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FDA approves Immunomedics' breast cancer treatment amid COVID-19 crisis

As many are forced to stay at home due to the coronavirus, Immunomedics is using virtual tools to introduce doctors to its new breast cancer treatment, Trodelvy. Dr. Behzad Aghazadeh, Immunomedics Executive Chairman joins Yahoo Finance to discuss.

Video Transcript

- Now, somewhat lost in all the COVID-19 coverage, the FDA recently approved a drug called Trodelvy. It's a treatment for triple negative breast cancer patients who have failed prior therapies. Dr. Behzad Aghazadeh is Immunomedics executive chairman, and he joins us now. Doctor, a very important drug here. A [? reece ?] that just got FDA approval. How does it work? Can you walk us through it?

BEHZAD AGHAZADEH: Sure. Thanks, Brian, nice to be with you. Trodelvy is what we refer to as an antibody and drug conjugate. It's essentially a holding device in the form of an antibody that specifically targets the tumor surface [? mark ?] control two, which is highly expressed in a variety of tumor types. In this instance, it's, in particular, expressed in the triple-negative breast cancer patients.

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And with it, it carries a warhead that once it reaches the tumor type, the warhead can either enter the cell and, thereby, kill the cancer specifically or within the tumor microenvironment in this area surrounding the cancer leech off the antibody and kill the surrounding cells that are also cancerous within the tumor microenvironment. So it's a highly targeted delivery mechanism to kill the cancer in the location where it's presented.

- You know, Doctor, this is a challenging time, I imagine, to launch a drug such as this, especially because it's not a COVID-19 treatment but an important treatment, nonetheless. How are you able to get this to people, to doctors? What are you doing virtually to get this to the right folks?

BEHZAD AGHAZADEH: Yeah, that's an excellent question. And there's a two ways that we have to contend with that. One is the actual supply chain of making sure the drug does reach the patients. And we are a global manufacturing footprint where the final step actually occurs in Italy, the hotbed of the pandemic.

And we started working very early on identifying the potential risk of that poses and making sure the drug is brought to the US on land through customs. And that is now available in the channel. So we made sure we don't miss a beat. On the other side of that is on the approval, we wanted to make sure that we have all the infrastructure in place should we receive an approval that we can get to the physicians as quickly as possible.

Now, the reality is, nothing makes up for face-to-face interactions. And our sales force is doing much what we're doing here, which is sitting remotely and interacting with physicians. But it really does help to, first of all, have the infrastructure in place that we started planning for this eventuality in February when we started getting the early signals of what an outbreak might do. And we built all the infrastructure necessary from an IT standpoint.

Now, what really ultimately does help is to have a very differentiated product where there is a high unmet need. And in this instance, the physicians themselves are reaching out for us. And we're detailing them over video conference providing all the material that is necessary for them to understand the mechanism and help them think through which of their patients could benefit from the drug. So it's early days. We've only been approved since about a week. And however so far so good, really no hiccup from it [? it doesn't ?] to reach the physicians.

- Doctor, what's your sales estimate for a drug like this, let's say, within one year of being available?

BEHZAD AGHAZADEH: So it's really too early to judge that. And we haven't provided any direction or guidance. But the general numbers out there-- and it's too early to know with certainty what the patient population is. It's a-- the early-- the first indication-- and this drug has potential in other settings-- the early indication-- that the first indication that it's approved in the triple-negative is about 8,000 to 9,000 patients in the US.

And based on that, should we reach a reasonable level of penetration, what the [? Rand ?] folks, like, obviously it's too early to judge. And in this COVID environment-- we just talked about that-- further complicates factors. But if you reach the full reasonable level of penetration, it can generate several hundreds of, perhaps, $750 million of revenue ultimately.

- Doctor, a two-part question for you. Is this drug covered under insurance? And then unrelated to that, how has this pandemic changed the way you're doing business? And how will it change even when we're out the other side of this for you?

BEHZAD AGHAZADEH: So from a true standpoint, a late stage oncology setting is generally very well-reimbursed by insurance. Having said that, we've also put in place all the mechanisms and copay and other patient access provisions to ensure that no patient goes untreated whether they have insurance or not. So that's important to us. And it's the right thing to do.

Overall, we are prepared to respond to a prolonged pandemic. Or should the restrictions lift, we, first of all, do not expect that they will lift, and we'll be back to business. We're-- so settling in for the long haul with respect [? to e ?] detailing. But we'll be prepared to go out and market it face to face again.

With a severe setting that this represents, in the end, the impact from COVID is going to be muted. And it's going to be really a function of just making sure that patients can see their physicians, which is something we can't directly control. But we'll be make every effort to make sure that, oh, we are ready to provide the drug where it's needed.

- All right, let's leave it there. Dr. Behzad Aghazadeh, Immunomedics executive chairman. A very important FDA approval here. Thanks for taking some time to discuss it.

BEHZAD AGHAZADEH: Thank you very much.