00:00 Speaker A

From policy and regulatory uncertainties to tough competitor dynamics, the healthcare space facing a difficult backdrop right now. As the global healthcare landscape navigates uncertainty, we're looking at how to play in the dynamic environment in the Yahoo Finance playbook. Joining us now, Assad Hayder, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, lead US pharmaceutical analyst and head of the healthcare business unit. And Assad is also preparing for Goldman Sachs's healthcare conference where he's going to have a chance to talk to a lot of the CEOs within his coverage. So, um, should be interesting to hear what they have to say, Assad. But I know um, in advance of that, you're kind of looking at two main treatment areas as where the the most excitement, I guess and development is right now. One of them is GLP-1s, which goodness we have talked a lot about. But the other has to do with oncology. Talk to me a little bit more about that right now, the backdrop there because it's gotten relatively less attention.

02:11 Asad Haider

Yeah, great question, and thanks for having me, Julie, again on this. So, yes, we had down to our healthcare conference next week. Like you said, we've got about 200 companies from across the healthcare ecosystem, converging on in Miami, where we're going to be looking for direction and color on things like policy, uncertainty, etc. But I think from a bottom-up perspective, our focus really is on fundamentals and on new product cycles. And like you said, GLP-1s and obesity is one that's been talked about ad nauseum, although that's that's one that we're still very excited about. But there is this new emerging modality to treat cancer. It's called It's basically combining two tried and tested mechanisms for cancers, one's called vegf's, one's called PD-1s, and combining them together and basically the thesis is that the the sum of the parts is really greater than the whole. And you've seen some pretty promising early data from some companies on these modalities. And there's been a lot of partnerships that have been evolving from global pharma companies, the most recent one of which you saw this week earlier where Bristol Myers partnered with a company called Biontech to collaborate on these, on developing these PD-1 vegf bispecifics. And right before that about three weeks ago, you saw Pfizer jump into the fray with another Chinese company called 3SBio, with a deal where they want to collaborate on PD-1 vegf bispecifics as well. And before that, Merck jumped in, and so everyone's trying to get a slice of this pie. And it's very early data, but the early data so far do look promising. And if the data hold up in later stage trials as they mature, then this could potentially disrupt the standard of care in oncology. And so, you know, right now the biggest oncology drug is Merck's Keytruda, that is um, on track to do about $28 billion, $30 billion. And so, there's obviously a lot of excitement on new modalities that could potentially disrupt this. And so I think that there's a lot of interest in this. You know, we just came back from the ASCO meeting in Chicago, and this really was the star of the show that everyone was talking about.

06:24 Speaker A

On that GLP-1 theme, Assad, a question. What is our line of sight right now about when the pill becomes available? And when it does, what do we think How do we think the price is going to compare to the shot?

06:58 Asad Haider

Yeah, it's a great question. So on the on the availability of the pills, so Lily, Eli Lilly is actually the frontrunner here. And they are going to have data later this year at some point in the fall for their oral obesity pill, which is called Orforglipron. And that trial is going to read out later this year. And we expect that they will file assuming that the results of that trial do look good. We assume they will file shortly after and then have a pretty quick global launch starting in 2026 in the US, and then globally right after that. As it relates to pricing, they haven't really said given us their strategy yet. It is a good question broadly, just in the context of all the focus on pricing dynamics and international reference pricing, etc. You know, I think the baseline assumption should be that it probably will get priced at some kind of a discount certainly in international markets. And then there'll be a volume offset, and that's how we're modeling it. But it remains to be seen where these companies price the pill.