Eisai’s sales projections for Leqembi exceed US$7 billion by 2030

JAPAN —Eisai has announced that its Alzheimer’s disease drug Leqembi (lecanemab), developed in partnership with Biogen, is expected to generate peak sales of JPY 1.2 trillion (US$7.4 billion) by the end of the decade.

Leqembi is partnered with the U.S. biotech company Biogen, and received accelerated approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year to slow down cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease patients.

The FDA is expected to decide whether to grant full approval to the drug by July 6, after holding an advisory committee meeting to discuss the application for traditional approval.

Eisai CEO Haruo Naito expressed confidence in Leqembi’s potential, stating that a transparent discussion at the advisory committee meeting will boost its penetration.

He also stated that Eisai is striving to make Leqembi profitable around the end of the third fiscal quarter of 2025, which is in line with their previous estimate of profitability in the latter half of its second year or third year after launch, following its January approval.

2.5 million people eligible

Eisai has projected that its Alzheimer’s disease drug, Leqembi (lecanemab), will generate peak sales of one trillion yen (US$7.4 billion) by 2030.

The company based this estimate on the belief that around 2.5 million people worldwide will be eligible for treatment by that time, with Asia/Latin America and China accounting for 70% of global cases.

Leqembi’s first sales to U.S. pharmacies occurred in January, with revenues exceeding expectations, according to Eisai’s global Alzheimer’s disease officer Ivan Cheung.

The Japanese drugmaker also anticipates a sales surge in 2025, driven by wider availability of new blood-based biomarker technology.

This technology will help identify people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease who are most likely to benefit from Leqembi.

Despite Medicare currently restricting the use of amyloid-directed monoclonal antibodies for patients in clinical studies, Eisai’s sales forecast for Leqembi assumes eventual wider coverage in the U.S.

Although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently rejected a request from the Alzheimer’s Association to provide broader coverage for new Alzheimer’s treatments, it indicated it would review any new evidence that could lead to a change in its policy.

Additionally, Eisai plans to release data for new tau antibody biomarkers at an upcoming event. The anti-MTBR tau antibody E2814 is being developed as a disease-modifying agent for tauopathies including sporadic Alzheimer’s.

Analysts are eagerly awaiting the data release in July, which could demonstrate substantial reductions in tau positron emission tomography (PET) or tau in tau of the microtubule-binding region (MTBR).

PET tau imaging is a way to look inside the brain over time and see where a protein called tau is building up.

This can help doctors understand how tau relates to other brain problems, and whether new treatments might be able to help prevent those problems from happening.

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