Waiting in the Wings: Most Valuable R&D
Metabolic disease developments are likely to continue dominating sector headlines in 2024, with Novo Nordisk
and Lilly’s fight for share in diabetes and obesity a particular focus.
Novo and Lilly are investing huge sums to ensure they remain market leaders and their follow-on projects are among biopharma’s most valuable R&D assets.
This table (next page) shows some of the sector’s most highly valued research projects, ranked on net present value. Evaluate Omnium computes these NPVs from sellside consensus sales forecasts.
Cagrisema is Novo’s fixed-dose combination of the novel amylin receptor agonist cagrilintide and semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. A vast pivotal programme is likely to start reporting out in 2025. The first phase 3 data on Lilly’s tirzepatide follow-on, the oral GLP1-agonist orforglipron, should emerge the same year.
Next year could also see the revival of Roche’s controversial Tigit project, should the long-awaited final readout from Skyscraper-01 impress. The trial, and tiragolumab itself, had been largely written off after disappointing interim data, but a disclosure last year of what seemed to be an improving survival picture lifted hopes once again.
Tigit blockade was for a while considered the next big blockbuster immuno-oncology target, but its potential remains an open question. Several other developers are also ploughing substantial sums into the mechanism, so the outcome will have wide repercussions.
Elsewhere, data onJohnson & Johnson’s nipocalimab will help determine whether Argenyx has competition looming in the highly valued FcRn space. And finally, Vertex will start reporting data Phase III from its pain project VX-548. Progress here would represent the first breakthrough with a novel mechanism in decades, and the valuation of this asset is likely to soar if encourage efficacy and safety emerges.
