Daniel Swisher
Analyst · Jeff Hung from Morgan Stanley
Thanks, Bruce. Well, I'm excited to share the progress across our commercial portfolio. So starting with neuroscience, we saw strong momentum during the third quarter for our oxybate franchise. Average active oxybate patients increased to approximately 16,000 in the quarter, a 6% increase over the same period last year. And we exited the quarter with approximately 6,000 active Xywav patients, up from approximately 5,100 at the end of the second quarter. We see significant opportunity for Xywav to continue to grow in narcolepsy and remain focused on educating physicians and patients about the lifelong burden of high sodium intake, particularly in a patient population like this one with an increased risk of cardiovascular comorbidities. In addition to the strong adoption of Xywav from existing Xyrem patients, we continue to see the large majority of oxybate naive patients being prescribed Xywav as opposed to Xyrem. As Slide 7 illustrates, we've achieved market-leading adoption for Xywav in narcolepsy relative to launches of other next-generation neuroscience products. This speaks to the strong product profile, which includes FDA's published findings of the clinical superiority of Xywav to Xyrem based on greater safety because of reduced sodium as well as our deep understanding of the sleep space and our ability to successfully drive adoption of new therapies. And we believe the IH indication will drive further growth of Xywav. Our commercial launch began on November 1, and I'll remind listeners that a replay of our October webcast discussing the commercial launch strategy of Xywav for IH is available on our corporate website for those who missed it. As we roll out this launch, our initial focus is on driving awareness and adoption among existing oxybate prescribers and the approximately 37,000 people who have been diagnosed with IH and are actively seeking health care. Expanding the market beyond diagnosed IH patients who are actively seeking treatment provides us with a longer-term growth opportunity. And we estimate that the total diagnosed IH patient population is likely close to that of the diagnosed narcolepsy market, which is approximately 70,000 to 80,000 patients. As a reminder, beginning with our fourth quarter and 2021 year-end reporting, we will share the breakdown of the number of Xywav patients based on their diagnosis of either narcolepsy or IH. So moving to Epidiolex. This is our first full quarter with the product since the close of the GW acquisition. Epidiolex net product sales were $160.4 million and we achieved a 21% increase over the same quarter in 2020 despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19. COVID-19 continues to put short-term pressure on Epidiolex growth. There are several factors related to the pandemic that are at play. On a macro level, pediatric new prescriptions have been disproportionately impacted by COVID relative to other specialties over the last 12 months, as the chart on Slide 8 illustrates. Epidiolex growth has been affected by this trend. Reports from the field indicate that due to COVID-19 and the lack of access to vaccines, especially for children under 12 years of age, many parents are hesitant to bring their children into an office setting and risk COVID exposure or change antiepilepsy treatment regimens and risk breakthrough seizures. These dynamics have negatively impacted new patient starts, the majority of which are pediatric patients. At the same time, promotional visits to institutional centers in the U.S. are down across the industry. We see this playing out with Epidiolex. Through the first 3 quarters of 2021 relative to 2019, our average number of total monthly sales interactions with health care providers were down 44% overall, with face-to-face interactions down 71%. This has a notable negative impact on the growth rate of a newer product like Epidiolex, where education and in-office support for physicians with little or no product experience help expand trial usage and adoption. And the impact here is not limited to Epidiolex, as sales across other antiepileptic drugs with similar indications to Epidiolex have been flat in recent quarters. Now turning to Slide 9. While there are challenges, our team has made steady progress in driving adoption in our 3 current indications, Dravet syndrome, Lennox Gastaut syndrome and tuberous sclerosis complex, or TSC. We continue to have high persistency rates among patients who begin therapy, and we see opportunity for additional patient growth across these indications. There has been strong adoption of Epidiolex in large epilepsy centers, and we have increased our reach now to smaller centers and general neurology practices. As we expect COVID-19 pressures to ease in the U.S. and now with younger children becoming eligible to receive COVID vaccines, we expect to see an upturn in both patients visiting their health care providers to discuss new treatment options and our ability to provide in-person education to physicians, the combination of which we believe will contribute significantly to Epidiolex growth. Based on positive trends in new and unique prescribers as well as feedback from our prescribers, we are confident that we will continue to grow the Epidiolex prescriber base. So in response to the current environment, we've implemented a number of virtual educational initiatives for health care providers and patients to further their understanding of Epidiolex' unique product profile and mechanism of action in the anti-epileptic drug class. In recent market research among prescribers, approximately 40% of respondents indicate they are moving Epidiolex up in their treatment algorithm. We believe this is underpinned by more prescribers having experience with Epidiolex over time and gaining confidence in the product. There's also a very large unmet need in refractory epilepsies. In the U.S. alone, there are approximately 160,000 treatment-resistant pediatric epilepsy patients and approximately 1 million treatment-resistant epilepsy patients overall. Many of these patients have rare pediatric onset epilepsy syndromes for which no FDA-approved treatment exists specific to that particular syndrome. Epidiolex has the potential to treat a broad range of seizure types. And the goal of our development program is to add to that existing body of evidence. Our planned registrational trial in epilepsy with myoclonic-atonic seizures, or EMAS, will provide data in this seizure type. In addition, we continue to invest in company-sponsored trials and to support investigator-initiated studies to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Epidiolex in different epilepsy subtypes and across different end points. We also see a significant opportunity for Epidiolex growth coming from markets outside the U.S. Looking at Slide 10, we have been extremely pleased with our progress in Europe. We have secured favorable pricing and access to date, and national reimbursement is in place in 4 of the 5 largest European markets, including Germany, the U.K., Italy and Spain. In those 4 markets, pricing is greater than 70% of the U.S. wholesale acquisition price. In addition, we anticipate commercial launch in France next year. Overall, we remain excited about the future growth potential of Epidiolex. While we are currently navigating short-term headwinds, we are confident that with Epidiolex' unique mechanism of action, its ability to be combined with other therapies and increasing positive experiences in real-world settings, Epidiolex can become a standard of care for treatment-resistant epilepsies. So now turning to oncology and Zepzelca. Our team has done an outstanding job on the launch of this innovative therapy. As the graph on Slide 11 shows, net sales of Zepzelca substantially outperformed the launches of other comparable oncology products. Our team has done an outstanding -- sorry, we continue to see strong growth in demand for Zepzelca in third quarter with net product sales of $71.7 million. As noted in our press release, we have lowered our return provision to reflect actual experience. This had the effect of increasing the quarter's net sales number by approximately $10 million. Excluding this adjustment, third quarter net product sales increased approximately 10% compared to the second quarter. As you can see on the chart on Slide 12, Zepzelca is now the treatment of choice in second-line small cell lung cancer, and we're pleased that Zepzelca's share in this setting continues to increase, taking market share from topotecan and immuno-oncology products used as monotherapy. We continue to see near-term growth opportunities as we expect Zepzelca will continue to gain share among patients being rechallenged with platinum-based chemotherapies or receiving other chemotherapy regimens. Now moving to Rylaze on Slide 13, our internally developed recombinant erwinia asparaginase therapy launched in mid-July. Third quarter net product sales were $20.7 million. Initial feedback from accounts is encouraging, and we have received positive reports on the ease of both ordering and dose preparation as well as our support services. In terms of the market dynamics, Erwinaze is still available in the supply channel through mid-September, which included the last imported batch of Erwinaze sold by Clinigen that FDA allowed the importation of in May. We believe the overwhelming majority of Erwinaze supply was used up by the end of August, and there was a notable uptick in Rylaze orders beginning in September. To support the launch, we're executing numerous commercialization activities to educate health care professionals about the clinical profile and the administration of Rylaze. And we're working to place Rylaze on institutional formularies and into their regular ordering systems. In summary, having delivered on the Xywav for narcolepsy and Zepzelca launches, we are confident in our commercialization team's ability to achieve successful launches for Rylaze and Xywav in IH. And while we've been facing some near-term headwinds from COVID for Epidiolex, we do expect to be able to drive growth for this brand and across our product portfolio in future quarters and to deliver meaningful value as we transform the lives of patients and their families. I'm now going to turn the call over to Rob for an update on our development programs. Rob?