Gilead scores a big win
Last week, Gilead and its partner Galapagos NV (NASDAQ: GLPG) unveiled two major clinical updates for their anti-inflammatory medicine filgotinib in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. These two late-stage trials, known as FINCH 1 and FINCH 3, both met their primary endpoints. But more important is that they also provided some compelling evidence that filgotinib might be the safest of all the JAK1 inhibitors vying for a chunk of the multibillion-dollar rheumatoid arthritis market.
What's at stake? Filgotinib, if approved, would likely be the fourth JAK inhibitor to enter the market for rheumatoid arthritis. Even so, the drug's potentially superior safety profile over AbbVie's upadacitinib, Eli Lilly's Olumiant and Pfizer's Xeljanz could enable it to grab a significant share of this high-value indication. Gilead, in turn, might finally have its next megablockbuster product.
Turning to the specifics, Wall Street has filgotinib's peak sales ranging from a low of $1.1 billion all the way up to a healthy $3.7 billion, and that's just for the drug's rheumatoid arthritis indication. Follow-on studies in psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis (spinal arthritis), and Crohn's disease could tack on another $3 billion to this tally.
In all, this top biotech stock is far too cheap based on filgotinib's megablockbuster prospects -- a fact that the market will probably start to realize in the weeks ahead.