Enrique Conterno
Analyst · Andy Hsieh with William Blair. Your line is open
Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our first quarter 2022 earnings call. On today's call, I will provide a high level summary of the most important accomplishments and developments in the first quarter of 2022. Juan Graham, our CFO, will then review the financials after which we will open the call for your questions. Starting with Slide 3. FibroGen is positioned to create significant value for patients and shareholders by executing on our three areas of focus: number one, accelerating the development of pamrevlumab in three indications with significant unmet medical needs, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, locally advanced unresectable pancreatic cancer, or LAPC, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD; number two, ensuring commercial success of roxadustat in patients with chronic kidney disease outside the U.S., while continue to explore a path forward in the U.S.; and number three, increasing our research productivity to advance novel programs that leverage internal expertise and accessing external innovation for additional pipeline opportunities. Now let's move to our clinical trials focusing on pamrevlumab on Slide 4. Pamrevlumab is a wholly-owned asset in Phase III clinical trials for three high value indications, IPF, LAPC and DMD. Each one of these diseases represents an important unmet medical need and each constitutes a significant market opportunity. As we recently announced, we have completed enrollment of our ZEPHYRUS-1 Phase III study of 356 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The ZEPHYRUS-1 Phase III study is largely based on our Phase II PRAISE study, which demonstrated a meaningful reduction in lung function decline. Enrollment continues in our second ZEPHYRUS Phase III study. This is ZEPHYRUS-2. And we look forward to updating you as that trial progresses. We completed enrollment of the LELANTOS-1 Phase III clinical trial of pamrevlumab in non-ambulatory patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, DMD, in the first quarter and expect to complete enrollment of the LELANTOS-2 Phase III clinical trial of pamrevlumab in ambulatory patients with DMD in the second quarter. It is very exciting to be expecting data readouts for LELANTOS-1, 2, and ZEPHYRUS-1 in 2023 and I want to thank our clinical development team for their efforts. Moving now to locally advanced pancreatic cancer. As discussed previously, we plan an interim analysis of event-free survival in the second quarter. Depending on the results and in consultation with the FDA, we will decide whether to file for accelerated approval. After making this decision, we will provide an update later this year. Regardless, the trial will continue to the primary endpoint of overall survival and we expect top-line data in the first half of 2024. I'd now like to spend a few minutes highlighting our perspective on the significant commercial opportunity we see with pamrevlumab in each of the three disease areas, on Slide 5 beginning with IPF. With a diagnosed prevalence of approximately 330,000 patients across the U.S., EU, China and Japan, IPF represents a significant opportunity with the two approved IPF therapies generating almost $4 billion in net revenue in 2021. Despite this market size, there remains significant unmet need with these two approved therapies as characterized by continued disease progression and challenging tolerability. There is a sentiment in the IPF community of limitations with the current therapies and a desire for additional therapeutic options. If the Phase III ZEPHYRUS program produces similar results to the Phase II PRAISE trial, we believe pamrevlumab has the potential to help a sizeable number of patients with IPF and be a very significant product for FibroGen. In the middle column, you can see that locally advanced pancreatic cancer opportunity. Pancreatic cancer represents one of the greatest unmet needs in oncology, given the diagnosed prevalence of almost 140,000 patients across the major regions combined with the low five year disease-free survival rates of around 10%. There have been limited treatment advances in the non-metastatic setting over the last two decades with the immuno-oncology therapies failing to demonstrate survival benefits over the current standard of care. Similar to IPF, there is limited late-stage development activity in non-metastatic pancreatic cancer, which creates a meaningful opportunity for pamrevlumab if it can demonstrate an improvement in overall survival. As we said earlier, the LAPIS Phase III trial is fully enrolled and we look forward to seeing if pamrevlumab could provide an important new treatment option. And finally, in the third column, we wrap up the pamrevlumab market section with a snapshot of the DMD opportunity. While the prevalence of DMD is the lowest of the three indications we're pursuing, giving the devastating nature of its diagnosis and the relentless disease progression, we're hopeful that the LELANTOS clinical trial program can lead to an approved therapy that is so needed by the DMD community. With corticosteroids as the current standard of care, patients commonly deal with troublesome side effects as they continue to experience disease progression and loss of ambulation. While the currently approved exon-skipping therapies produce an increase in dystrophin levels, they are targeted at the small proportion of DMD patients and have yet to demonstrate a meaningful clinical improvement in symptoms or disease progression. There is a clear need for therapies that can improve muscle function and prolonged ambulation by targeting the downstream pathological changes of DMD. We believe the antifibrotic mechanism of pamrevlumab may be a solution that can help these patients and their families. Now let's move to roxadustat on Slide 6. Following the European Commission approval of EVRENZO for the treatment of adult patients with symptomatic anemia associated with chronic kidney disease, Astellas has launched in Germany, the UK, Netherlands, Austria and the Nordic countries. While uptick has been slower than expected, the early feedback from healthcare providers prescribing EVRENZO has been positive. The anemia of CKD opportunity in Europe is significant, and EVRENZO has an important first-mover advantage relative to other HIF-PHIs. Launches will commence in the other major EU market later this year, pending positive reimbursement decisions. Despite significant discussions with AstraZeneca, we have not been able to find a path forward for AstraZeneca to fund further roxadustat development of anemia of CKD in the U.S. We continue to believe roxadustat can address an admin need for patients with CKD anemia. It's important to note that we continue development of roxadustat in MDS with top line Phase 3 data expected in the first half of 2023. Moving now to China. Roxadustat was renewed in the NRDL for another two years, beginning, January 2022. As expected, this relisting was accompanied with the price reduction. As you can see on Slide 7, we are reporting first quarter, total roxadustat net sales in China of $43.5 million by FibroGen and the joint distribution entity, which is flat compared to the first quarter of 2021. This was driven by a greater than 70% increase in volume offset by the recent NRDL price reduction. We expect roxadustat net sales growth for the full year in China, driven by significant growth in volume. FibroGen portion of roxadustat net product revenue in China was $18.9 million for the first quarter on a U.S. GAAP basis. Juan will dive into further details in the finance update. Turning now to updated external market data on Slide 8, roxadustat continues to be the number one branded treatment for anemia, CKD as measured by value sharing the category, which includes all ESA products on roxadustat. We expect this category leadership to continue as roxadustat volume continues to grow at a fast pace. Next Slide 9 provides a snapshot roxadustat unit growth as indexed to December, 2020 on the chart on the left, as well as year-over-year growth in the table on the right. Of note is the consistent unit growth of roxadustat, while the leading ESA brand is slightly up, reflecting the anemia, CKD market expansion that has been driven by roxadustat since its original NRDL listing in 2020. Now it is worth taking a minute to comment on the COVID situation in China. As you're aware, lockdowns have been implemented to reduce the spread of COVID in a number of cities, including Shanghai and Beijing. Thus far, we have not seen an impact on roxadustat demand in China, where we have seen an impact is in some of our clinical trial involvement in China. We are and we will continue to monitor the situation closely as it evolves. And our thoughts are with our China employees during this difficult time. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Juan Graham for the financial update. Juan?