Global cancer immunotherapy grows slow due to COVID-19

A cold wave hit the cancer immunotherapy market, which has been on a roll in the aftermath of COVID-19.

According to MSD, Keytruda’s sales in the first quarter rose 18.7% YoY to 4.3825 trillion won (exchange rate: 6 May 2021).

However, compared to the 4Q, when it rose to 4.4881 trillion won,, Keytruda shrunk 2.4%. It is the first time that Keytruda has performed worse than the previous quarter since its launch in 2015.

After returning to the 2 trillion mark in 3Q of last year, Opdivo (BMS) fell back to the 1.9 trillion mark, growing 2.6% backward YoY and 4.1% QoQ.

Yerboy (BMS), which surpassed 500 billion won in 3Q of last year, succeeded in rebounding through the expansion of the combination therapy with Opdivo but left a weaker performance than 4Q.

Tecentriq (Roche) and Imfinzi (AstraZeneca) both showed relatively good fulfillment, growing more than 20% YoY.

Among them, Tecentriq grew 7.2% QoQ to the mid-900 billion mark, catching up to half of Opdivo.

On the other hand, Imfinzi was stagnant as it did not deviate much from its 4Q earnings.
In the CAR-t therapy market, Yescarta (Gilead), which was behind Kymriah (Novartis) in 4Q, took the lead again.

Yescarta fell from the previous quarter for the second consecutive quarter after reaching to 170 billion won mark in 2Q of last year but recovered to 179.8 billion mark in 1Q.

Kymriah grew steadily every quarter to 170 billion won but left behind by Yescarta about 10 billion won.

Meanwhile, Tecartus (Gilead), which joined the market last year, had poorer performance than the previous quarter even though it was in the early stages of its release.