In strengthening Spravato sales, a positive sign for psychedelic drugs

2024-07-17

Dive Brief:

Sales of Johnson & Johnson’s depression drug Spravato accelerated in the second quarter, putting the medicine on pace to eclipse $1 billion in annual revenue this year.

Globally, Spravato sales totaled $271 billion between April and June, a 61% increase from the same period one year before and a 20% jump from the first quarter. The numbers, disclosed by J&J alongside second quarter earnings Wednesday, reflected “increased physician and patient confidence,” Jessica Moore, the company’s head of investor relations, said on a conference call.

Approved for treatment-resistant depression in 2019, Spravato is a form of ketamine that’s given as a nasal spray. It’s also cleared to treat depressive symptoms in people with major depressive disorder who show acute suicidal ideation or behavior.

Dive Insight:

Spravato remains a comparatively small product by sales for J&J, which reported more than $22 billion in revenue during the second quarter. But the pharmaceutical giant has high expectations for its growth, telling investors in December that it anticipates sales will grow to between $1 billion and $5 billion annually.

Wednesday’s numbers are encouraging evidence in support of that forecast. And they could also bode well for brain drugs like Spravato that work in ways that can also cause dissociation and hallucination.

“Spravato's strong sales trajectory supports the notion psychedelics can become commercially viable for mental health,” wrote Jefferies analyst Andrew Tsai in a client note Wednesday.

The field is in particular focus as the Food and Drug Administration decides whether to approve MDMA as part of a psychedelic-assisted therapy tested by biotechnology company Lykos Therapeutics. While two late-stage studies run by Lykos showed the therapy could help people with post-traumatic stress disorder, advisers to the FDA last month recommended the agency hold off on an approval, citing issues with how the trials were conducted and MDMA’s safety. The FDA is expected to make its verdict by Aug. 11.

Experts viewed the negative vote as having a “sobering effect” on the psychedelic field, although the FDA could still surprise and grant Lykos an approval in some fashion.

Behind Lykos are several other companies, including Compass Pathways, which is developing psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, and Atai Life Sciences, which is working on a form of dimethyltryptamine in the same setting.

“Spravato's continued sales acceleration ... provides evidence that psychedelics can generate meaningful sales in hard-to-treat [central nervous system] disorders, even if their ultimate use [is] restricted to hospitals or treatment clinics,” wrote Tsai.

Due to the risk of dissociation and suicidal thoughts, Spravato is only available for use under the supervision of a healthcare professional in a medical office or clinic.

Unlike many of its pharmaceutical peers, J&J has maintained neuroscience as a research focus, and is developing two depression drugs behind Spravato that work in new ways. One, seltorexant, showed positive results in a Phase 3 study J&J read out in late May, while the company is awaiting important data on the other, called aticaprant.

更多内容，请访问原始网站

文中所述内容并不反映新药情报库及其所属公司任何意见及观点，如有版权侵扰或错误之处，请及时联系我们，我们会在24小时内配合处理。

机构