Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker highlighted 12 key pivotal trial readouts, including from four new molecular entities, that could happen in 2025.
After repeatedly wowing investors, Roche’s star eye med Vabysmo collected more than $4 billion in sales during its third year on the market. Still, questions continue to swirl about an evolving market showdown with Regeneron’s rival drug.Vabysmo has supplanted cancer immunotherapy Tecentriq to take the No. 3 spot on Roche’s annual sales ranking. The bispecific eye injection brought in 3.86 billion Swiss francs ($4.3 billion), including 1.05 billion Swiss francs in the fourth quarter.Despite 43% year-over-year growth, Vabysmo’s fourth-quarter sales missed analyst expectations by 2%, according to Intron Health. The performance came after several quarters of Street-beating sales for the drug.During an investor call Thursday, Roche’s pharma chief Teresa Graham suggested that the fourth-quarter haul was affected by a “spend-down” and “significant channel filling” right after the launch of a more convenient prefilled syringe version of Vabysmo, which was approved by the FDA in July and EU in December.Starting in January, Roche is seeing “a strong trajectory” for Vabysmo sales, Graham said, assuring investors of continued strong growth and further market-share expansion in 2025.Vabysmo’s market share in the U.S. in the fourth quarter was 31% in neovascular age-related macular degeneration, 22% in diabetic macular edema and 23% in retinal vein occlusion. The numbers were 30%, 22% and 20%, respectively, in the third quarter.Graham stressed that Vabysmo’s fourth-quarter share numbers were not directly comparable to previous quarters because a data aggregator recently issued a “restatement” of third-quarter share figures. If analyzed by prior metrics, Vabysmo expanded by roughly three percentage points across each of the three indications, she said.Lately, the competition between Vabysmo and a high-dose version of Regeneron’s Eylea has been the focus of industry watchers. In September, European regulators also approved a prefilled syringe of Eylea HD. Nevertheless, Roche is “really not seeing any impact in any part of the world” from the arrival of Eylea HD, Graham said.The Roche exec highlighted how the two products’ syringes are “materially different,” as the Vabysmo product offers one-hand administration, she said. “When you think about it, if you’re doing […] 100 shots a day, having that real ease of administration is super important,” she added. “I would say we definitely have device preference going on our side.” As for Tecentriq, sales of the PD-L1 inhibitor declined by 3.3%—or remained flat at constant exchange rates—last year.“We do believe, as we have mentioned previously, that Tecentriq is getting close to peak, and we expect sales growth to be in the zero to low-single-digit range going forward,” Graham said.In 2024, Roche welcomed antibody-drug conjugate Polivy to the blockbuster club. With full-year sales of 1.12 billion Swiss francs, the drug ranked 16th on the company’s list of top meds.Although Polivy’s fourth-quarter sales, at 304 million Swiss francs, were flat over the prior quarter and came in 6% below Wall Street’s estimates, the drug expanded its U.S. market share in the key first-line diffuse large B-cell lymphoma indication to 29%, according to Graham.Roche has increasingly been leaning on new drugs like Vabysmo for growth. In 2024, a “young portfolio” of drugs contributed to 56% of Roche’s 46.2 billion Swiss francs of pharma sales, up from 51% in 2023. On Thursday’s call, Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker highlighted 12 key pivotal trial readouts, including from four new molecular entities, that could happen in 2025.One of the key assets is giredestrant. The oral SERD is nearing phase 3 readouts from the persevERA and evERA trials in HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, around the middle or the second half of 2025, according to Roche. Schinecker has put the drug’s peak sales potential across multiple indications at above $3 billion.The other three new meds with pivotal readouts expected in 2025 are astegolimab in COPD, fenebrutinib in multiple sclerosis and vamikibart in uveitic macular edema.