With two years of experience selling Alzheimer’s disease antibody Leqembi so far under Eisai’s belt, the Japanese drugmaker is counting on its 2027 fiscal year to be a blockbuster year for the drug.
Sales in fiscal year 2027, which wraps up in March 2028, are projected to reach 250 to 280 billion Japanese yen ($1.6 billion to $1.8 billion), the company said in a recent update (PDF). As Eisai sees it, 2027 is a key step to achieving the company’s big expectations for 2032.
It set those aspirations at 1.6 trillion yen ($10.6 billion) last March in both early Alzheimer's and preclinical Alzheimer's indications. This trajectory is, however, down on a similar simulation Eisai made last year, where it saw $1.9 billion (290 billion Japanese yen) as being achieved by the end of the financial 2026 year.
To get to its new 2027 sales expectations, the company ran another revenue simulation that takes into account the delayed uptake in the U.S. and reflects “learnings from launches in each region.”
Some ways to pick up demand in the U.S. could come from greater brand awareness and strengthening the collaborative network between medical networks and primary care physicians, which would cut down on referral time. Eisai will begin communicating with PCPs in the U.S. in 2025’s fiscal year, it said.
Also crucial for growth are upcoming developments in the tests required for an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The specific tests necessary for patients to access Leqembi treatment have proved a thorn in Eisai and its U.S. commercialization partner Biogen since its 2023 launch.
On the regulatory side, Eisai looks to expand the drug’s value through a subcutaneous autoinjector formulation of Leqembi, which the FDA is set to decide on in late August of this year. That option is a “key factor” to streamlining treatment and trim down on the resources needed for its current infusion administration route.
While the company aims to “make every effort” to achieve its 2027 business milestones, Eisai pledged to kick off a three-year rolling plan to assess progress in the long-term potential of Leqembi.
Most recently, the drug pulled around 13.3 billion Japanese yen ($87 million) in the third quarter of Eisai’s 2024 fiscal year, which will end March 31. Leqembi collected sales of 29.6 billion Japanese yen (about $194 million) over the last nine months of 2024, putting it on track to reach a 12-month sales target of 42.5 billion Japanese yen ($279 million), Eisai’s chairman and CEO, Tatsuyuki Yasuno, said in an interview with Fierce Pharma earlier this year.
With 13,500 patients so far reached in the U.S. as of the company’s third quarter, “the Leqembi business is continuously growing stronger,” Yasuno said.
As for bigger-picture operations, Eisai is looking to focus its capital allocation over the next three years in in-house R&D investments in neurology and oncology, partnership opportunities and in-house manufacturing of its major products. The company’s three pillars for medium to long-term growth lay in operational excellence through structural reforms, drug discovery progress and creation of R&D areas not related to drug discovery such as AI teams and manufacturing solutions.