates that we achieved with brepo 30 mg compare favorably to what IVIg was able to achieve even in an open-label setting. Our data, of course, achieved in a placebo-controlled setting with the steroid reduction impact that I had walked through before in the IVIg trial, steroids were held constant.
Slide 18, again, speaks to this intersection of therapeutic benefit and simultaneous steroid reduction. As you can see, over half of patients were able to simultaneously achieve a moderate TIS response with minimal or no steroid burden and over 1/3 of patients on brepo 30 mg were able to achieve both a major TIS response and minimal or no steroid burden after 1 year. So again, we think this is going to be very compelling to patients and physicians. Slide 19, we move to the skin-specific data. This shows the CDASI, which is the gold standard endpoint for measuring skin disease in dermatomyositis. Again, you see similar to the TIS, statistically significant separation from placebo as early as week 4, sustained at every visit after week 52 and clear dose-dependent response, again, establishing 30 milligrams as we had hypothesized coming in as the appropriate dose for this patient population.
On Slide 20, I note that about 60% of the patients in the trial came in with moderate to severe skin disease. And this is reflective, again, of the real world where this is a moderate to severe skin disease that is refractory is a large share of dermatomyositis patients, and this is a highly morbid patient population really in need of new therapies. And you can see very compelling data for this large subset of patients. The brepo 30 mg patients achieved on average 63% reduction in skin disease burden and 44% of them were able to meet the standards for cutaneous clinical remission much more than in placebo.
And we think that, that's really a very powerful data point in terms of the ability to generate very deep reductions in skin disease burden for these moderate to severe skin disease patients, which again represents a large portion, both of this study specifically in the real-world patient population. And I think coming into the readout, there was probably more confidence in skin and maybe some more questions about whether brepocitinib would also be able to provide benefit on muscle disease. And as you can see on Slide 21, that question has now been pretty definitively answered. And the answer is yes, brepocitinib can help muscle disease in very meaningful ways for dermatomyositis patients. You see a few distinct data points here that all speak to that. First, I would note and remind everyone that the TIS itself is -- it's a global endpoint, but heavily weighted towards muscle disease and particularly for a patient coming in with moderate to severe muscle disease at baseline, it's impossible to generate benefit on the TIS unless muscle disease is improving.
And for that subset of patients, which was 75% of the study, not a small subset, you saw a very significant benefit on TIS consistent with the overall study results. MMT8, which was a physician-administered assessment of motor strength, also very good data. We hit stat sig there and 72% of patients on brepo 30 mg achieved a 7-point increase or greater, which is very meaningful. And then finally, this may be less familiar to people, but I actually think it is probably the most important data point on this slide, which is the HAQ Disability Index. This is a patient-reported outcome. It's a questionnaire that measures daily living activities like ability to walk up 5 steps, ability to get out of car, ability to dress oneself.
These are the ways that muscle weakness in DM actually matters to patients in the real world. And this is a scale where the scores range from 0 to 3, where 0 is no impairment and 3 is basically completely physically disabled. And so against that backdrop, a 0.3 point placebo-adjusted improvement is extremely meaningful. And again, as we think about bringing this drug to patients in the real world, that's the kind of thing that's going to -- going to matter a lot to them, and we're excited over time to continue to report out more of the patient-reported outcomes as well, which we think are going to be a very important feature of brepocitinib.
Slide 22, we've covered this already through some of the data, but I would just really highlight that as you would expect with the TYK2/JAK1 mechanism of action, we saw a very rapid onset with confirmed benefit as early as week 4. As I mentioned before, a stat sig separation from placebo on both TIS and CDASI at week 4. And then the average patient achieved the minimal clinically meaningful response on TIS at 32 days, TIS20 -- TIS32 days, 1 month. And then in 2 months, the average patient achieved a moderate response of TIS40. So again, this is very rapid onset of action.
But then importantly, as we've walked through before, actually sustained out to a full year. It's not just a quick benefit that then [ fades ] over time. And then finally, with the efficacy data on Slide 23, Matt made this point already. I would just reemphasize it. And here, you can see the exact data. But this is an incredibly robust and broad result across a significant number of different endpoints. The primary endpoint is critically important. We also included in the statistical analysis plan 9 ranked key secondary endpoints.
Every single one of those hit with clinically meaningful data and extremely low p-values, as you can see on the right hand of the slide. And again, just to repeat what Matt said, this includes measurements of muscle disease, skin disease, time to onset of benefit, the intersection of clinical response and steroid sparing and really just a very robust compelling data set that we're really excited to bring to FDA and then ultimately to doctors and patients in the real world.
And then on Slide 24, turning to safety. As Matt mentioned, the safety data here, I think, really reinforces our ingoing hypothesis that brepocitinib could provide a potentially very favorable benefit risk profile to patients with dermatomyositis. You see, generally speaking, well balanced across the arms in terms of all of the data here. And I would highlight, in particular, that adverse events of special interest, including cardiovascular events, thromboembolic events, and malignancies were well balanced across the arms. In fact, as you can see on the slide, the frequency of these occurred with a greater frequency in placebo in this study.
And I think what that speaks to is just the fact that the background rates of these events, both from underlying disease as well as from the toxicities of steroids and ISTs are large in this population, and there's a high unmet need for new therapies. This is a very robust safety database in just DM for a rare disease population, 241 patients out to 1 year. But I would also remind everyone also that the brepo safety database overall includes 1,500 patients and subjects, well-characterized safety profile that appears consistent with approved JAK and TYK2 inhibitors.
And finally, yes, just to wrap up on Slide 25 before handing it back to Matt. We're really excited by this result, and we think it can really meaningfully improve the lives of patients. I spent, as you can imagine, a lot of time over the last few years with physicians who spend a lot of their medical practice treating these patients with patients themselves, patient advocacy groups, and these are extremely sick people who really need a new medicine.
And I'm really proud of the fact that in a space that's been a bit of a graveyard for drug development, we've been able to break through of this, proud of our development team at Priovant for delivering on this outcome, really appreciative of all the investigators and site staff who have worked so hard to deliver it and most of all, to the patients who volunteered their time to participate in this, including in a 52-week placebo-controlled trial, which is for a very sick patient with the risk of being on placebo, really volunteering their time and life to help advance research. So really appreciative of all that, really excited about what this means, and I'll hand it back to Matt.
Yes. Thanks, Ben. And I'll just reiterate Ben's note of thanks. Look, this is incredibly exciting data. This is everything really we could have hoped for. In this study, and it will really matter to patients. So I'm excited to watch the Priovant team carry that forward. I want to reiterate Ben's thanks for the patients and the investigators who partnered with us in the study for our partner, Pfizer, for their work on the program to the entire Priovant team who has worked truly tirelessly on this for a number of years to the Roivant team who was also incredibly heavily involved over time, just a great outcome and a lot of people working on it.
Look, I'll turn it over to Q&A in just a second. There's a lot more to talk about in terms of the future, both for the program specifically and for Roivant. We're going to hold an Investor Day on Thursday, December 11. There will be an in-person component for those who want to be in New York. So we'll talk more about that in the future, and I look forward to seeing many of you there and on various calls between now and then. With that, I will stop yapping and turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Dennis Ding with Jefferies.
2. Question Answer
Congrats on the really strong data here. I had a question on just in terms of doctor feedback, have you done market research or survey work with rheumatologists and where they see brepo fitting in? And I know you said TIS is an artificial clinical trial endpoint that's not really relevant in practice, but what endpoint really resonates with these DM doctors? And if there's any way to quantify what percentage of their DM patients would they prescribe brepo to given the data you have?
Yes. Great. Thanks, Dennis. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the question. On the conversation with docs, I'm actually going to turn it over to Ben in a second who has a ton of those conversations all the time and can talk about the feedback from rooms. Look, I think in terms of what endpoint resonates with docs and with us as we look at this data, I'll make 2 comments. One is all of them in aggregate is one answer to that question. That is the robustness of the data set, the breadth of the data set. I think there will be an overpowering effect to people looking at this data of seeing that it has effect in lots of different places. That said, I'll call out what Ben called out in the presentation, which is the HAQ-D index talking about sort of patient experience living with disability.
I think being able to show a real separation on those sort of activities of daily living. I'm not sure that every patient is walking around thinking about their HAQ-D score every day, but I think that is something where those patients are going to their doctors. And they're not saying, "Oh, like my CDASI feels like it's a little bit worse this week." They're saying, I can't climb up the stairs or I can't lift things. And I think the HAQ-D index really shows our ability to benefit there. So I think those are really good endpoints there. Ben, do you want to talk about what we say about treatment paradigm?
Yes. I mean I think that there's a lot of enthusiasm. We've done research of many different forms. I would say, broadly speaking, there is very high enthusiasm for new targeted therapies to help nearly all patients. Again, as I mentioned, the standard of care here is mostly high-dose steroids as well as ISTs. So I think very high levels of enthusiasm for a new medicine. Ultimately, every doctor would assess individually for each patient whether to prescribe it. But I would certainly think of the kind of broad eligible patient population here is nearly all DM patients.
And then obviously, whether it's prescribed is ultimately a patient-by-patient determination. I would also just add, again, from all the conversations I've had with rooms and derms, the steroid-sparing benefit here is, I think, very meaningful. And again, this ability to simultaneously drive clinical improvement with minimal to no steroid burden. I think the intersection of that -- of those 2 distinct but related benefits is really going to resonate. And that's something that I think I would highlight in particular about this data.
And our next question will come from Brian Cheng with JPMorgan.
Truly congrats on the data. Maybe just first on the trial data. Can you comment on the treatment compliance in the high dose? And when it comes to the extent of the rescue medication, can you also kind of give us more color on what medications are being used and for how long? And then I have a quick follow-up.
Yes. Thanks, Brian. Obviously, look, good question. And I think you can tell from the disposition slide on 14, both in terms of discontinuation rates that actually patients on drug discontinued at a low rate, right, only 7% and a meaningfully lower rate than on placebo that at some meaningful level, compliance was quite good. That is these patients were excited to be in the study, excited to stay in the study and the patients who were on drug stayed in the study more.
In terms of rescue, I think the short answer to that question is I'm sure docs use a variety of things, but the most important thing you use for short-term rescue for flare-ups is steroids and increase of steroids relative to the taper protocol. And I think most of these rescue patients included a meaningful component of increased steroids because they weren't getting what they needed.
Great. And then based on the profile and receptivity of brepo among the physicians that we spoke to and also considering the existing off-label use of JAK in the space, how should we think about pricing at this point in the grand scheme of things? How much flexibility do you have? Will you be able to anchor this to a rare disease pricing?
Thanks, Brian. Also a great question. The most important answer to it is we're not going to talk specifically about pricing in advance of an approved product. Look, I think it's too early to talk about it beyond what we've already said. And I'll make 2 points. One is this is a novel mechanism. Dual inhibition of JAK1 and TYK2 is not approved anywhere else. So it's a completely novel mechanism. It's not like we have to be referencing or anchored to any other approved therapy.
And in dermatomyositis, it is a severe disease with high morbidity and high mortality. And among the sort of approved or sort of in development alternatives, IVIg, where approved, is $0.25 million a year kind of a therapy. And if you look at the FcRn space where another agent is in development, for example, that's significantly more expensive. So I think as a severity of patient population, certainly, the market appears open to rare disease pricing, and it's a novel drug. So we think that's a reasonable place to be. But that's where we're at today.
And our next question will come from Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs.
And I'll add my congratulations to you all on this data. Maybe 2 quick questions for me. Maybe first, can you just speak to how the kind of robust skin and muscle disease activity you saw might point to any additional indication expansion opportunities with the drug? I know, obviously, you saw robust activity across both of those. And then can you also just talk to the sequencing you anticipate as we look forward to some of the clinical stage assets that are in development? How do these data kind of inform your expectations for brepo sequence in the treatment paradigm as you look forward on a 3- to 5-year view?
Yes. On the first question there on indication expansion, I'll just say, we have, let's say, suspected all along that brepo was a very potent, powerful drug that would work in a variety of settings across a variety of different markers. Both the Roivant team and the Priovant team have been thinking expansively about places that we can go. And I think we have lots of ideas, so stay tuned. And I think this data is supportive of the breadth of those opportunities, but so is the other 8 other positive data sets we have for brepo and other indications already.
In terms of how it fits into the treatment paradigm in the medium to long term, I think Ben sort of hit at this in his conversations with rooms. But in general, I think the answer is we view every dermatomyositis patient as an eligible potential recipient here. As you saw in the slide deck, only a very small percentage of these patients are on IVIg, and many are on off-label therapies that have not been proven to work. I think the existence of an oral medication with a compelling broad data set is going to create a real change in how these patients think about treatment. And frankly, almost everything else in development is also injectable. And so we -- for the foreseeable future will be differentiated even as other agents may enter the market. So we think we have a lot of opportunity.
And our next question will come from Yaron Werber with TDC.
Congrats really on the consistency of the data pretty much all across the board. Maybe just a couple of questions. Number one, the safety profile looks really clean and safe, and there were actually more dropouts on placebo relating to AEs. Can you discuss that? It was 11% on placebo versus 6% on brepo. And then I think there's probably going to be a little confusion on the CDASI on the 12% versus 7%, which shows you a 5% delta. What's clinically meaningful? Where we believe from physicians, anything with a CDASI different of over 5% is clinically meaningful? So getting to 12% is pretty good, but I want to know your thoughts.
Yes. Thanks. Look, I think I'll take the CDASI question and maybe ask Ben to talk a little bit about the safety piece. Look, I think, first of all, just to be clear, the CDASI is not a percent. It's a scale. So these are sort of numerical values, just to be clear on what the data is. Look, I think the short answer is 12 points on CDASI is a very large clinically meaningful benefit for these patients. And maybe the way to think about this is if you just look -- if you flip back to Slide 20 in the deck that you have in front of you, remember that 44% of the patients on brepo 30 mg achieved what we would call cutaneous clinical remission by the end of the study. And so I think that gives you a sense of like how significant these results are. And look, I think that is an indicator that the CDASI data, I think, is going to be viewed as extraordinary bluntly by dermatologists to treat these patients. Ben, do you want to comment on the safety question?
Yes, sure. I mean I think your observation is astute. I think what is leading to treatment discontinuation speaks to in the placebo arm is as we mentioned, this is really a study on top of standard of care and standard of care has significant safety burden in this population. There's also just reasonably high background rates of a lot of events for dermatomyositis patients just from the underlying disease. This is a very severe highly inflammatory systemic condition that affects multiple organ systems. And I think you see that in the placebo data -- data here. And that's consistent with what you would see in terms of background cohorts and published literature as well in terms of just dermatomyositis patients overall. So I think what it speaks to really is that what these patients need is novel, efficacious steroid-sparing treatments. And I think that that's what our data set supports brepo to be.
And our next question will come from Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Congratulations on the really strong data. Maybe just following up on the CDASI and specifically on Slide 19. The placebo response was also a little bit higher than what we typically expect on CDASI. So I was wondering if there was any explanation for the placebo as well, which saw 7 points decrease on CDASI. And then just a couple of follow-ups. Do you plan to file for just one dose, which is the 30 milligram? And if you can provide your perspective on what percentage of DM patients might be on off-label JAKs? I know it's a little bit of hard data point to get, but any benchmark would be super helpful.
Yes, perfect. Thanks. Look, I think on the placebo point, first of all, I just want to remind you of something that Ben said in his last answer, which is that this is not a study against placebo really. It is a study against standard of care. And these patients are in active therapy. And so part of the explanation for placebo here is that. The other piece of it that I think is notable is, remember, this is -- you're talking about like normal, but this is the first time anyone studied this out to 52 weeks. If you sit and you look at the 12 and 16 and even 24-week time points, I think those numbers are probably more in line with what you expect in other studies. Obviously, also across immunology, we've seen placebo rates change over time. And so I think there's a little component of that too. In terms of dose, look, I think the study makes very clear that 30 milligrams is the correct dose for this patient population. And I think that will be that will be our intention. Ben, do you want to add something to that?
Yes, I would just add on -- I agree with all that. And I would just add, again, like as an anecdotal example in the open-label study, the placebo on CDASI was 7.5 points at 24 weeks, not 52. So I think that this is a very difficult and challenging area to do drug development. That is what we've seen through all of the failed trials. And I think just important to bear that in mind. I think as Matt said, 52 weeks is critical. But even at shorter time points, you've seen placebo rates in other trials behave similarly or even with more placebo response.
And the next question will come from Andy Chen with Wolfe Research.
This is Emma on for Andy. Congrats on the data. I believe Ben mentioned more patient-reported outcomes will be reported at some point in time at a later date. When can we expect those results? And what can we expect?
I think in terms of what you can expect, I think the short answer to that question, and thanks for the question, is if you look at this data set overall, I think it supports a highly active agent. And I think you can expect to see exciting outcomes in those PROs where patients were excited to be in the study, excited to be on drug. I think that's reflected in the discontinuation rates. I think it's reflected in the overall data set. So I think you'll see data that supports the profile that we're happy for.
In terms of timing and process from here, obviously, those PROs are incredibly important for medical communication, for talking to physicians, for getting the physician and patient community excited about the drug. And so I think what you should expect in terms of timing is that we will use those at conferences, we'll use those at medical meetings. We'll use those as we get out and engage with that community. And I think that's going to be an important part of our activities over the next 12 to 18 months. So I think we'll see data coming in that window and beyond.
And the next question will come from Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital.
Great work on this update. Just 2 for me. Just any details you're able to provide on commercialization plans as you think about the number of sales reps and then how quick you can ramp up the infrastructure for the launch? And then second question is, it looks like about 20% of patients in the study had a history of ILD. Just remind me, did you measure if there was any impact on ILD symptoms or progression? And then do any of the drugs used now for dermatomyositis have an impact here?
Great question, Sam. I'm going to let Ben take that one.
Yes. On ILD, the results -- first of all, this is a myositis study, a general myositis study, not a study on ILD specifically. The TIS is a global endpoint. And so patients with ILD, that would factor into the physician's global and patient global assessments. The results among patients with ILD at baseline are consistent with the overall patient population. None of the approved drugs to date have like ILD specific data. So I think that finding is encouraging that these patients would be appropriate for brepocitinib use to treat their overall myositis.
And then the second question on commercialization, but Matt can chime in too. The main point I would make is just this is a rare disease. And I think one of the distinctive features of a rare disease is that there is high overlap between the KOLs, clinical trial sites and eventual prescribers of the medicine. And I think we at Priovant in executing this trial have been in the trenches with these physicians and patient community for several years. And I think that is really something that we're excited about as we look towards gearing up to launch the drug. I think more generally, it would just be kind of a typical rare disease structure in terms of the commercial team and organization.
Yes. Yes, thanks. On the commercial side, just to echo what Ben said, I think, look, it's a very concentrated prescriber base. We know a huge percentage. The Priovant team has done a great job engaging with the dermatomyositis treating physicians. We know a huge percentage of these docs. And I think there's a lot that we can learn, have learned from other recent launches in similarly rare patient populations that we have studied closely and that we're going to carry forward into this launch as well. So I think -- look, I think we're building all the right pieces there.
And our next question will come from Samantha Semenkow with Citi.
I'll add my congratulations on the data today as well. Just building on that prior question, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the DM landscape right now. I think, Matt, you mentioned there are only 13% of patients roughly on IVIg. I'm wondering if there are any dynamics outside of maybe IVIg just not being a suitable treatment for the majority of DM patients. I know the data today likely speaks for itself in terms of potentially driving adoption. But is there anything you can share about your expectations on what that could look like over time and how that compares to what we've seen for IVIg thus far?
Yes. Thanks, Sam. I think the short answer to that question is IVIg is a very challenging thing to use. You're talking about multiple days a month for literally hours a day in an infusion center. And so I think for some patients, it's the best option for them. But I think the short answer is just the market has spoken. And by the way, I think like the fact that only 13% of patients are on IVIg is a reminder that's not really the sort of "comp set" in any meaningful way that that's a pretty specialized therapy. And that really what we're looking at here is going after the broader population who are sort of suffering through on high-dose steroids and other things and maybe even off-label therapies in a good way.
And look, the other thing that we see over and over and over again in these rare disease markets is that with a highly effective therapy and with someone out there sort of talking to docs about treatment that you see diagnosis and treatment rates go up in these patient populations with new options. So I think we're also looking to help with that. And again, I think having a once-daily oral format is going to be a huge help, especially relative to the profile of IVIg. So I think all of those things combined paint just a totally different picture.
And the next question will come from Yatin Suneja Guggenheim.
Guys, let me add my congratulations as well. Clear win here, very nicely executed study. So 2 quick ones for me. First one is on steroid tapering potential. Could you maybe talk about how -- or if there is a potential to capture that on a label and how that would work? That's number one. And second one is on the responder rate, right? Like if we look at the responder rate out to week 52, look pretty compelling, almost better than IVIg or in line with IVIg, but the mean reduction is a little bit different. Why that might be the case?
Yes. Look, I think on the question of steroid sparing and how that shows up on a label, I think there's a few different things there. One is, as a reminder, among our key secondary endpoints was an endpoint that specifically showed both TIS response and minimal steroid burden. So that's a key secondary in the study. Also, obviously, the sort of clinical trial section of the label will describe the trial. It will describe the way the trial was one, the use of steroid tapering is a feature of the trial. And so I think all of those aspects will be clearly present in the, obviously, any labeling decision are a function of discussion with FDA. But clearly, the sort of steroid-sparing nature of the study is deeply embedded in every aspect of the trial and every aspect of the data.
The other thing, of course, is as a part of our medical communication strategy, this is something docs care a lot about. And you can imagine there will be a lot of discussion. On the week 52 responder rates in terms of how the -- how the difference between the responder rates and the mean IVIg changes, look, I think the short answer is there's just some evidence of some really extraordinary responses in a lot of patients in the data. And I think that has contributed to the data you're looking at here. It's just really exciting numbers.
Yes. I mean it's different studies, different endpoint durations. The -- when you look at the individual patient level, these are somewhat noisy endpoints, which makes it all the more striking the level of statistical significance that we've been able to achieve on our primary endpoint. And I think, yes, we're really excited about the response rates we see, including the response rates that are tied to minimal or no steroid burden as well, as Matt pointed out, one of the key secondaries.
Our crack team of real-time experts had another useful reminder, which is that just as a reminder, steroid tapering was included in the Benlysta U.S. label in SLE. So there is also a precedent for steroid sparing lining up in labels for similar structures. Great questions, [ Paul ].
And our next question will come from Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainright.
Congratulations on the data. I'm just curious, and I know it was -- maybe it was a robust study, but not super big. Did you see different results across patients who might have more skin or muscle involvement just given the mechanism of action, it would seem sort of best suited for brepo. And along those lines, when you talk to KOLs, are there certain types of patients they might want to start using brepo on first before sort of expanding and as they gain experience, start to use more broadly?
Yes. Thanks. That's a great question. I'm a little hurt only because this is the largest interventional study in the -- ever run. And so -- but I hear you it's only 240 patients. Look, the short answer to your question is we saw extremely consistent response. In fact, on the slide in the deck, which I'm on the page number right now that showed the muscle-specific subset, you can see where we looked at a subset of patients with a lot of muscle disease, and they had a slightly larger increase in TIS than the patient population as a whole.
And so look, it's clear that we saw benefit across both. In terms of where people want to use brepo first, look, this is easy for us to say today. And obviously, we're still carrying out these conversations and will be a lot and Ben's team will be spending a lot of time with the doc community in the days and weeks to come. I think the answer is they want to use brepo everywhere. I think these are -- it's a new treatment option in the field that really hasn't had any in a long time. And I think docs are, from our experience, just tremendously excited about having it and using it everywhere they can. So I think that's what it comes down to for us.
And that, just as a follow-up, I mean, did you see any difference in terms of patients with significant skin involvement?
No. We also looked at the test among patients with moderate to severe skin disease at baseline, and that data is also very consistent with the study as a whole. And as we walked through the cutaneous specific results for those patients were very compelling. So I think really a very broad set of benefits we see here. And actually, even to come back to the mechanism slide that Matt showed, I think that's consistent with brepocitinib, consistent with the novel mechanism of dual TYK2/JAK1 inhibition in terms of being able to hit multiple of the inflammatory pathways involved in DM pathobiology. And so I think, again, ties together nicely in terms of why we see this as a very compelling potential treatment option for these patients.
I show no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Matt for closing remarks.
Thank you. Look, thanks, everyone, for listening this morning. I want to re-extend a huge note of gratitude to the investigators and patients in the study. They entrust us with their care. I want to re-extend a huge note of gratitude to Ben and to the entire team of Priovant. It is impossible to overstate the number of sleepless nights that go into something like this to the Roivant team and to investors like you, thank you for your support. We will be back in touch soon. In the meantime, everybody, have a great day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
Roivant Sciences — H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference
1. Question Answer
Welcome, everybody. We'll kick things off. I'm Doug Tsao, senior analyst at H.C. Wainwright. We are thrilled to have with us Roivant up next, represented by the company's CFO, Richard Pulik. I've known Richard for almost a decade. There was a little break in there from when I knew you at Novartis.
So a lot going on at Roivant. And maybe we'll start with the Immunovant business because I think you recently had some additional data in Grave's. And you recently showed an update in terms of remission and durability of the effect, which I think enhanced investors' confidence. I guess maybe just what were some of your takeaways from that incremental data? And in the past, Immunovant was focused on thyroid eye disease and then the company sort of shifted to Grave's because they thought it was a better opportunity. What makes you as a company sort of think that Grave's is a better opportunity, even though others right, like Argenx is still pursuing TED?
So thanks very much, Doug, for having us. Look, I think a very exciting time to be at the conference. Like you said, we did an update last week on Grave's, just to put everything in perspective, this was a disease where we had Phase II data last year that I think Immunovant has really been sort of at the forefront of finding places to go and indications we go to be first-in-class. They had data in TED and we're the first ones to move there from the anti-FcRns. And then as we thought about other places to go, Grave's obviously seemed like a clear place just given the mechanism and the biology. Then we validated that with the Phase II study. And I think the exciting data that you mentioned was where we saw really potential disease-modifying benefit.
So patients were on drug at 680 milligrams for 12 weeks and stepped down to 340 milligrams. And then we followed them for 6 months and 80% of those patients were controlled and then 50% of those were controlled off ATDs, which I think is pretty incredible. If you looked at the curves there, it was essentially a flat curve even though you stepped down on the drug. When we thought about the population, there's, what, 330,000 uncontrolled Grave's disease patients that people should keep in mind, these are -- this is a disease that's usually diagnosed for women between the ages 20, 40. They're working age, they're motivated. It is a disease that has significant impact on just your daily living, your moods, your appetite, you have palpitations.
So a lot and then a significant impact on additional risk. And so to be uncontrolled here is actually pretty terrible in uncontrolled IDs. There really hasn't been a lot of research in this area for any novel therapy for at least 2 decades. And so this was very exciting for the field. And I think this is going to help with the Phase III studies that we started. We started a Phase III study back in December, where we already started thinking about the potential upside here for disease modification because we had -- we designed it so that you had Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3 and the Group 2 patients actually have the ability for responders to step down to placebo after 24 weeks.
So potentially, we'll even have better data, right, because you'll be on the high dose for much longer and maybe there's a potential to get that on label. So I think that's sort of driven a lot of excitement. At the same time, if you recall, we did show data in Grave's where we followed some of the more sort of traditional TED eye symptom measurements. And those were, again, very -- there's a 40% overlap with TED and Grave's. And so we certainly are going to continue to follow those. I think it gives us an opportunity to think about this disease more broadly and earlier, and we're excited about both.
Do you think that there's any opportunity or the potential for you to show the prevention of development of thyroid eye disease?
I think, look, we're certainly looking at some important measurements there in secondary characteristics and the ones we've shown. So certainly, that's something we thought about. And so I think potentially impact on Grave's and TED as well.
The gray space is becoming more competitive, right? It was sort of interesting a few years ago before Immunovant and if you talk to KOLs, that just antithyroid drugs are sort of our mainstay of treatment, a lot of patients respond. Some patients are somewhat intolerable. We've now seen, obviously, Immunovant sort of take a lead to sort of be a bit of a pioneer in Grave's. We're also seeing now Biohaven with their IgG degrader. We've seen Prinetics talk about a TSHR receptor antagonist as well as some other companies with taking sort of different approaches to address the specific autoantibody.
So in the scheme of the competitive landscape, especially when we think about maybe a small molecule potentially being having some cost advantages, how do you see the competitive landscape evolving in Grave's?
So look, having been in this industry for over 20 years, I think data is what rules. And we're the only company that has meaningful data for lots of patients that has now started 2 Phase III studies and that is firmly had and has shown potentially disease-modifying benefit and control of ATDs for a lot of patients. All of the -- and look, I think it's awesome that others have finally woken up and are in Grave's. There's a lot of patients here that need our help as an industry. And so I think awesome that others are coming in. I think we're just so firmly ahead here and the profile of IMVT-1402 is -- looks very good from a safety perspective and efficacy perspective that I think will be firmly in place.
Look, there's always been an interesting place for orals to. I don't think we've seen any data there yet. So looking forward to seeing them and very much welcoming to have more therapies, just way too early to really speak to that right now.
And one of the other indications where Immunovant has sort of taken a lead or sort of been out in front is in difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis. J&J recently announced that they were discontinuing development of nipocalimab in RA based on what they saw in their Phase IIa study. What gives you confidence that you should continue to see positive results when J&J, obviously, who has sort of invested behind nipocalimab did not see necessarily a compelling opportunity after their initial IIa results?
So look, obviously, we looked at the J&J data closely. And just to remind people, there was -- if you looked at that data set, there was a very clear correlation between IgG lowering and efficacy. We know that 1402 delivers the lowest efficacy benefit, right, where we're lowering IgG to the 80s or high 70s. No one can match that. We know that the dosing that we saw in that study was probably going to the 60s and that they need to have a combination partner.
I think that means it's wide open. Look, I still think that the initial hypothesis that lower is better with efficacy stays. There was actually a lot of disclosure in that PR. I think it's just as a doublet. It didn't add anything more. We certainly approached this to go into monotherapy, and we actually looked at different populations, so antibody positive and very late line here.
So there is a high unmet need for these patients. This is third or fourth line. Nothing is really working for them. And we know that they're antibody positive. So excited to see that data. We'll see that readout in the first half or not in the first half rather next year is the period 1 of that study and then the following years of the period 2 of that study. So we'll see how that develops. Certainly another place where we can be first and potentially best-in-class knowing what the IgG benefit is that we delivered with 1402.
And then one of the other significant key catalysts for the company will be the Phase III data for brepocitinib and dermatomyositis, the Phase III VALOR study. Can you share your expectations for the data readout? DM is also an area, right, where there wasn't that much activity, but all of a sudden, we started to see a lot more activity, including FcRn as well as cell therapy.
How do you see brepo sort of positioned in this market opportunity?
So look, when we did the JAK1/TYK2 deal, we got that drug delivered with 50 patients of data. We saw that brepo ended up beating JAKs or TYK2s alone across all the indications that Pfizer studied. We then also did our own Phase II study in the noninfectious uveitis, and we saw clear activity that was better than standard of care and where we had no edema.
So we had essentially in hand, lots of data across multiple diseases that JAK1/TYK2 performs better. And we also have lots of safety data and showed that this is sort of in line with JAKs. When we developed it, we said, let's focus on rare disease indications that -- where there's a high unmet need. For those not familiar with dermatomyositis, a lot of these patients have painful rashes. They have inability to lift their hands above their head. There's muscle involvement.
Some of them have trouble signing up. But this is, again, one of those diseases that's been ignored for a long time and where there's a high unmet need. And so we had the last patient last visit in July. When we looked at also some of the other JAKs and there's roughly 600 patients of data where you can see that JAKs have activity in this disease. So I think it's been exciting for us. And when you look at the powering of the study, you essentially need to see end point delta between the 30 mg dose and placebo for success here. So that -- we'll see what that looks like soon. And the other thing that we disclosed is that we had an aggressive sterotypering protocol here. We essentially wanted to get patients below 5 milligrams. We know that at the beginning of the study, there were 1,200 milligrams and we successfully got them down to 2.5 and that 98% of the patients adhere to that protocol.
So these patients don't have a lot -- 80% of them are usually -- I mean these are patients that are actively treated, 80% of them on steroids, roughly 20% on IVIg and then some on antimalarials. I think the light just went out here for those who are listening to the audio, but I think we'll sort that out. So look, I think there is -- to be able to deliver for these patients with an oral, I think, is exciting for the field, and we'll see what that looks like in short order.
And then DM is not the only indication you're pursuing. And so just how are you thinking about brepo in the other markets, right, NIU as well as sarcoidosis?
So the other -- like I mentioned, so when we were doing this, we're doing this for rare diseases. And so CS, we essentially have another -- we have a Phase II study reading out next year. So that would be sort of -- if that is positive, there will be another pivotal place to go, we'll see what that looks like. And then the Phase III non-infectious uveitis study that is ongoing, that is going to read out in '27. And that will -- assuming that the DM is positive, that will be sort of reading out as the DM is launching. And that would be -- so there's 3 potential places to go here where we think there's not tons of competition and the high unmet need.
And so we should -- DM is going to be the priority indication or the first that you will likely follow on. Then I'm just curious, shifting gears a little bit that you have a jury trial related to 4 of the U.S. patents for your LNP related to LNP technology related to the Stella SpikeVax, which is scheduled now for 2026. Is there any update on that litigation with Moderna?
So look, we're very pleased with where we're at there. Just to remind folks, there's a jury trial scheduled for March '26 of next year. And then we're waiting for the summary judgment portion of that trial, hopefully before then. And then there's another trial for -- with Pfizer. If we step back, we know that there's been roughly $150 billion in global vaccine sales. And we also started -- have litigation in 30 countries on the Moderna side. And if you looked at the precedence of the various business development deals that we did, so these are deals that we did with companies pre-data. They were in the mid-single digit to low teens pre-data. So if you can kind of do the back of the envelope math there, that's a big opportunity for -- to finally get paid for what we think is a very important and meaningful patent estate around these medicines.
And one of the central themes for the company has always been business development. And a lot of your recent deals or sort of most of your recent deals, right, like maybe all of them when I think about it, right, have pulled assets out of the major pharma companies, right? Pfizer seems to be a particularly favored partner for the company.
Do you have a bias for those types of assets? And the reason I ask that is because there might be some perception just given what's happened in the capital markets that it's a buyer's market when you look at small biotech and opportunities for innovation or for external innovation there.
Look, I think we're pretty agnostic. I think if you look at some of the mixture of our deals, obviously, we did some of the JAK1/TYK2 and the TL1A deal were from Pfizer, mosliciguat, which we didn't talk about, which is in PH-ILD and it's reading out in the Phase II study next year, which will be very interesting, where there's, again, like not a lot for these patients we did with Bayer. But the reality is we went to a with the Honell deal as FCR as the beginning and did that with a player that really was off the radar with folks.
So we look pretty broadly. I think the main -- I think the sort of -- look, we are ruthless economic, and we have -- I think we're very thoughtful in terms of -- we're very fortunate because we have $4.5 billion in capital as of the last quarter. I think we've been incredibly disciplined with that because we ended up buying back $1.5 billion of shares, reducing share count by 14% and then authorized an additional $500 million share buyback. But we still -- we're funded through profitability and then have -- we have roughly $2 billion to play with to continue to do deals. And those deals, if you look at our 10-year history, have been usually at $14 million upfront. And then we'll do, like I said, these type of Phase II studies to validate our hypothesis before doing the bigger investment there.
So we have a lot of capacity to create new companies. And I think we've been pretty open-minded. Look, I think pharma has been an excellent partner and continues. We continue to have interesting discussions there, but also some of these biotech names, as you mentioned, have also provide great opportunities. So it's a perfect environment for us, but we are -- we continue to be very disciplined there.
And I guess I'm curious, Richard, when we think about the pace of deals, as you noted, you have about $2 billion of capital to cold play with. That could be accomplished. And given the fact that you generally have done deals that have not required a lot upfront. But from operationally, how much capacity do you have for further business development?
Look, I think that's a great question. And because of the Vant model, where we essentially create a company around Vant around the deals that we do, we have the ability to recruit the best people. So look, you're coming into a company where the trial is funded because you have the capital and that you know your #1 focus is to execute on that trial.
You don't need to meet investors. You -- all you need to do is execute on that particular trial. And typically, the management teams in the company get a portion of the Vant. So you're very well incentivized. So I think that continues to be a great way for us to -- if we find something to recruit and motivate management teams to execute. And so I think we have a lot of capacity to continue to grow and to do further new Vant creation if we find the right deal.
And so what kind of pace should we look at? Should we expect additional deals or -- is there much urgency? Or do you sort of feel like you've got a lot on the plate right now?
Look, I mean [indiscernible] registration is underway. But generally, if you look at our Phase II kind of think about 1 to 2 Vants per year or so. So I think we have quite a bit of capacity to continue to execute there and are very active.
Okay. I think we're almost out of time, but maybe quickly just touch on mostly, which was the latest addition to the portfolio. What the value proposition you see is and the next sort of milestone for that product?
So look, we showed in the PAH population, so the Group 1 population, 83% PVR reduction. So that's the best we've seen in any of the PAH data, pretty incredible. We ended up running a Phase II study to see if this works in Group 3. That is read on next year. United Therapeutics obviously has an approved drug there. We are a once-daily DPI. So I think that will be -- look, these patients are incredibly sick, and there's a high unmet need there. So I think that will be an interesting opportunity. We'll see what that looks like and to see if that Group 1 data translate to Group 2 patients next year.
Okay. Great. With that, I think we'll wrap it. Thank you so much.
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Roivant Sciences — Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference
1. Question Answer
Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for being here powering through towards the end of the day. There are 2 more days of this, so keep up the energy. My name is Albert Wong. I'm a Managing Director in Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley. I'm going to read a disclosure here. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative.
So let me get started. Matt, I think most people know who you are, but if you can just give a quick intro, and I will then get into the questions.
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us at the conference. We only have to do this for one day, so you all have the marathon. We have the sprint version, which is great. I'm Matt. I'm the CEO of Roivant, which is a biopharma company that -- the truth is it's mostly trying to do what everybody else is trying to do, which is develop medicines that matter. We have some data coming real soon in dermatomyositis, among other things, and excited to talk about all that today.
Okay. Great. Why don't we just jump right into brepocitinib. It's data you said second half of '25.
We did. We are in the second half of '25. What we said about the timing there is the last patient, last visit in the study happened in July, which should be imminent. So brepocitinib, maybe just take a 2 second step back, is a dual inhibitor of JAK1 and TYK2. So these are relatively well understood, very powerful anti-inflammatory mechanisms. It's a drug that we in-licensed from Pfizer a number of years ago, and it's really the only late-stage drug of this kind and certainly one of the only late-stage JAK inhibitors to be going into kind of rare and orphan inflammatory disease. And dermatomyositis is a terrible disease, an inflammatory disease that presents with both a really bad skin rash as well as a muscle wasting that's secondary to inflammation. And we are really excited to be developing a drug there for a patient population with very high unmet need. And this is a registrational program. So if this data is successful, we think it should be sufficient for approval.
Right. And this is the -- it's called VALOR, right?
The VALOR study. That's right.
Yes. It's Phase III registrational. And dermatomyositis is an interesting indication. Can you talk about the mechanism and why you chose dermatomyositis as the first...
Yes, perfect. It's a great question. So DM, as I said, is an inflammatory condition marked by this rash and this muscle wasting. It's a sort of down the fairway inflammatory disease. We know from the pathophysiology that it's got a lot of interferon activity. And obviously, both JAK1 and TYK2 and in combination are interferon signalers. We know from other studies, there's a Pfizer drug called dazukibart. That's an interferon-targeted antibody that has shown reasonable data in Phase II. There's also some data from STELARA and IL-12/23 that shows activity from that mechanism. And we know that TYK2 is involved in IL-12 and 23 signaling.
So it's a disease where we really had good reason to believe that both JAK1 and TYK2 are active components of the sort of -- are both active signalers that can mediate the disease. And so we thought it was a good choice from that perspective, having a JAK1/TYK2 targeted drug. It's an orphan disease. There's really not a lot approved. The only sort of current generation therapy, if you will, is IVIg. There's a Pfizer IVIg called OCTAGAM, that's an approved drug. But other than that, these patients are mostly treated with steroids and immunosuppressants, steroids and methotrexate and things like that. It's got a lot of comorbidities, a lot of bad sort of life effects. It affects people's ability to move, it affects their ability to go out in public. It's a really tough disease.
It seemed like there was high unmet need. These patients are sick enough that even when we started the study back in 2021, 2022, it didn't feel like the black box class warning associated with JAK inhibitors were going to matter at all to the patient and physician population. That continues to feel true both based on our conversations with docs as well bluntly as there's lots of patients in somewhat less severe and more common diseases who are obviously using JAK inhibitors at this point. And so it feels like we're happy with that. And yes, it just feels like a high unmet need disease where there's also quite a lot of evidence that JAK inhibition as a mechanism specifically works, I should have led with that.
There's been no large placebo-controlled studies, but there are now four investigator-sponsored studies, mostly with tofacitinib, but one with baricitinib as well and hundreds of -- literally hundreds, about 600 case reports of the use of JAK inhibition as a mechanism to treat DM patients, all of which show some combination of skin and muscle benefit for these patients. So it feels like a like a mechanism that the doc community is excited about and familiar with, but there's good preclinical rationale that there's some good clinical data and there's some good clinical data by proxy from some downstream anti-inflammatories. And so it feels like a really good place for us.
Okay. And are there others out there that are doing JAK and TYK at the same time because it seems like you mentioned a lot of JAKs that are...
Yes. So there are very few -- there are no other late-stage JAK1/TYK2s in development for any indication. There's some earlier-stage programs, but I think basically no other sort of Phase III JAK1/TYK2s. And I think there may be an earlier stage study from a Galapagos molecule in DM that targets both. But other than that, I think there really aren't any other DM studies in a comparable mechanism. Yes, so I think it's really just us there.
Okay. And I want to go back to some of the things you said about the clinical presentation and the use of steroids. So two separate questions. First one, maybe describe the Phase III, how big it is? What are your endpoints and what you're really looking for to try to solve part of the clinical presentation that you're seeing?
Yes, perfect. So the Phase III is a 240-ish patient study. It's got three arms, placebo, 15 milligrams of brepo and 30 milligrams of brepo. Our main focus is on the 30-milligram arm in terms of the drug arms. It is a 52-week study. That's basically what FDA requires at this point for studies in dermatomyositis. The regulatory endpoint in DM, not our choice, is an endpoint called TIS or total improvement score, which is one of these composite indications in immunology. It is itself a collection of a whole bunch of different scores on different components, some of which are individually multicomponent tests. It measures both skin activity and muscle activity. And some of the endpoints are very objective, things like muscle enzyme testing. Some of them are like sort of muscle activity testing where like the doc puts his hand out and the patient has to push up on the hand. So some of that's more subjective. Some of them are skin assessments and things like that. But that's the endpoint.
TIS is not a great regulatory endpoint in the sense that it is, a, not particularly clinically relevant in the sense that no patient is invited, it's a change from baseline. So no patient is walking around thinking about their TIS on any given day. And then also because the change from baseline, it can only go up, it can never go down. It's an improvement score. And so I think, therefore, just in a normal distribution of patient outcomes, you're going to get some placebo response. But it is something that the end physicians are familiar with. And our primary endpoint is mean TIS, delta on mean TIS from placebo is really what we're solving for.
And I think we measure a bunch of other secondaries, including some skin-specific measures like CDASI and other subsets of the DM TIS endpoints that are more specific to dermatomyositis. TIS is used across different versions of myositis or flavors of myositis. And we have an endpoint called DMOMS that is sort of a different cut of the roughly same data that's more DM focused. So we're looking to see improvement across those measures. That would include improvement across muscle symptoms, improvement across skin symptoms, really just things that make these patients' quality of life better.
Yes. Okay. And given the score has some subjective and objective endpoints, are you worried about high placebo rate or just some variability among the three arms? This is a powering question.
Yes, I am worried about that. Look, I think given all the supportive evidence, I'm hopeful the drug works. There has been some variability in placebo performance in DM studies. Placebo TISs have ranged from 20 to high 30s basically, which are pretty high rates of improvement. And so I think there is some reason to be worried about that. We've taken a lot of steps to try and mitigate placebo in the study. Probably there's a lot of sort of operational things, investigator training, standardization, just like spending a lot of time on trial sites, making sure they're doing things the same way as each other.
But also, we have probably the most important thing is a mandatory steroid taper in the protocol that starts at week 12 and requires that all patients be below 5 milligrams of oral daily steroids by week 36. We have basically every -- 98% of patients successfully adhered to that taper. And so I think that should be helpful. It should mitigate some of the placebo risk and give us a little bit more of a chance to separate. We are the first late-stage DM study with a steroid taper in it. And so we don't know for sure how much it's going to help, but I think it should be a potentially significant benefit in the study. But I do think placebo response risk is the single biggest risk we're facing at this point until we see the data.
Right. And this steroid taper that you're having patients go through, have you seen this in other studies or previous studies in the past where you can, I want to say, predict what a patient will look like?
So in dermatomyositis, the answer to that question is no. There has not been a large study in dermatomyositis with a mandatory steroid taper. So there's like natural history studies, there's physician interviews you can do. There's like things you can do to sort of figure it out. But we don't have a lot of like placebo-controlled data to point to for steroid taper. This is obviously a mechanism used in a lot of other places in immunology to mitigate placebo response risk. So it's incredibly important to lupus studies, for example. It's been used in some other places. I think one of the reasons I get some of the investor questions about this is, there was a pemphigus study from an FcRn run that had a steroid taper that was maybe insufficiently strict and resulted in not being able to show a static difference. So I do think this is a mechanism that people use in other places.
Okay. And dermatomyositis is an indication that has very few drugs.
That's right. Yes.
So therefore, there have probably have been some failures. How do you look at your drug? And what have you learned, I guess, from the previous failures? Or how do you think you're different?
Look, it is an indication that has had some failures. It's not like lupus or something where the ground is littered with dead bodies. It's an indication that has been understudied, to be honest. So there's a handful of drugs in history. IVIg, as I said, is approved, but there are some other IVIgs that have failed. One of the things that I think we believe is some other people have used responder endpoints, especially TIS 20. Given the high placebo response rate, we find TIS 20 of a more challenging endpoint. And so I think we were happy to use the continuous variable to use TIS as primarily in the study and to put some of those other things in the secondaries.
I think the steroid taper is another thing that we implemented after looking at those other protocols to try and keep placebo response rate more well managed. I think we thought a lot about the mechanics of that taper. One of the things that's different about our study than basically all of the precedent studies is that we have a 52-week endpoint. There was one other study that was intended to be a 52-week study that got cut off sort of midway through due to corporate issues for the company that was running it. But in general, these have been shorter studies. That's less a sort of intentional decision on our part and more it's just the way FDA has decided to go in studies for dermatomyositis. But I think it has some puts and takes associated with it and some facts about using the 52-week endpoint could be helpful.
Okay. Great. And...
Sorry, one other thing. We enrolled patients who both have active skin and active muscle disease. And that was an intentional choice to try and make sure we had sick enough patients to really get a full picture of them.
So the patient has to have both?
Both, that's right. Every patient is both skin and muscle presenting.
Got it. Okay. So we're looking forward to that data in second half. And let's just look into the future and assuming that's successful, what are next steps?
Yes. So DM is a great indication for us. It's successful, it's a good-sized opportunity. There's probably somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 patients in the U.S. with DM. Like I said, not well controlled on the existing therapies. About 20% of those patients on IVIg and the rest are sort of floating around on other things. And so it's a challenged patient population, high mortality, a lot of comorbidities. So I think it's well set up from that perspective. It's a very concentrated sort of treatment paradigm landscape. There's about 200 DM referral centers that together treat more than half of the patients. So I think in terms of like field force kind of dynamics for a commercial product relatively straightforward.
And the doc community likes this mechanism. They've been very happy with the study. JAK inhibitors are used to varying degrees off-label. There are some docs who use them very widely. Obviously, you see all these case reports in IIT that's sort of more evidence of it. So I think we have tailwinds for doc familiarity and enthusiasm, tailwinds from a concerted prescriber base. It's an open market without a lot of other competing therapies. There's some things like an FcRn efgartigimod that is coming later with the study that reads out maybe next year.
But in general, I think it's sort of an open playing field. And we get to follow the playbook that other orphan therapies have now shown us, which involves a lot of patient support to make sure access is provided, lessons learned from Horizon and from Madrigal and from Verona and from others that I think we're going to take the heart and pay close attention to. So I think commercially, the picture looks good. If this data are good, we'll file -- I think we said that the NDA filing would go in sort of early next year. We hope for an approval in '27. So I think that's kind of what the path looks like from here.
Okay. And given the 40,000 to 70,000 patient population, how do people think about pricing for this?
Yes. Obviously, it's premature for us to give any specific pricing guidance, but IVIgs in DM are priced at $250,000 or something. And if an FcRn enters, obviously, FcRn is $500,000, $600,000 a year drug. So I think that probably sets some bookends from other mechanisms, and we would look closely at our data and think about where we want it to be.
Okay. And the FcRn one from argenx, do you know when that data is reading out?
I think it should be next year. They had a Phase II study that read out in June. That study is in a different patient population. It's sort of a pyomyositis study. So it's not just the end patients, but that data will come next year. They're maybe 18 months behind us or something like that.
Okay. Got it. Well, speaking of myositis and other indications, what are the other indications you're going after following dermatomyositis?
Yes. So for brepocitinib specifically, we have an ongoing pivotal program in non-infectious uveitis, which is an eye inflammatory disease, quite prevalent. There's about 400,000 patients with it, about 70,000 of which have the particularly difficult to treat back of the eye form, poorly controlled. The only other sort of novel approved therapy right now is HUMIRA, which bluntly looks okay, not great. So I think there's opportunity. And we ran our own Phase II study in NIU that read out last year and it was truly exceptional. The data was really, really, really strong. We were very happy with it. And so we're now running a pivotal program with two Phase III studies that are enrolling very well, and we'll read out.
Our current guidance is the first half of '27 for that readout. And so right around the time, we should be getting an approval in DM, we should also be stacking on data in the Phase III program for NIU. We also have an ongoing proof-of-concept study that reads out next year in cutaneous sarcoidosis and other very severe skin disease that if that data are positive, would pivot into a pivotal program thereafter. And we have a bunch of other ideas for places to go from here with additional indications for brepo, which has IP out to 2038, 2039.
Okay. And those indications also are orphan?
Yes. I think once you start thinking about this price point, we're looking for things that kind of fit nicely with one another, and there's lots of opportunity. Bluntly, look, when we in-licensed this drug from Pfizer, I think the general mood on JAK inhibitors was no one knew exactly that RINVOQ was a $3 billion drug. People thought it might flatline with the black box. No one knew where it was going to go. And our view was orphan was, a, a clean swim line. There weren't a lot of other JAK inhibitors looking at orphan and b, an area where people would care less about the black box.
Sitting here in 2025, RINVOQ is a $7 billion drug on its way to $15 billion. The market has kind of spoken in terms of comfort with JAK inhibitors. And with maybe one or two exceptions, there's really no one else focusing on orphan disease with JAK inhibitors. We feel like we have just a ton of white space for a mechanism that is widely understood to work on not just a JAK inhibitor, JAK1/TYK2, it's slightly different. But anyway, the bottom line is I think there's a ton of places to go from here in terms of unmet need that will never be fully appropriate markets for the existing sort of broader market JAK inhibitors, but which feel like a great opportunity for brepocitinib.
Okay. Can we cover FcRn? .
Sure, yes. We have 10 minutes, let's do it.
Okay. Lots of indications. I think you're going after at least five, maybe six.
Yes, I think that's right.
Can you maybe go through so that people know?
Yes. So we have a couple of different anti-FcRn inhibitors at Immunovant. The sort of first generation one batoclimab has read out registrational data sets if we wanted to apply for it in MG and there's an ongoing program in CIDP. And then there's data coming in TED later this year. And then the second generation, which I think is probably the more important molecule in our portfolio, IMVT-1402 is currently in registrational development in Graves' disease, which is what I would think of as our lead indication as well as MG and CIDP. It's in a study in difficult-to-treat fourth-line rheumatoid arthritis. It's in a registrational study in Sjogren's. And it's in a proof-of-concept study in CLE, so six indications.
Those range from, obviously, MG and CIDP extremely well validated for FcRns. Argenx is killing it commercially where, a, I think there's room for multiple molecules, even RYSTIGGO is like doing pretty well; and b, I think the deeper IgG -- our sort of main differentiator from the other FcRns is that we generally suppress IgG more deeply in practice. We get to close to 80%, whereas efgartigimod, for example, in most studies is sort of closer to mid-60s. And so we think that delta could, should, did in the case of our Phase II data lead to potentially impressively deeper responses. And so in an indication like MG and CIDP, the hope is to be -- we'll obviously be years behind them, but better. But then in an indication like Graves' disease, it's complete white space.
We think we have the best drug. We have a great form factor, a simple subcu. And Graves' is just a patient population with an enormous unmet need. So that's -- we are the first of anybody really in Graves' development right now. We have this registrational study ongoing with other programs and other mechanisms kind of behind us at this point, but we think we get to set that stage. And we've generated Phase II data in batoclimab in Graves' disease that we're really, really excited about, up to including some data we put out for the first time last week, showing that the effect persists after discontinuation of therapy and gives a real remittive benefit that a significant number of these patients get to go off all drugs and still benefit from their time on our therapy. So we're really excited about Graves' disease.
Okay. And between you guys and Immunovant, how do you think about which indications are the most important? You have Graves' disease where you're going to be the first one and it's late stage, and you have proof of concept, but you take myasthenia gravis and CIDP where there's a drug on the market clearly doing very well. So how do you balance where your priorities are?
Look, I think there is no question that our top priority is Graves', which is -- first of all, there's millions of Graves' patients. There's probably 330,000 uncontrolled Graves' patients that is fully refractory, have failed every available therapeutic option. The only way for those patients to treat their Graves' disease at this point is either live uncomfortably or surgically remove their thyroid or irradiate their thyroid and then treat an underactive thyroid for life. And so these are sick patients who have no options. It's a huge opportunity, and we get to be truly first and our data is very good. And so there's no question Graves' is sort of the top of our priority list.
I think in general, we're most excited about those indications where there's white space. So CLE is another example, at least in FcRn, where we would be the first FcRn and hopefully the best. Then there's a category of indications like a Sjogren's, where we are neck and neck, where we will not be significantly behind from a timing perspective and where we hope we can deliver a more efficacious drug given the IgG suppression. And then sort of the third priority bucket there is indications like an MG or CIDP, where on the one hand, I think there's a chance we deliver really, really great clinical data. I think that gets us real class share. But on the other hand, I think undeniably, argenx has done an amazing job commercially, and I think we will be playing commercially from behind in a category where docs are just like very familiar with and excited about what argenx has done. So I think those are tougher diseases, but where there's an opportunity for better if our clinical data sort of plays out the way that we'd like it to.
Okay. Great. And when we look at the broader anti-FcRn landscape, where do you see Immunovant and their role in the overall landscape?
Yes. Look, I think what we believe is there -- so first of all, one nice thing as a clinical developer of an FcRn is FcRn is actually a relatively difficult target to drug. And so as compared with CD19 T-cell engagers or as compared with anti-TL1A antibodies or whatever, where there's like quite a lot of those coming out of China and other places, actually, like there are not very many FcRns in development. And many people have tried and either there's some complicated things about the targeting of specifically the IgG binding domain, and this is the whole issue that [indiscernible] second generation versus the albumin binding is like a lot of this comes down to the specific construct, and then there's other things associated with making FcRn that are difficult.
So the competitive landscape is not that broad. Of the other drugs, look, argenx is the undisputed category leader right now and that they are an approved product. They're selling close to $4 billion a year. It's been an amazing success. And I think our main goal is to prove that we can be better basically to prove that we can deliver better efficacy. I think the reason why we believe that's possible, as I said earlier, is we suppress IgG more deeply, and these are autoantibody-driven diseases where you would think the deeper you can reduce the autoantibody level, the better clinical benefit you'll see. How much will vary indication by indication, but we think we've shown across a range of indications at this point that patients with deeper IgG suppression have better clinical outcomes. So I think our hope is that we can deliver a best-in-class molecule.
Now the nice thing about FcRn is in indications like Graves', not only do we hope to be best-in-class, but we will be first-in-class in essence, that we will get there first. Whereas indications like MG, we're just sort of necessarily playing from behind from a timing perspective. But I think our role should be we hope we have the best-in-class drug. We hope we are the HUMIRA to argenx and both, as it were. And I think there's a possibility that the world plays out that way, but the data has got to come together.
There is another important benefit to our drug that's just worth highlighting, which is both batoclimab and 1402 are formulated into a simple subcu injection. Our sort of low standard dose is a single 2cc auto-injector, and 1402 will be an auto-injector at launch. Whereas efgartigimod is a higher volume Halozyme formulated subcu. And so the injection times are longer. They have a prefilled syringe. It's a longer injection time, and it's got some sequelae associated with being a Halozyme like injection site reaction. So I do hope our form factor will also be a real benefit, especially in an indication like Graves' where these patients are used to oral therapies and things like that.
So I think we've got some form factor advantages as well, but I think the main benefit we're hoping to capture is clinical efficacy. Of the other ones, there are really two others that are currently approved products. J&J has nipocalimab approved in MG. Look, I think that's also an interesting drug. It's capable of suppressing IgG quite deeply, but it has the same albumin suppressing effect that our first-generation drug does. And so we believe it has LDL effects and other things. And J&J has responded to that by developing it at lower doses where it does not suppress IgG sort of as deeply as we do in the clinical doses currently being studied. And then UCB has RYSTIGGO, which is also a product, taking decent share in MG for a drug that is not first in market, but has some other -- it is a nice subcu, but it has some other sequelae, including causing headaches. And so those are really the FcRns in development, and we think we have a chance for best-in-class and first-in-class in a bunch of indications.
Right. Okay. We've gone down to the 10-minute mark. So I do want to leave room for questions. Anything more you want to say about brepo or the anti-FcRn?
No, I think we've covered those well, yes.
Okay. And last thing before I turn it open, internal versus external BD. You have a lot of pivotal late-stage data coming out. So do you need to do it? What are you looking for?
Yes. Look, we have always been an active company from a BD perspective. Everything we've talked about today as well as mosliciguat which we did not, our PH-ILD drug and almost everything we've developed in our history has been in-licensed or acquired. We think we're good at that. That is we think we have good relationships with pharma companies. We think we're a good partner. We think we're good at creative deal structuring to solve problems for our partners. And we are cash rich. A number of years ago, as you know, we sold anti-TL1 antibody, and we still have $4.5 billion of cash on our balance sheet today after $1.5 billion of share buybacks. So we have a lot of opportunity to spend on late-stage development and to be a good partner from a capital perspective as well.
The environment is awesome. It's a complicated moment for big pharma with a lot of LOEs, a lot of transition, IRA and other, we call it, regulatory and political wins are causing reevaluation of portfolios. So it's been a great environment, frankly, for 1.5 years at this point. We've been pretty choosy given our capital position. So I think we haven't yet done a major deal, but there's some stuff we're very close to that we're excited about. And I think you'll see us active for sure, in interesting areas that we think are worth focusing on.
Our pipeline also affords us a wealth of sort of BD opportunities. There's indication expansion possibilities in all of our mechanisms. And I think we are fortunate not to have to choose between our babies, we just have enough cash to do it all. And so it's really just a question of sequencing things out and when BD deals become possible.
Okay. Great. Maybe I'll turn it over to any questions from the audience here. Anyone?
What I've learned internally is that you feel very long awkward positive, eventually someone feels...
So we should keep waiting.
That's up to you.
No, maybe I'll fill it in the meantime, because I did have one last question. Do you think your future BD deals will look like the mosli deal you did last year? Is that a standard type deal that you would be doing?
Our deals have existed historically on a range of spectrums. We paid, in some cases, 9-figure sums for acquisitions of drugs. The mosli deal was of a phenotype where we paid relatively low upfront dollars for something. In that case, it was about, I think, $14 million with some sort of typical back-end royalties and milestones kind of things. We've also done deals like TL1A deal, which were equity splits where we kept 75% -- we got 75% or 80% of the economics or whatever, and our partner got the balance. So I think all of those structures are on the table.
I think it is probably not the base case expectation that we would do like large public markets M&A. We have the cash for it. It's just a little naturally stingy, and it's been hard to find things that are interesting, especially in a world where we feel like we can partner with big pharma companies in these creative ways and just do deals that are more our style. But never say never, and there are definitely opportunities in the public markets that we've watched closely. Some of them off the run and some of them on the run. It just sort of depends on the circumstances.
So I think we're pretty agnostic in terms of what we do, and there's some great stuff out there. Look, it's been a complicated year in the biotech markets. There are a lot of companies that need capital, some without access. So I think there's just a lot of opportunity around us.
Any questions? Okay. I'm going to ask one more. I don't like the silence. As we're talking about BD, you mentioned that you did $1.5 billion of share repurchase. So capital allocation, are you just seeing more value in your own stock? I mean that's the definition of a share repurchase is you're buying yourself over new BD ideas out there.
Look, we were in an unusual position after the sale of the TL1A. We had over $6 billion in cash on our balance sheet, which is an extraordinary amount for a company of our size and stage. And part of the answer to this question is, and I feel strongly about this, just as a matter of discipline. If we couldn't make it on four, we probably couldn't make it on six. There's just like a certain amount of just like math that says you've got enough cash, this is not going to come down to capital. And look, I think we've got some really -- like we've talked about brepo and DM. We have brepo and NIU. We have all these Immunovant catalyst. We have a litigation with Moderna with that lawsuit. The jury trial is next March, currently scheduled. There's like a lot of opportunity, and I thought it was good for our shareholders to own more of it. So getting the buybacks done leading into those catalysts felt good.
But I think there was also, like I said, just a significant capital discipline component to it, which is we sort of had enough. I think we scoped out our existing pipeline. I think at the time that we did this analysis in earnest after the TL1A deal, sort of $2 billion felt like more than enough to develop that pipeline to profitability. We looked at the BD opportunities in front of us and another $2 billion sort of felt like sufficient to do the kinds of things we would want to do, which generally involve, again, relatively lower upfront payments, but potentially for late-stage programs with 9-figure development costs associated with them, and that felt like a healthy sum. And that's still just like left a lot of capital beyond and it felt like a reasonable time to return some of it to shareholders and the buybacks felt like a reasonable format.
Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Last chance. Any questions out there? Okay. Do you want to make any closing comments on that?
No. Just thanks for having us. It's always fun to do this. And look, I think it's conference season happens when conference season happens. I'm excited to actually get my hands on the brepocitinib data in DM and then to get back out and hopefully talk about how great it is, but we'll see what it looks like.
Yes. Well, I wish you luck on that.
Thank you. If you're religious and are looking for something to pray on this weekend, DM patients need to help. I don't know. I'm told it works no matter what you believe.
Okay. So we've been at that interpretation. Anyway, great to see you.
Thanks very much. Likewise. Thank you, everybody.
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Roivant Sciences — Special Call - Roivant Sciences Ltd.
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Immunovant Graves' Disease Data Update Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to your first speaker today, Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining today's call to review the Immunovant Graves' disease data. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant.
For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today as well as the press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along.
I would like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we have filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you, everybody, for dialing in this afternoon on short notice. It's an exciting opportunity to get together. Today, midday, the American Thyroid Association abstracts went live and with it, a presentation of our follow-up data for our Graves' disease study went live. And there's just some really, really exciting updates in that data set. So I wanted to get on the phone with everybody and walk through it.
So I'm going to start on Slide 3 with just a little bit of an overview of what I think are the most important messages, and then we'll go through a little bit of disease background and the data in more detail. Look, in short, so as a reminder, the data that we're presenting today, the data that's being presented today is data -- the main portion of the study, the 24 weeks of treatment, we presented on that data about a year ago. And since then, we have been following the patients in that study for 6 months of off-therapy follow-ups. These are patients who have not been on batoclimab for 6 months at the time of this update.
And the sort of truly remarkable 2 things that we've seen during that period are, again, a full 80% of patients who entered the off-treatment follow-up period had a response, were responders to therapy 6 months after they had been off therapy. So 17 out of the 21 patients who went into the off-treatment follow-up period were still responders after 6 months of no therapy. So that really speaks to the potential for this as a disease-modifying therapy. We have changed the course of these Graves' patients, all of whom entered the study overall uncontrolled and now 17 out of 21 of those patients or 17 out of 25 in total are controlled 6 months after cessation of therapy.
And we've seen very good remission data. Of those 17 responders, nearly half of them, 8 of the 17 patients were off antithyroid drugs while being controlled. So they were not only responders, but they were responders and off antithyroid drugs 6 months after the cessation of FcRn therapy. So a pretty great outcome and 2 points, the potential for disease modification and a really strong rate of remission that we are very proud of and excited to be presenting today.
I'm going to very briefly just remind everybody on Graves' disease, kind of what it is, why we care, a little bit of the opportunity and the unmet need, and then I'll dig into the study and the data. So starting again, super briefly on the background stuff on Slide 5. Look, Graves' is an autoimmune disease driven by the presence of autoantibodies that effectively attack the thyroid and lead to an overactive thyroid. So in a normal thyroid, there's this sort of regulatory cycle where TSH causes the thyroid to be active. The thyroid produces thyroid hormones and those hormones impact your thyroid regulation. In a Graves' disease patients, autoantibodies are attacking the thyroid in a way that leads to increased production of T3 and T4 without the regulatory mechanism kicking in. And so you wind up with a dysregulated overactive thyroid.
On Slide 6, there are many, many Graves' disease patients. There's a full treatment hierarchy at the back of this presentation, but many, many patients. A good percentage of them on first-line therapy managed to get controlled with antithyroid drugs or have ablation, either surgical removal of the thyroid or radioactive ablation. The truth though is, over time, first of all, a significant percentage of patients simply fail. And second of all, some of them simply can't maintain or -- they either relapse or they cannot maintain control on antithyroid drugs. And that's about 25% to 30% of the total Graves' population in America wind up with either relapse or they are uncontrolled or intolerant ATD. So a large percentage. That comes out to about 330,000 sort of prevalent sort of circulating in the world uncontrolled Graves' patients in the U.S.
This is a severe disease on Slide 7. People really need to care. There's a whole bunch of risks that are elevated in these patients. The risk of cardiovascular disease is 2.5x higher in the Graves' population than the overall population. Patients are 4x more likely to have preeclampsia and 7x more likely to have thyroid cancer. So this is a severe disease with severe comorbidities.
Individually treated Graves' populations can go on to -- Graves' patients can go on to develop thyroid eye disease. It affects about 40% of patients diagnosed with Graves' patients, including a meaningful percentage of those patients who experience like optic neuropathy impairment of visual function can lead to blindness. And then there's some other significant complications such as a thyroid storm, some percentage of hospitalized patients with Graves' disease, which can cause mortality as well as a high risk of recurrent thyroid cancer in Graves' disease who develop thyroid cancer. So a lot of severe comorbidities and severe consequences of having Graves' disease.
It's a high unmet need on Slide 8. As I said, 25% to 30% of patients are uncontrolled on existing therapies. And there really is no other second-line therapy for these patients other than any thyroid drugs. There are no existing disease-modifying therapies for these uncontrolled patients. So if you're uncontrolled, you're either sick for life or having your thyroid removed. And patients with uncontrolled Graves' disease, as we just went into, experienced a severe -- a range of severe comorbidities. And there are 65,000 incident patients and a very large prevalent pool of patients who are uncontrolled, but choose not to undergo thyroid ablation.
So okay, getting to the data for today, starting on Slide 10. So just as a reminder of what we're doing, this is a picture of the schema for the Phase II trial that we've now run for batoclimab in Graves' disease. As a reminder, these patients entered the trial with active Graves' disease and uncontrolled hyperthyroid despite ATD therapy. So these were all patients who were refractory to every available therapeutic treatment option. They went through 24 weeks of treatment. First, 12 weeks on high-dose batoclimab followed by 12 weeks on low-dose batoclimab with a step down at week 12. And then they were modified for -- sorry, not modified. They were observed or followed up with for 24 weeks after the cessation of therapy.
So the data that we presented in 2024 was for the left-hand side of this before the blue box, was for the 24-week treatment period, and there were 25 patients who entered the trial and were dosed for 24 weeks, and those are the patients who we've already previously reported on. 21 of those patients entered the off-therapy follow-up period, and we have data today that we're presenting for the off-treatment period. And so that's the data that we'll be talking through today.
As a reminder, the baseline characteristics of this population on Slide 11 was representative of an uncontrolled population despite ATD use. They were sort of normal in age. This population skews female. The Graves' population skews female, and they had elevated FT3 and FT4 and elevated TRAb levels to a significant degree.
Okay. So now for the exciting bit, starting on Slide 12 with some of the new data. So some of this is a representation of some of the data we put out last year, but just sort of walk people through the study. 25 uncontrolled Grave's disease patients entered the study at baseline. First of all, a pretty great treatment effect. 20 out of those 25 patients at the end of week 12 had thyroid hormone levels, T3 and T4 below the upper limit of normal, so normalized thyroid hormone levels for hyperthyroid patients and had ATD doses that were at least at or below their baseline level. And at week 24, there were still, even though there had been a step-down therapy, there were 18 patients.
So a couple of notes there. One is, and we've talked about this before, a helpful fact for us overall, given that we have the deepest IgG suppression practically of any anti-FcRn antibody is we saw our best response rates for the high-dose portion and patients deteriorated somewhat during the step-down portion. And what's not clear from this picture, but it's clear from the previously presented data is that of those 18 out of 25, some of them had to step up ATD dose relative to their efficacy at week 12. So patients got worse when we stepped down therapy. Again, helpful because we believe that IMVT-1402 will have the deepest IgG suppression of any anti-FcRn antibody.
Now the new data for today, the really sort of remarkable effect is 18 out of 25 patients were responders at week 24, fine. After 24 weeks of being off drug. So at week 48, these patients have been off drug for 6 months, still 17 out of the 21 patients for whom we had data were responders. So 80% of the patients for whom we had data at week 48 were responders to therapy, which to me, and we'll talk a little bit more about this from a pathophysiology perspective in a moment. This is just clear evidence of disease-modifying potential for this therapy that patients who were uncontrolled at the beginning of the study were able to be controlled were responders to therapy even 6 months after discontinuing batoclimab. So that was a great data point.
On Slide 13, the other exciting data point here that we're sort of putting out there is of those 17 responders, first of all, nearly half of them were fully in drug-free remission. So 47%, 8 of these 17 patients were ATD-free at week 48. They were on no antithyroid drugs. These are patients who, despite use of antithyroid drugs could not be controlled at the start of the study, are controlled and off antithyroid drugs at week 48. And another close to 30% -- 29% of these patients, another 5 patients are on really the lowest dose of ATDs, 2.5 milligrams and only less than 1/4 of them, only another 4 patients were on greater than 2.5 milligrams of ATDs. So tremendous remission data for an uncontrolled patient population that shows that not only can we be disease modifying, but for a significant percentage of patients, we can get them off antithyroid drugs.
There's one other data point that really supports this disease-modifying benefit on Slide 14, and it's remarkable in just how clean the picture is. So as you would expect, so this is a chart that shows during the treatment period and after both IgG levels relative to baseline and TRAb, antithyroid antibody levels during and after the period. And what you can see is exactly what you would expect for anti-FcRn antibody. You get rapid suppression of both IgG generally and specifically TRAbs during the high-dose treatment period. Those numbers come up somewhat during the low-dose treatment period, less control of IgG, some amount of increase in thyroid hormone levels.
And then during the off-treatment follow-up period, you see exactly what you'd expect. The only data point in here is the week 48 data point. We haven't filled in any of these curves. But by week 48, all of these patients have basically returned to normal pretreatment baseline levels of IgG, but the TRAb levels stay low. So these patients have had the course of their Graves' disease changed, whereas previously, their TRAb levels were high, they...
[Audio Gap]
The audio has cut out. Am I back now? Great. It sounds like I'm back now. So I'm just going to repeat Slide 14 in case I missed that. So on Slide 14, again, this shows the course of treatment for these patients. It shows IgG levels as well as antithyroid antibody levels during the treatment. It shows that during the high-dose portion of the treatment, both IgG levels and TRAb levels were nicely suppressed to a significant degree, that suppression got slightly worse when we stepped down to lower dose therapy that IgG levels recovered a little bit, that TRAb levels recovered a little bit. And then notably, these curves diverged during the off-treatment follow-up.
So the only data point here is the 48-week data point. But you can see these patients returned to normal IgG levels at week 48 despite their TRAb levels remaining low, that is the course of disease for these patients was altered and then they had sort of normal TRAb levels, which coincides with their overall sort of clinical picture on the previous slides, while they had a meaningful benefit. We think this is a new scientific finding. It's an interesting finding. It merits further investigation, but it may very well be due to the ability of an anti-FcRn antibody to disrupt some of the feedback cycles at play in Graves' patients.
Okay. A couple of more points, and then we'll go to Q&A. One is on Slide 15, as a reminder, batoclimab was well tolerated in the trial. There were no new safety signals identified. There was no sort of significant TEAEs other than what we've previously talked about. Nothing new to report from a safety perspective and consistent with what we've seen broadly from anti-FcRn antibodies and from batoclimab.
Secondly, a reminder on Slide 16. So the Phase III program for IMVT-1402 is underway with 2 registrational studies, 2 potentially registrational trials now running. And you can see the schematic on this slide for the batoclimab Phase II that we're talking about today as well as for the first of those 2 1402 trials at the bottom. And as a reminder, the batoclimab Phase II was certainly under optimized in terms of how these patients were treated, right? They had to step down to lower dose, which did, in fact, reduce response rate. You can see the decline of response rate shown at the picture at the top.
Whereas the Phase III program -- the Phase IIb, the pivotal program at the bottom, is clear, we are dosing even in the sort of Group 2 patients that are designed to show the same remitted benefit, we're dosing at a high dose of IMVT-1402 for 6 months, which should give us the potential for a greater treatment effect with a greater number of responders and hopefully, a greater remission and post-treatment effect for those patients. So we will find that out with that study. Again, both of the potentially registrational trials for 1402 are now running. This is the schematic for the first of those studies.
We will also have a 52-week treatment arm where we treat 52 weeks of high-dose batoclimab, which should give us the opportunity to see potentially an even greater treatment benefit in patients on chronic therapy. And in particular, where we think there will be some patients for whom, look, remission or sort of a complete response may not be in the cards, and those patients may require chronic therapy, and we expect to show the benefit of long-duration therapy as well in that first study.
So wrapping it up before we go to Q&A, and again, a relatively short presentation today, but I wanted to highlight this data. This is the potential -- we think this is potentially a first-in-class disease-modifying therapy in Graves' disease. We've seen a remarkable effect. First, 18 out of 25 patients treated were responders at week 24. Secondly, 17 out of 21 patients with whom we followed up remain responders 6 months after the end of treatment. We observed a close to 50% remission rate in those responders with 8 out of the 17 responders off all medications 6 months after the cessation of batoclimab.
And we think the design for our pivotal program could potentially generate improved efficacy with continuous 600-milligram dosing versus the step down in the Phase II. And both of those Phase II studies have enrolled patients at this point, and they are ongoing with our data expected in 2027. So we're really looking forward to generating that data. We think this is super helpful in sort of explaining the benefit that we may have in these patients and in helping -- we hope the world see just how excited we are about the use of IMVT-1402 in Graves' disease.
And with that, I will conclude my prepared remarks and hand it over to the operator for Q&A. Thank you, everybody.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Sam Slutsky from LifeSci Capital.
2. Question Answer
Congrats on this update. Just kind of curious how the data looked between that week 24 and week 48 time points and whether the week 48 data were kind of consistent across that whole time period? Or did it bounce around a bit? And then was there any predictors of those who had the best response at week 48 versus what their response was at week 24? So essentially, was there any correlation of being in remission at week 24 versus week 48? Or just kind of any predictors there?
Yes. Thank you. That's a great question. Look, I think the short answer is that the overall data throughout the time period was consistent. We're not showing the kinetics for competitive reasons. Graves' at this point is a competitive field. But in general, I would say consistent. And in general, I would say, look, for the most part, the responders and the stronger responders at week 24 are the ones who maintain a response through treatment.
Our next question will come from the line of Yatin Suneja from Guggenheim.
Two questions for me. A very nice presentation. So the first one is on, maybe if you can elaborate a little bit about -- on this total IgG level and the TRAb levels. What exactly you are seeing from a correlation perspective? I understand that the TRAb level are down about 70% and you still are in remission, but the total IgG is still up. So I don't know what the disconnect is and maybe I'm missing something. So that's one. And second, if you can just elaborate also on how the enrollment is going and what is the exact ATD titration protocol you are using in pivotal study and how that compared to Phase II?
Great. Thanks. Yes. Perfect. So on the IgG, TRAb question, that's a super important question, and thank you if I wasn't clear on this. I just want to highlight it again. This is on Slide 14. So what you see during the first 24 weeks here is approximately exactly what you would expect to see from FcRn therapy. That is what FcRn therapy does is reduce levels of IgG antibodies. And what you see is a commensurate and correlated reduction in both overall IgG levels as well as specifically TRAb levels. Those reductions are more pronounced during the higher dose period and less pronounced during the lower dose period.
The disconnect that you see during the off-treatment period is those patients are no longer being treated with anti-FcRn antibody. So what you would expect to see is the antibody levels recover to pre-baseline levels, right? They're not being treated. Their IgG levels are not suppressed. And so therefore, what you would expect to see is an increase in IgG level that brings them back to baseline, and that is exactly -- in fact, exactly what you see. What you see in many indications is a commensurate increase in autoantibody levels, right? In many indications, the "only reason why autoantibody levels are down is because you're suppressing IgG.
And when you take away the IgG suppression, you see a more or less immediate and commensurate recovery. We do not see that here. And so instead, what we see is despite the fact that overall antibody levels are recovering, these patients are effectively no longer producing TRAbs at the same level as they were prior to treatment. And so their TRAb levels remain suppressed. And that is exactly the disease-modifying benefit that we are excited about that by interrupting this feedback loop in some way, we are able to see sustained TRAb reductions even though therapy is discontinued. And that is why you see the disconnect or the sort of lack of correlation from week 24 to week 48. That's on the IgG and TRAb question.
In terms of question 2, look, on enrollment, I think it's fair to say we are happy with the enrollment overall. We have a lot of excited docs who are participating in the trial. We have a lot of sites active on both studies at this point, and we have patients enrolled in both studies. There's a lot of patient enthusiasm, a lot of physician enthusiasm. Frankly, we get a lot of questions from docs over time about remission, about durability of response. And I think this data will be helpful in even further supercharging the enrollment on the study. And so we're happy to be putting it out because I think docs will absolutely react favorably, and we're excited to see what kind of reaction this data gets at ATA when presented by George next week. So that's the first thing on enrollment.
On ATD titration, the short answer to that question is the protocol has an aggressive titration of ATD pushed by the protocol. It is not forced to 0, but there's a forced attempt to get it to 0, T3 and T4 are normal. And I think that's about what we've said about the protocol at this point. Those are both good questions, and it's important to clarify that antibody data.
Our next question will come from the line of Samantha Semenkow from Citi.
Apologies if this has been asked, but maybe could you talk a little bit about what the potential remission rate could be if we're looking at the patients not stepping down to 340 milligram? I'm curious if it gets above what you've seen in this proof-of-concept study.
Yes. Thank you. It's a great question. It has not been asked. Look, I think it's a difficult question to answer mechanically because it's speculation. But I think just based on what we see even for the difference between the patient sort of outcomes at the end of week 12 versus at week 24, first of all, a higher rate of controlled patients -- a higher rate of responders at the end of week 12 than at week 24. And second of all, again, though it's not in this deck, it's in some of the prior materials, more of the patients at the end of week 12 are ATD-free than at week 24, which means there has been a mechanical step-up in ATD dose in order to maintain response during the lower dose treatment period.
I think it sort of very strongly seems that we will get to better control at higher dose, a greater number of responders, a greater number of ATD responders at the end of the treatment period and that it seems from the data we've generated here like that should lead to a higher rate of remission. But obviously, that is the thing we are testing in Phase III. Remember, there's also an arm that will show 52 weeks of treatment at the high dose. And I would expect to see potentially even higher rates of response at the end of 52 weeks of therapy and potentially to see even better rates, therefore, of remission for the 52-week cohort on follow-up after that.
But again, the Phase III is really designed to look at treatment effect on drug for 52 weeks for the high-dose cohort and then remitted benefit for the sort of Group 2 that cycle after 6 months. Thanks. It's a great question. It's obviously an important factor for the Phase III.
Our next question will come from the line of David Risinger from Leerink Partners.
Yes. And congrats, Matt. It's great to see the results. So could you talk a little bit about what this data may imply for 1402 in other disease states that you're testing? And then specifically with respect to Graves' disease, are you evaluating longer duration off-treatment effects? And how are you thinking about this commercially if patients can see such a sustained benefit off drug over the long term?
Yes. Great. Thanks, Dave. Those are both really, really good questions. Look, I think in terms of the implications for other disease states, obviously, a thing that we were happy with the Graves' data originally, just the way the study was designed was that we felt it showed benefit from deeper IgG suppression. And we think we've shown that consistently across several indications at this point with batoclimab and bluntly, we hope to continue to see that, and we think this data is supportive.
I don't know that it implies there will be remission off drug in other indications. And frankly, what you see in many indications is that when you withdraw FcRn treatment, autoantibody levels come right back, which means I don't think in those diseases, you'll see remission. I think what we found here, which makes us really proud of our scientific choice in Graves' disease is there is something special about Graves' disease, where mechanistically, you have these enlarged thyroids, you have the body sort of producing autoantibodies in part because of the Graves' disease. And once you suppress the antibody levels, you sort of break this sort of nasty feedback cycle and you get away from producing antibodies to begin with.
I think that appears to be potentially specific to Graves'. It opens a question what other indications might be like that. But I think in many FcRn indications, this is not the pattern that you see. Specifically with respect to Graves' disease, are we evaluating longer duration of treatment? I think the answer to that question is we are planning to continue to follow off-drug effects in all of these studies, and I think it will allow us to generate even longer-term data.
Commercially, what I think is clear from the data set we've generated here is there's just going to be a diversity of treatment effects and a diversity of treatment durations. Some patients are going to be very sick and are going to need potentially like chronic long, long duration therapy in order to maintain control. Some patients may need a year of therapy, 18 months of therapy, longer in order to get control. But once they get controlled, potentially have the possibility of remission. And some patients may get to ATD-free control during a shorter period of treatment and may be able to get off drug or may be able to take a holiday.
And we don't know yet based on the studies we've run, whether some of those patients will ultimately have flare-ups and recurrence of disease or not. It will ultimately depend on the etiology of their Graves' disease. And because it's such new science, I think we just like -- we won't know that fully until we get a little further along.
There are some hints from what you see with methimazole, where some methimazole patients go on methimazole, get their Graves' disease under control and then never have a relapse. Some Graves' disease patients go on with methimazole for a period of time, see improvements, get off methimazole or in remission and then have a recurrence. And some Graves' disease go on methimazole and can never come off it because they simply can't get disease control. So I think we'll likely see something similar in the Graves' population. And thank you. It's a great question, and it's one that's top of mind for us.
Our next question comes from the line of Yaron Werber from TD Cowen.
Terrific data. Matt, maybe just a question to zoom out and just give us a little bit of a sense of the strategy between the development program. So one study, the one you showed us the 240 patients, that looks like that started December, late in 2024. It has a host of secondary endpoints, and that's the one that's testing 26 to 52 weeks, right? And then you have the second study that you just started about a couple of months ago, right? So that's 210 patients. And that's only -- it's only dosing for 26 weeks. 2 different dose levels. That's the one you're not showing us here. How is the second study differ? And why is it only 26 weeks? It sounds like you're not doing the second 26 weeks as part of that protocol, maybe the strategy behind that.
Yes. Perfect. Thank you. These are great questions. By the way, for anyone's reference, the design of both of -- the full schemas for both of these studies is shown on Slides 22 and 23 in the deck. I didn't walk through them in the presentation today, but they're available for anyone who wants to look.
Look, I think a few things here. First of all, the benefit of the 52-week study was, a, to show very long duration treatment in support of chronic therapy for patients who really need it and support of maximum benefit for patients who really need it; and b, to have that Group 2 that looked at remission where we could take a group of patients off therapy after 6 months, which gives us some interesting and useful commercial data, frankly, aligned with the data that we've generated hopefully today. And so I think that's sort of the point of the longer study.
In general, based on the Phase II, we're confident in the treatment effect at 26 weeks. Obviously, we need 2 studies for approval. And so the second study is designed in large part for regulatory support, that is designed to give us an additional study with appropriate data, including at multiple dose levels. And the FDA has obviously looked at these designs and is overall aligned with our plan here. And so I think the point in aggregate is to get the data we need for regulatory approval, regulatory submission as well as to generate commercially important data for patients around remission and longer treatment effects in the first study. And we -- the reason it went in the order you observed is we started enrolling the longer trial first so that we had a hope of reading them both out at a relatively comparable time point.
The next question will come from the line of Yasmeen Rahimi from Piper Sandler.
Matt, congrats on the outstanding data. Two quick questions. One is what percentage of patients are TRAb negative at the various time points? And then question number two is, did you see a difference? I know IgG levels came up during the off-treatment period, but was there a difference among the patients who remained completely ATD-free versus being on the 2.5 mg dose group based on the IgG response increases up?
Perfect. Thanks. So those are both great questions. My answer on the first one is going to be a little bit annoying, which is this is the first data ever presented for TRAb recovery after a treatment period in a Graves' study of an FcRn or in a Graves' study of an IgG suppressive therapy. There are a couple of other people either thinking about or actively running such studies. And we think we have some real competitive benefit on Phase III program design and commercial benefit in that data. So we're not going to share at this point specific percentage of patients that are TRAb negative at more time points than we've got here.
And look, was there a difference in patients who were ATD-free versus 2.5 milligrams based on IgG response. Look, I think the short answer to that question is it's not like ATDs are a major driver of IgG. And so in general, by week 48, these patients have recovered from an IgG perspective, but we don't have sort of a lot of specific data to show here on how that relates patient by patient. But I would say, I think you can think about sort of across all patients, I think you think about IgG as having normalized by the end of the trial.
Our next question will come from the line of Leland Gershell from Oppenheimer.
I wanted to just ask, Matt, with respect to the first registrational trial in Graves', you have Group 2 going to either -- still going to the placebo if they are a TRAb responder or not, just staying on drug if they aren't. I just want to ask what the definition of a TRAb responder is based on the data you've shown us from before and today, it seems like TRAb is suppressed pretty well. So presumably, most of those patients from Group 2 would be going to placebo. But I guess the reason why I'm asking this question more broadly is, do you think that you'll have enough data from this study with remission data in the placebo group that, that will be enough for docs to be convinced of the remission benefits of 1402 when it comes to market?
Yes, got it. I don't think we've given the exact definition of TRAb responder, but it's down a lot from where they started and relatively close to normal is the definition. But I don't think for competitive reasons, we've given the exact number. I do think we will have plenty of data on both how placebo patients progress and how drug patients progress to get comfortable with what the remission rates are and to get docs excited about what this drug can do.
Remember that, first of all, we have lots of placebo patients out to 52 weeks. And second of all, in the second study, the entire follow-up of that study effectively is patients, many of whom off drug after 6 months of therapy. And so I think there's a lot of other data to point to. And the short answer to your question is I think we're going to have plenty of evidence to suggest the effects that we're looking for.
Our next question will come from the line of Douglas Tsao from H.C. Wainwright.
I guess, Matt, when we just think about the sort of remission data and the patients sort of having a disease-modifying effect, I'm just curious if you've gotten feedback from either KOLs and clinicians as well as payers, just in terms of their sense of that 6-month point of sort of remission because obviously, with Graves' patients, many do enjoy 6 months, but they do relapse after, call it, 9 months or 12 months and so forth. And just will you need data beyond what is needed from a regulatory standpoint to sort of more conclusively provide evidence that patients are [ proving ] true long-term remission?
That's a great question. And look, I think the short answer is a few things. But remember, every single patient in this study was uncontrolled on standard of care and a huge percentage of them are leaving this controlled at the end of treatment and remaining controlled after 6 months. And so I think docs looking at this data will be excited and will view this as differentiated. I think the potential disease-modifying benefit here where we're seeing TRAb stay low, where we're seeing a durable treatment effect, where we're seeing patients controllable on ATDs, even like independent of the remission point is going to be helpful. And then I think the remission number is going to be compelling.
I think a few things about the time point. First of all, I think based on the way these patients look at the end of 6 months, my expectation is that many of them will continue to be responders beyond. Obviously, we'll have plenty of follow-up in the Phase III, we'll be able to continue to comment on how durable those responses seem to be. But also, I think docs are going to look at this data out at 6 months, they're going to be -- I hope that they will be convinced that there's a real and durable effect here. And I think the remission in some ways is a cherry on top and that we're able to get these uncontrolled patients controlled, but I think the rates of remission are going to be really exciting to patients and physicians.
And Matt, I mean, I think it's a good point, right? Obviously, we have to remember that these were patients who were uncontrolled, right, on high doses for some amount of time. And so this was a very difficult-to-treat population. I'm just curious, along those lines, I mean, what will be the open-label extension? And how long do you plan to follow patients in the Phase III even beyond the sort of primary data point readout?
Yes. I don't know that we've given all of that publicly. We may in the future, but the answer is there's long follow-through on these patients. I said on the 52 weeks, we're following through in the...
I mean after the 52-week point, right, where beyond that, is there sort of like a long-term extension planned for the study? And how long will that be?
It's another year beyond that, yes. More than enough for payers and physicians. More than a year, yes.
Our next question will come from the line of Brian Cheng from JPMorgan.
Congrats on the update. This is Sean on for Brian. So following up on the extrathyroidal benefits we saw last year at ATA, can you elaborate a bit more on whether you're seeing deeper responses and/or prolonged durability in proptosis and the other metrics? And also, just to confirm, were the 9 ATD-free patients at week 24, the same patients that remain ATD-free by week 48?
So we don't have additional sort of TED or proptosis kind of data to present today. Obviously, we followed these patients for the 6 months after treatment, so it may get presented in another setting. But we don't have it today. In general, I'd say it looked favorable, and it's something we'll continue to look at and talk about. And then I think the answer is there were some movement in and out of cohorts. But in general, patients that did well continue to do well over the course of the study.
Our next question will come from the line of Dennis Ding from Jefferies.
This is Georgia on for Dennis. Could you please talk about how you define remission in the Phase III? And if our focus should be on the Group 2 patients respond and then transition to placebo in period 2? And then what is the statistical plan for the study? And will you have enough power to detect a statistical difference on remission?
Yes. Thanks. Good questions. In this data set, we've defined remission as -- well, in this data set in terms of how we presented it today, we defined remission as patients whose T3 and T4 were below the upper limit of normal and who were off ATD. So that's how we analyzed it today. In the Phase III, it's patients who are responders and are ATD-free is the answer to that question in terms of how remission is defined in the Phase III. Look, I think there is plenty of power overall in these studies to answer the questions we need to answer. And the truth is because the endpoints are pretty stringent, I don't think we expect a ton of placebo response for most of these endpoints. So I think in general, we should get what we need out of the powering of the study. Thanks for a good question.
Our next question comes from the line of Jason Gerberry from Bank of America Securities.
I guess just wanted to come back to Slide 14, and you have a really good reduction, durable reduction in TRAb in the off-treatment phase. And I guess what would you say is the biological hypothesis at this point that going to the 52 weeks of treatment could generate a better outcome even if it's just hypothesis. And one of the things going back to my note when -- the data was published a year ago, there was some commentary about maybe IgG reduction was associated with ATD-free response. And so in those 8 subjects, I'm just wondering, you mentioned some diversity of response at the patient level. Is there something maybe going on at the patient level that maybe explains the confidence in getting a better response in the full year of treatment?
Look, I think the short answer to your question on like why we believe the data will look even better at 52 weeks than it does at 24 weeks is twofold. One is it looked better at 12 weeks of high dose than it did at 24 weeks of high than low dose. And so you can see that there is like the possibility for degradation on removal of therapy at that point. Also, in general, many of these patients were continuing to improve across various measures, continually able to titrate ATDs, continually able to get to better levels over the course of time. And so like it didn't look like we had found max treatment benefit either at 12 weeks or at 24 weeks.
I think there's like -- in terms of the biological hypothesis, it seems like, and this is true for methimazole as well, some sick thyroids sort of need time to wake up. They need TRAb to be normal. They need to be your thyroid for a long time before getting to the best responses. Many of these thyroids are heavily inflamed, which is part of what may lead to the sort of feedback loop of anti-inflammatory and therefore, autoantibody activity. And so I think you need to like get that inflammation down in order for the TRAb levels to stay low.
And I'll say, yes, look, I think it is definitely the case that our conviction in the benefit of long duration treatment is higher because of the patient level data that we've seen. So there is some heterogeneity. There are obviously some patients who respond quickly and durably, but there's also like information embedded in the patient level sort of study or the patient level analysis that gets to like what happened to each patient and how those responses were maintained and for the patients that were responders, what happened to ATD dose over time and maybe you can make some predictions about what would have happened to ATD dose if they had been on therapy a little bit longer.
Our next question will come from the line of Charles Ndiaye from Stifel.
This is Charles on for Alex. Maybe one question for me. In terms of the Phase III and expectations for placebo, do you think it's possible for patients to achieve spontaneous remission?
Thank you for the question. Biology is humbling, so anything is possible. But the truth is that uncontrolled Graves' patients who have been uncontrollable on ATDs do not, in general, achieve spontaneous remission. And if you ask these docs, like if you ask Kahaly who ran the study, it's going to be a very small percentage of these patients that spontaneously remit.
Our next question will come from the line of Thomas Smith from Leerink Partners.
This is Nat Charoensook on for Tom Smith. We have a couple of questions. First, are there any patients that did not respond during the 24-week treatment period but became a responder during the off-drug follow-up period? And second, it's encouraging to see that TRAb levels stay down through week 48. How do TRAb levels correlate to corresponders -- sorry, responders or drug remission during the follow-up period?
Yes, great. Those are both good questions. Look, I -- in terms of the TRAb levels, we're not giving like super specific answers on what the stuff looked like. But I think you can imagine the responders had overall better durability of TRAb response and the nonresponders had lesser durability of TRAb response. So I think that's sort of biology -- sort of as you would expect from the biology here. In terms of expectations for -- sorry, yes. So sorry, that's the second question. I apologize. I've lost track of the first question if there was one.
So the first question is whether there are any patients that did not respond during the 24-week period.
Mechanically, I think 1 or maybe 2 patients like moved around between the definitions between the week 24 and week 48 time point. But I think that's mostly a technicality. I think basically, the answer is no, that the patients that were responders at week 24 were the patients who were responders at week 48.
Got it. And one question, if I may. So for the 1 patient who discontinued the treatment but got included in this presentation as a responder, how long was that patient on batoclimab before treatment discontinuation?
Thanks. It's a good question. I think the answer is 7 weeks. So that patient received 7 weeks of high-dose batoclimab and then maintained response through week 48.
Our next question comes from the line of Corinne Johnson from Goldman Sachs.
As you guys look at the mechanisms that are also in development for Graves' disease, you've referenced a couple of times it's getting a bit more competitive. I guess how do you think this remission data could be differentiated over time, both with respect to the data that you've shown and also how you're developing this program?
Yes, great question. Thank you. Look, I think it's hard to call. And there's different -- there's a handful of different mechanisms. There's obviously -- there's IgG degradation where I think it matters which types of IgG you are degrading. Some of them are, for example, IgG3, TRAbs, which would -- therefore, you need to degrade those 2. I think as you get to like some of the anti-TSHR mechanisms and so on, I think the answer is it's all a little bit complicated in terms of like how the -- I think the sort of feedback loop mechanisms that are at play here are specific.
And frankly, like it's new information that you're able to do this. And so I think it's a little bit unclear on exactly how those mechanisms. I think the fact is until those mechanisms are able to prove they can generate this kind of data, we just don't know if they're going to be able. It does seem like if you are able to get the thyroid to reregulate over time, you may be able to drive remission. But how durable that's going to be, how effective that's going to be, I think it's going to be different depending on which mechanism. And the blunt answer is we're years ahead in terms of how much data we have about our mechanism.
Our next question will come from the line of Andy Chen from Wolfe Research.
This is [ Brandon ] on for Andy. A quick one from us. At what point in time did those safety issues occur during the Phase II study? And is there any concern about safety as we head into Phase III with the higher dose over 52 weeks?
Yes. I think the short answer is that the safety and tolerability of FcRns is pretty well characterized at this point. The safety findings all were as reported in the original 24 weeks that there was nothing particularly concerning about the time point. Remember that the -- obviously, the Phase III is 1402 instead of bato and sort of a number of the sort of observed findings were sort of obviously bato-specific albumin or LDL-related findings. So I think in general, my expectation is that we will not see anything meaningful or interesting from a safety or tolerability perspective that's different from what we've already observed. And I don't think we have much in the way of concerns about longer duration 1402 therapy.
I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back over to Matthew Gline for any closing remarks.
Fantastic. Thank you. Look, thank you all for listening today. We're, again, very excited to be able to present this data. We're looking forward to the actual presentation at ATA next week, and we want to thank, obviously, George -- Dr. Kahaly for running this study with us, to the patients who trust us with their care, to the Immunovant team who's worked really hard to bring this to fruition and to the sort of entire team at Immunovant who sort of helped come up with this idea and have really propelled us to the front of what we think is a really exciting area of biology. So thank you all, and looking forward to speaking again soon on a variety of topics.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.
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| Jun '26 |
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%
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| Umsatz | 7,53 7,53 |
68 %
68 %
100 %
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| - Direkte Kosten | 1,42 1,42 |
67 %
67 %
19 %
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| Bruttoertrag | 6,12 6,12 |
73 %
73 %
81 %
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| - Vertriebs- und Verwaltungskosten | 625 625 |
0 %
0 %
8.298 %
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|
| - Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten | 649 649 |
11 %
11 %
8.625 %
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| EBITDA | -1.265 -1.265 |
8 %
8 %
-16.804 %
|
|
| - Abschreibungen | 2,85 2,85 |
72 %
72 %
38 %
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| EBIT (Operatives Ergebnis) EBIT | -1.268 -1.268 |
7 %
7 %
-16.842 %
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| Nettogewinn | -266 -266 |
46 %
46 %
-3.536 %
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Angaben in Millionen USD.
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Firmenprofil
Roivant Sciences Ltd. ist in der biopharmazeutischen Branche tätig, die sich mit der Entwicklung von transformativen Medikamenten beschäftigt. Zu seinem Produktportfolio gehören Vtama, Batoclimab, Brepocitinib, Namilumab und RVT-2001 zur Behandlung von Psoriasis, atopischer Dermatitis, Schilddrüsenerkrankungen und anderen Krankheiten. Das Unternehmen wurde am 7. April 2014 von Vivek Ramaswamy gegründet und hat seinen Hauptsitz in London, Vereinigtes Königreich.
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| Hauptsitz | Bermuda |
| CEO | Dr. Venker |
| Mitarbeiter | 721 |
| Gegründet | 2014 |
| Webseite | roivant.com |


