Dive Brief:
- A groundbreaking pancreatic cancer treatment from Revolution Medicines is likely to quickly become a blockbuster and eventually break into the ranks of the world’s best-selling drugs, helped by a higher-than-expected price, analysts said.
- Revolution said a 30-day supply of the medicine, Rasonque, will have a list price of $39,800, well above the $25,000 to $30,000 expected by some analysts. That equates to a yearly wholesale acquisition cost topping $477,000, more than double the list price for Merck & Co.’s Keytruda, the top-selling cancer medication in the world.
- The price, combined with a promising label, prompted analysts at Evercore ISI to raise their estimates for Rasonque sales to $2.4 billion next year and $15.1 billion by 2034 just for pancreatic cancer. Evercore expects the medicine to win approval for other types of cancer as well, potentially putting it in line for $20.8 billion in peak annual revenue.
Dive Insight:
After winning a lightning-fast approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday, Revolution is now pouring resources into the launch, making sure the drug can live up to the hype. The company made the once-daily tablet available immediately and set up a program called (ON)Path to help patients navigate insurance, find financial assistance and manage side effects.
“Rasonque has the ingredients to be one of the fastest oncology launches in history, if not the fastest,” Evercore analyst Cory Kasimov wrote in a note to clients. The introduction of Rasonque “will be transformative/historic, and our conviction is only reinforced with the label and pricing details,” he wrote in a second note after the company’s conference call.
The FDA cleared Rasonque for patients who have already received one systemic therapy for metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma or who aren’t candidates for “multiagent systemic therapy.” That “or” is key, allowing doctors the flexibility to use the drug as a first-line treatment, analysts said.
Some insurers may try to restrict the drug’s use as a first treatment because of its cost, but in general, friction with payers will be limited because of the lack of alternatives for many patients, RBC Capital Markets analyst Leonid Timashev predicted in a note to clients. Revolution is also likely to move quickly to win front-line approval for the medicine, he wrote. A Phase 3 trial in the first-line setting is underway.
Rasonque represents both a scientific and medical breakthrough, reaching a target at one time considered undruggable and extending survival for patients with an extremely deadly tumor. The FDA approved the drug in just over a month after Revolution completed its submission, with one official calling the results for the medicine “unprecedented” in the agency’s press release.
The drug does have significant side effects, but doctors and patients are excited about its ability to attack tumors and extend survival. Those who have seen its benefits include former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, who spoke about his experience with the New York Times.
