Roche Exits Eight Clinical-Stage Programs to Refocus Pipeline on High-Potential Assets

On February 1, Roche announced its 2023 performance and stated that it had removed eight oncology and neurology candidate drugs in Phase I and Phase II from its pipeline, aiming to balance the overall portfolio value and accelerate the development of more valuable assets.

In this process, the balance of Roche's product pipeline shifted from neuroscience and oncology (to a lesser extent) towards immunology, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases. The number of neuroscience projects decreased from 18 to 12, although one of the projects was moved to another part of the R&D pipeline.

CEO Thomas Schinecker said that these resources would be transferred to "the projects we want to accelerate." During Thursday's Q4 earnings call, he also indicated a similar reduction in production for the first quarter.

Basmisanil is a GABAA-α5 receptor negative modulator that was developed between 2016 and 2019 for the treatment of ischemic stroke and schizophrenia. Later, the discovery of EEG biomarkers for dup15q syndrome (a developmental disorder) sparked interest in treating the condition by reducing GABA activity in the brain. In 2022, Roche registered a Phase II trial for this indication, but now the company intends to discontinue the development of this drug.

Roche also removed balovaptan, a small-molecule vasopressin V1A receptor antagonist, which had previously reached Phase III for the treatment of autism spectrum disorder but failed to make progress. Afterwards, Roche initiated a new Phase II study targeting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which was completed last year. However, due to potentially unsatisfactory results, Roche decided to remove it from its pipeline.

Before the Q4 earnings update, Roche partner AC Immune stated that Roche had returned the rights to Alzheimer’s disease candidate drugs crenezumab and semorinemab last month; details of the decision to abandon the Angelman syndrome candidate drug rugonersen were disclosed to the patient community last year.

In the field of oncology, Roche eliminated three Phase I candidate drugs, including a CD40/FAP bispecific antibody for solid tumors, an EGFRvIII/CD3 bispecific antibody, and an HLA-G/CD3ε bispecific antibody.

The removal of pipelines also comes with the influx of other assets, including candidate assets acquired through the acquisition of Carmot and Telavant. In addition, Roche has advanced a WRN covalent inhibitor (a synthetic lethal target, which is the core of a $135 million deal between Roche and Vividion) into Phase I clinical trials.

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