During a quarterly conference call, executives from Legend Biotech showed little concern for a new threat to its lone commercial product, multiple myeloma CAR-T Carvykti.
The competition—oddly enough—comes by way of its commercial partner on Carvykti, Johnson & Johnson.
During its fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Legend emphasized that the size and growth of the market should allow each of the treatment options to thrive.
“We and our partner J&J are firm believers that newer drugs, including Carvykti and also Tecvayli, should be the preferred option based on the clinical data that shows superiority of these regimens over the triplet standard of care,” Legend CEO Ying Huang, Ph.D., said. “If you look at community practice, in the second-to-fourth-line setting in the U.S., still all BCMA-targeting modalities only account for about 5% market share. That shows that there’s plenty of growth for these new regimens in the community setting.”
Legend pointed out that there are more than 100,000 patients around the world who are undergoing second-line treatment and that there is a “significant unmet need and a significant opportunity for the CAR-T adoption in second and third line,” Legend’s Carvykti chief Alan Bash said.
Beyond the expansive market opportunity, the Legend exec highlighted several factors underpinning the company’s confidence in Carvykti’s competitive edge.
“We continue to hear very significantly that there is a very unique value proposition for Carvykti in these earlier-line settings as a one-time infusion, delivering overall survival and five-year, treatment-free remissions in later-line patients,” Bash added.
Professional treatment guidelines have also highlighted considerations for sequencing BCMA agents that position Carvykti as a better earlier-line treatment because “putting a BCMA bispecific in front could diminish the efficacy that you could get from CAR-T.”
Three months ago, Imran Khan, M.D., Ph.D., J&J’s vice president of hematology medical affairs, told Fierce Pharma that while some patients prefer to get a single infusion of Carvykti and be done with their treatment, others—for various reasons—may get treated locally in the community setting, where CAR-T therapies are not available.
“As a one-time, time-limited infusion, Carvykti offers a different clinical profile and carries different economic implications, offering meaningful payer savings versus combination regimens that require continuous therapy,” Legend also told Fierce in December.
On Tuesday, Legend also pointed to its manufacturing success rate, which has increased from 97% to 99% and is “unconstrained from a capacity standpoint,” Bash added.
“This is one of the many reasons why we and our partner, Johnson & Johnson, are moving full steam ahead on our capacity expansion plans,” he said. “Our partnership with Johnson & Johnson is built to scale Carvykti to its anticipated potential of more than $5 billion in peak annual sales.”
Legend reported its 2025 revenue at $1.03 billion, including $306 million in the fourth quarter, which is a 64% increase year over year. Total sales for Carvykti, which was initially approved in 2022, came to $1.9 billion, including $555 million in the fourth quarter.
Analysts from Jefferies are projecting Carvykti’s sales to grow to $1.5 billion in 2026 and to $2.4 billion by 2028.
The New Jersey-based biotech started 2026 with $949 million cash on hand. Legend added that Carvykti became profitable in 2025 and that it will do the same as a company this year.
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