Merdad Parsey
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead
Thanks, Johanna, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to share some perspectives on several clinical pipeline-related updates and progress. Starting with Veklury. We're very pleased with the recent full approval of Veklury by the FDA. Veklury is now approved in the U.S. for the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19-based disease on a strong and consistent body of evidence from three rigorous, randomized, controlled clinical trials over the past six months to inform us about the profile of Veklury. It's the first antiviral treatment proven to help patients hospitalized with COVID-19, recover and leave the hospital more quickly, a significant benefit for patients, their families and society. The results include the double-blind, placebo-controlled NIAID Phase 3 ACTT-1 trial, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study met its primary endpoint of time to clinical recovery through day 29, demonstrating Veklury plus standard of care, reduced the time of recovery through day 29 compared with placebo plus standard of care from 15 to 10 days with a P-value of less than 0.001. The key secondary endpoint of clinical status at day 15 was also met. Patients receiving Veklury were 50% more likely to have it improved by day 15 compared with those receiving placebo, and the effect was maintained through day 29. The secondary mortality endpoint in the overall population only showed a trend towards reduced mortality with a P-value of 0.07. Recall that when we started these trials with the NIAID, we knew very little about the disease itself and didn't know which patients might be most likely to benefit from Veklury. Given the range of disease severity in the overall study population and the emerging understanding that clinical outcomes are highly dependent on a patient's requirement for oxygen at baseline, an exploratory post-hoc analysis was conducted to determine whether there were differences in mortality based on patients' baseline clinical status with respect to the requirement for oxygen support. In this post-hoc analysis, in patients requiring low flow oxygen at baseline, the largest subgroup of patients in the trial, over 40% of patients, those who received Veklury had a 72% reduction in mortality at day 15 and a 70% reduction in mortality at day 29, with confidence intervals that do not cross one. These results are what we would have expected and hoped for with an antiviral therapy that should have the most impact when given earlier in the course of the disease before the inflammatory cascade leads to critical illness. These data add to the breadth of evidence from two additional randomized controlled clinical trials, establishing the use of Veklury as a standard of care for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients. All three of these Phase 3 trials have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and the raw data was shared with the FDA as part of the NDA review process for them to perform their own independent analyses as is their standard approach. We continue to pursue other ways to expand the utility of remdesivir as a backbone of treatment, including exploring how combinations could be more effective and new means of administering the drug that don't require intravenous administration. Now, last week, interim results from the World Health Organization Solidarity trial were released through a preprint server. These results don't alter the demonstration of efficacy observed with remdesivir in the studies I just described. That trial was intentionally designed to be pragmatic and enable participation across a wide range of healthcare settings. They are components of the study design and data that should provide pause. These may be clarified or placed into appropriate context during the peer review process. Given that we haven't received the data, nor have there been peer reviewed -- nor have these data been peer reviewed, it's difficult for us to discuss the study. Some of the issues we and others have identified in WHO study include the lack of a PCR confirmation of COVID-19 at the time of enrollment, the lack of distinction between patients requiring low-flow or high-flow oxygen in the results, no data monitoring, no data verification, and 20% of the data being reported as missing from the preliminary analysis. We can only speculate at this point that these factors may have contributed to the negative outcomes reported in this study. It is, however, important to note that the totality of data generated thus far for Veklury suggests that antivirals are most effective earlier in the disease course. As you get sicker, inflammation, such as ARDS or fibrosis, potentially things like vascular blood clots and bacterial pneumonias could kick in. The NIAID data suggests that patients on low-flow oxygen are those that show the greatest benefit in time to discharge and mortality. An antiviral doesn't clear inflammation or blood clots once they're formed. So, this makes sense. Sicker patients on high-flow oxygen and mechanical ventilation may need an antiviral, but it will be insufficient to treat the inflammation. In those patients, treatment in addition to antivirals such as dexamethasone may be beneficial and have been demonstrated to be that way, using WHO data. We look forward to learning more about the Solidarity trial results and sharing this information with regulators, once we have the data in hand. Most importantly, at this moment, the world is combating a pandemic that isn't going away. As we see infections once again on the rise across the U.S. and Europe, it's critical that physicians have every tool possible at their disposal, and that patients are encouraged to seek care for what we know can be a rapidly progressing and deadly virus. We're proud of the role Veklury has played in this pandemic, and I'm proud of and profoundly grateful to the team who's worked so hard to advance this medicine for patients, including those collaborators at the NIAID, the investigators and patients who've been integral to the conduct of these studies. We regularly receive letters of gratitude from people who've been treated with Veklury, and we're grateful for the opportunity to provide this important treatment during this time. So, now, I'd like to turn to oncology. As Dan mentioned, we're very excited now to have the Trodelvy program in-house with the closing of the Immunomedics transaction. We're excited to welcome the impressive Immunomedics team to Gilead. As Dan and Johanna both mentioned, Trodelvy represents a growth inflection point for the Company, and I'd like to highlight recent progress that has us excited about the full potential of this medicine. You may have seen the ESMO data that Immunomedics presented from the confirmatory Phase 3 ASCENT study. In this study, despite having received a median of four prior anticancer treatments, patients treated with Trodelvy showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival with a median of 12.1 months versus 6.7 months for chemotherapy and a hazard ratio of 0.48 and a P-value of less than 0.0001. Trodelvy also demonstrated statistically significant improvement in ORR, 35% versus 5%, and CBR, 45% versus 9%, when compared with chemotherapy. These remarkable results should establish Trodelvy as a new standard of care in patients with third-line metastatic TNBC. In urothelial cancer, another area of focus, as reported at ESMO last month, Immunomedics released the positive results from cohort one of the pivotal Phase 2 TROPHY U-01 study of Trodelvy in cisplatin-eligible patients with metastatic urothelial cancer. These results confirm the interim findings in prior Phase 1/2 study results, showing Trodelvy has significant activity and is well tolerated in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic urothelial cancer who progressed despite platinum-based chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibitors. Trodelvy has a potential to be an important new treatment for patients with metastatic urothelial cancer. Based on these exciting data, in terms of the path forward for Trodelvy, the BLA -- supplemental BLA seeking expansion of Trodelvy's label to include the ASCENT result is expected to be submitted in Q4 to the FDA under the RTOR program. The sBLA submission to the FDA for an accelerated approval of Trodelvy in metastatic urothelial cancer is expected in Q4 as well. In addition, the MAA for Trodelvy in metastatic TNBC in Europe is planned for submission to the EMA in the first quarter of 2021. The potential for Trodelvy in earlier lines of therapy and additional tumor types is something we're really excited to explore. Results from studies with combinations of PARP inhibitors and separately checkpoint inhibitors give us even more options to explore the potential of this new treatment for patients. Beyond Trodelvy, I'd like to highlight other opportunities in our oncology pipeline that continue to excite us. On magrolimab, our anti-CD47 asset, we continue to pursue options for filing an accelerated approval pathway from magrolimab in addition to azacitidine and MDS in 2021 based on the ongoing single-arm study. As with all single arm studies, the risk and the FDA will make a decision based on the totality of the data and whether the data support a substantial benefit from available standard of care. The recent breakthrough designation for magrolimab provides recognition by the FDA the potential for magrolimab, and enables us to have more frequent FDA interactions. We also have obtained prime designation from magrolimab, another recognition of the potential for magrolimab. We've initiated our enhanced randomized Phase 3 study comparing magrolimab plus azacitidine versus azacitidine alone in higher risk MDS patients to confirm the Phase 1 results for potential full approval. The emerging data from our partner, Arcus, is very exciting, and we look forward to updating you in due course. Moving to antivirals. We continue to be excited about lenacapavir, the Company's investigational long-acting HIV1 capsid inhibitor, an injectable administered every six months. The study evaluating lenacapavir in highly treatment-experienced HIV patients is progressing, and we're on track for a planned filing in 2021. We also recently announced the addition of a new study arm of lenacapavir to the women's -- to the existing planned women's HIV prevention study, evaluating Descovy and Truvada in women at risk of HIV. In parallel, we will also initiate a study of lenacapavir for HIV prevention in men and transgender people who have sex with men. Turning to filgotinib. We're excited about the launch of Jyseleca for rheumatoid arthritis in Europe. During the quarter, we shared data from the Phase 2b/3 selection trial in ulcerative colitis showing filgotinib 200 milligrams, induced remission at week 10 and achieved endoscopic, histologic and six-month corticosteroid free remission at week 58 with a consistent safety profile. We plan to file filgotinib for ulcerative colitis in Europe before the year-end and Japan early next year. As we previously shared, in August, the FDA issued a complete response letter for filgotinib in rheumatoid arthritis, requesting data from the MANTA and MANTA-RAy studies and expressing concerns regarding the benefit risk profile of the 200-milligram dose. We met with the FDA for a Type C meeting to discuss MANTA, and we'll meet again for a Type A meeting in Q4 to further discuss the CRL. In the meantime, we're pausing screening and enrollment for ongoing trials in psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and uveitis as we believe the FDA meeting will inform the broader filgotinib development program. We continue to believe in the benefit risk profile of filgotinib. I'd also like to highlight that we remain committed to inflammation into our long-term collaboration with Galapagos. Finally, I wanted to highlight that we are focused on ongoing strategic portfolio review and disciplined prioritization of our overall portfolio. We've shared a summary of important upcoming milestones across the pipeline in the materials we've provided. I'll turn over the call to Andy now.