Halozyme at TD Cowen Healthcare: Strategic Moves and Legal Challenges

Published 06/03/2025, 19:24
Halozyme at TD Cowen Healthcare: Strategic Moves and Legal Challenges

On Wednesday, 05 March 2025, Halozyme Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HALO) presented at the TD Cowen 45th Annual Healthcare Conference. The company discussed its strategic direction, highlighting potential legal challenges with Merck, financial projections, and business development opportunities. While the company is optimistic about future growth, it faces potential patent infringement issues that could impact its operations.

Key Takeaways

  • Halozyme is considering legal action against Merck for patent infringement related to subcutaneous Keytruda.
  • The company expects significant financial growth through licensing agreements and new product launches.
  • Halozyme plans to expand its drug delivery platforms and aims for substantial share buybacks.

Potential Patent Infringement and Legal Strategy

  • Halozyme believes Merck’s use of Alteogen’s modified hyaluronidase infringes on its MDACE patent portfolio.
  • The company prefers a licensing agreement but is prepared to litigate, which could lead to an injunction against subcutaneous Keytruda sales.
  • MDACE patents extend to 2032 in Europe and 2034 in the U.S., with Merck seeking patent review.

Financial Discussion and Projections

  • Licensing agreements for MDACE may include milestone and royalty payments, with royalties between 3% and 7%.
  • Potential milestone payments for exclusive licenses range from $130 million to $160 million.
  • Halozyme has returned $1.55 billion in share buybacks since 2019, with $250 million annually.

Business Development and Future Outlook

  • Halozyme is exploring opportunities to convert subcutaneous drugs to extended dosing regimens using Enhance technology.
  • The company plans to acquire new drug delivery platforms by 2030, leveraging collaboration expertise.
  • Long-term guidance through 2028 shows strong revenue and high free cash flow margin.

Product and Launch Updates

  • Three new studies are expected to start this year, expanding Halozyme’s portfolio.
  • Vipart Hytroulo is projected to generate $6.9 billion in revenue by 2030.
  • Ocrevus is expected to be a $10 billion brand, with a potential peak share of over 40%.

For more details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - TD Cowen 45th Annual Healthcare Conference:

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: All right. I think we’re going to get started here. I know lunch is just off of this session, so we don’t want to keep people waiting too long. But welcome back to the forty fifth annual TD Cowan Healthcare Conference. I’m Brandon Smith, senior biotech and life science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst here at TD Cowan.

And it is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you the CEO of Halozyme Therapeutics is Helen Torley to my right. And to her right is the Chief Legal Officer for Halozyme, Mark Snyder. And obviously, there’s a lot to discuss this morning, a lot of ground to cover in general for Halozyme. So maybe let’s just, you know, jump right into it, Helen. So, maybe we’ll talk about m Day’s portfolio.

But obviously, let’s address the Wall Street Journal article this morning discussing how Halozyme does potentially believe that Merck may have infringed upon its patents. So maybe just give us a sense, what is the case here? What does Emday’s look like, relative to how you kind of view the Keytruda sub q opportunity? And just help us level set how you’re thinking about this.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. Maybe I’ll give a high level overview, and then we can get into more of the the details, Brandon. And so as I think everybody in the room knows Halozyme is the pioneer, the inventor of the whole area of using hyaluronidases to be able to deliver large volume drugs subcutaneously. This has been the work of decades and many, many thousands of experiments. And it resulted in two patent portfolios, the enhanced portfolio, which you’re very familiar with, that we licensed to leading companies today to allow them to, make their IV drugs be able to be given subcutaneously, simultaneously, in return for a royalty.

And we also have another patent portfolio that we unveiled last October, which is called the MDACE portfolio, which is modified hyaluronidase. These were being worked on for many of the same years as the enhanced ones. It’s for a different product, though, in a different structure. And we unveiled these last October, wanting to make it clear that for any companies who are working on a modified hyaluronidase, who didn’t want to work with us on enhanced or couldn’t work with us on enhanced, perhaps because we’d already, were working with somebody else in an exclusive basis, that these patents were available for a license. And what was reported today really relates to the question of Merck is using a modified hyaluronidase.

We believe that the Altaogen product that they are using does infringe our intellectual property. And this consistent with what we’ve been saying in October, it is our goal for us to sign a licensing agreement with Merck for them to license, our IP that is enabling their ability to be delivering, subcutaneous Keytruda. That really is the sum and total of this. I think, as we get into conversations, hopefully, we we can also discuss, you know, if if Mark wasn’t going to come to a a license. I know there was some speculation.

We want that to happen, but we also do stand ready and able to, take appropriate steps to defend our intellectual property up to including lawsuits. So we can we can talk about that.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Great. So, let’s now talk about next steps here. So so what is the path forward? Maybe give us any any sense or color that you have on potential timing to this kind of kind of lay out the next few months now for for this part of the conversation?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. Well, I will say that, I have reached out to Merck to offer them the opportunity for a license with Ambase, and it’s our hope that they will engage with us and we’ll be able to progress with that. That really is our business model is these licensing agreements, and that’s what we would like to happen. In the event that doesn’t turn out as we would plan, maybe I’ll ask Mark to comment on that.

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: Thanks, Helen. And, yes, our preference as Helen has said is that we, we conclude discussions with a license agreement, but, so we’re hoping to have productive discussions with Mark, but if we do not engage in productive discussions on the license, the results in the license, the next step for us would be to legally enforce our intellectual property rights. And of course, what I’m talking about there is us bringing patent infringement litigation. One of the typical remedies you get, if you have patent litigation and you prove that there’s been infringement of your patents, you get what’s called an injunction, which is essentially asking the court to enforce the intellectual property rights and preclude the infringer from continuing to infringe. And here that would be asking them to, enjoin the ongoing sales of Keytruda subcutaneous.

Something that I want to make really clear though, is that, our rights would not extend to the Keytruda in its current intravenous form. So that would still be available to patients even if we did engage in litigation and we ended up with an injunction, patients would still have access to Keytruda. But for the subcutaneous version where we do have intellectual property rights, it wouldn’t be, essentially fair to allow Merck to continue to get the benefits that are conferred by the use of that subcutaneous technology without paying us appropriate compensation for our innovations.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: And can you just maybe remind us, what we know in terms of timing for a potential sub q keytruda launch just to help us orient, that within the context of the the legal decisions ahead?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. I can say that that based on, comments that were made Monday at this conference, it was confirmed by Merck leadership that they have filed both in The US and Europe for subcutaneous Keytruda, and they talked about a launch this year.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Okay. So I I guess this also then begs the question, if it does relate to the hyaluronidase from Altigen, are there any other assets within the Altigen portfolio that you kind of view as potentially falling into this purview?

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: So we’ve been very closely following the development and the commercialization activities of Merck with respect to Keytruda subcutaneous. The and that is the product that infringes from our perspective. And that’s the way we’ve historically licensed products is that we licensed the the combined product because that’s where we feel where the value is conferred is in the ability to make these medicines, transition to subcutaneous administration. And so that’s why we focused on that. And the focus really is not on Lteogen or their products.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Okay. All right. And have you done any maybe back of the envelope work yourself internally to think about the potential opportunity here for subcutetroot? I know Mark has talked about it, of course. But any and just any thoughts on what this could actually long term really mean for Halozyme?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. I I think a couple of of points. The MDACE patents extend to two thousand and 30 two, in Europe and 02/1934 in The United States. So, any licensing agreement, we would expect to receive royalties for that period of time. In terms of what the contract structure we would our license structure we would offer, very similar to enhances.

MDs is doing the same thing as enhanced. So, we would be talking with potential licensees about a milestone structure and a royalty structure. And our structure rate is mid single digit, which we have in a range of three to 7%. And we would expect to be a very reasonable starting place, certainly for conversations and an ending place for conversations with regard to a license. I think it’s always a question of when we do projections, you look at what the the total addressable market is and then see how much do you think is going to be a conversion.

And as you as you say, Brendan, this is a very attractive opportunity. Merck themselves have talked about the the fact that they see the fifty percent of patients who are receiving Keytruda, either as oral, either as monotherapy or with oral chemotherapy as being the immediate and an attractive market for sub q conversion. But they also talk about there being an opportunity with patients who are getting I’m Keytruda as part of IV regimens. They’re targeting about a thirty to forty percent conversion. So if you think about that times the very strong revenue of Keytruda, you can see this represents a a very attractive, royalty revenue stream to to Halozyme, you know, when we succeed in getting a license or, the the litigation is complete.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: And can you just remind us what you’ve said about, sorry. We’ll we’ll see that in a sec. What you’ve said about milestone payments in in regards to the enhanced deals in the past, just just to remind us.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. The the milestone payments, for an exclusive license have historically been in the hundred and thirty to hundred and sixty million if it’s a non exclusive license. It can be anything in a range from perhaps 80 to a 120,000,000 just to give a sense of that.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Did you have a question?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: And I’ll just repeat it for the audience. It was a question about how this relates to our exclusive agreement on Enhance with Bristol Myers Squibb. Mark, do you want to take that?

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yes. So I think the, the really important thing to remember here is that N Hance is an entirely separate body of intellectual property in technology, whereas that’s a truncated version of a human derived hyaluronidase. The mDASE technology is a modified human derived hyaluronidase. So they’re entirely separate, technologies, separate portfolios, separate group of assets, if you will. And so the exclusivity with respect to our enhanced portfolio does not apply beyond the enhanced portfolio.

And so we are free to the extent somebody is using our intellectual property in this other portfolio to address that.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Just maybe from a regulatory perspective, I know you’ve done over a decade of work with NHANES, right, and across a number of regulatory agencies. And given that MDACE is considered kind of separate from that, are there any important regulatory considerations we should keep in mind or additional steps that you would maybe have to go through with FDA, EMA, to kind of take something that falls under technically separate from NHANES, all the way to the market?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. I’ll just say that, obviously, the arrangements we will have with, licensing m days are gonna be very different from enhanced because enhanced we are collaborating with the partner and we to provide advice on development and also supply the API. So the RUPH 20 is coming for us. For the MDs licenses, this will just be a licensing agreement. It’ll be permission to use it while they’re using our IP, but we will have nothing to do with the sitting and advising them or supplying the API.

So that will be a totally separate agreement they have with whoever is providing the modified hyaluronidase. And so what I would say is for anyone developing a new hyaluronidase, they’ll go through the same things we had to do, which is obviously demonstrate the safety, demonstrate the lack of immunogenicity, demonstrate for each product a strong, efficacy and safety profile, either equivalent or non inferior to the IV or through just a large body of evidence that shows it is a safe and effective product. And so, that is really at the beginning of a whole development program, frankly, where Halozyme was in 02/2014 in terms of getting the first products to market and approved. So still a lot of road to go for any new hyaluronidase being developed. Enhance is now being used in in a million patients, which has given us just an extensive, safety, database that’s been very reassuring to regulators.

Any new modified hyaluronidase has to to go through all of that and just go through all of the proving itself time and time again to regulators that it is not having any unexpected, rare safety events.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Okay. So just to maybe drill into the timing here, because I know you’ve also reached out to the USPTO about this. So if Merck is thinking to launch that this year, is it fair to assume there might be some kind of answer from them in the coming months? Do you have to have any kind of sense what next step could be,

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: and and maybe when? So work work has taken some steps to, to seek review of the patentability of several of our MDS, patents. The initial threshold and whether or not the United States Patent and Trademark Office is gonna take that up. It won’t be until sometime in June is our expectation, and then we’ll learn whether or not that process moves forward. If it does, it will play out over the course of the year.

We, of course, believe that the Patent and Trademark Office won’t agree to to move forward with them. We believe very strongly that our patents are valid and that they’re not subject subject to challenge in the way that BERC has made this, this current challenge. I will say to bear in mind, we’re only talking about seven patents that they’ve put into this, request for review. Our MDACE portfolio is much broader than that in The United States alone, much, much more significant. And our total portfolio of IP assets for MDACE worldwide is about on the order of a hundred patents.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: And I know you you reminded us that it goes to twenty thirty, 20 30 two US EU, and then, you know, you’ve also last year noted that the enhanced patent in the enhanced patent in the EU was extended to twenty twenty nine, filed that for extension in The U. S, where it currently goes off patent, I think, 2027. Do you have any sense of when we might get an update as to whether that would be extended in The U. S. To 2029?

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: A lot of questions for me. The, the process in the patent office, it’s not under any set timeline. It’s a it’s a reissue patent application. We do know that it’s been examiner and our expectation is that it will be taken up for this examination process, shortly. Bear in mind, as you said, the other patent, the backstop, if you will, is valid until September of twenty twenty seven.

So we have plenty of time given historically what we’ve seen in the past for the time it takes for the patent office to do its review. And, we expect that review will be completed before we reach that September 2027, issue and any potential step down would be moot at that point in time. And we’re only talking about two products.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Brenda, can I come back to the MDES patents for a moment and just just kind of make one point? It was in my opening remarks and just want to to reemphasize it. Halozyme has been working on inventing the hyaluronidases for for more than twenty years. That really does give us a very strong position as a person who as a group who were making claims and getting patents filed, over the course of the last, two decades. And I will just say because of that wealth of experience and the the breadth of patents, Mark mentioned a hundred m days patents, That’s what really gives us the confidence that that we are going to prevail and and that the the other companies who are developing modified hyaluronidases are infringing.

Nobody was working in this field for the many years we were getting these hundred patents, issued. And so, we can come at this from a very strong strength. And, you know, you can look at the, the PGRs and say, why would a company want to try and invalidate a small portion of the portfolio? Why would they do that if they didn’t think there was some risk of infringement? And so that’s, obviously, certainly something that we expected and not something that surprised us.

But for us, it’s more confirmatory than ever that, we have a very strong position here and that we will prevail because of this excellent Princeton pioneering work that that didn’t just happen. It’s been evolving over, two decades. Great. Yeah. Let me repeat the question.

It was just a question to say why wouldn’t you go after the originator of the modified and do we have any precedence for, the non collaboration licensing agreements at Halozyme? Mark, I’ll turn those to you.

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: So the Keytruda subcutaneous product itself infringes with the combination, with the hyaluronidase. And if you look at the way that we license in HANDS, we license in HANDS at the combined product level that is the licensed product, in our licenses. And the reason we do that is because the benefit that’s conferred by the hyaluronidase is realized at that level. That’s, what’s helping to convert an IV medicine to sub Q. And so we’re just applying that same model to the way we would consider licensing this technology.

And so that’s the reason for it, because we feel that that’s where the value is appreciated and there is a, established and sort of industry standard, to license in that manner.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. So again, to repeat the question, if all seven of the the and these patents are currently under review were deemed to be invalid, would that infect our enhanced portfolio at all? And the answer is no. It does not impact enhanced at all because that’s a totally separate group of patents. But importantly, it doesn’t impact the strength of our case, against infringers like like Merrick either.

Mark, if you just want to comment on that.

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yes. We have many, many other patents other than the seven that, are even eligible for this post grant review process. And so and and even then, we don’t think that these should be entitled to post grant review, but it’s a small number overall. And we have many other patents that we believe are being infringed by the Keytruda subcutaneous product.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Okay. And I I know we talked a little bit about, the enhanced patent extension, particularly, especially in The U. S. Potentially an update later this year moving it from 2027 to 2029. And just to remind people that’s not currently included in your existing financial guidance.

So if we got an update you know, from that this year, is it fair to expect that we would get an updated guidance following that kind of patent office update?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: We would. We would update the guidance to reflect that, at the moment, we do take a step down on the royalties we receive on DARZALEX and amivantamab in September of twenty twenty seven. And so you can imagine that once that patent issues, the only one of our contracts it has an impact on is the J and J one, because for all of our other products, there is no step down in 2027. That’s very important. So this reads only on the positive upside for what’s going to happen for Darzalex and amifantumab.

And if I use the example of DARZALEX, it’s projected in 2027 to be about $9,000,000,000 in The US. And so instead of halving the rate, it would be at the full rate, the mid single digit rate. So if you do that math, you can see that percentage times a $9,000,000,000 opportunity is a very meaningful increase in our revenue, which will go from September 27 to March 29. So very nice impact.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Yeah. So so this is this is all tied directly also into, kind of forward looking BD strategy, right? We’ve talked a lot about potential for additional enhanced deals, potential for additional non enhanced deals. So maybe give us a sense of where your head is at from a strategy perspective. Any any thoughts or color you can provide on potential timing in in either case and and really what the primary criteria that you’re using right now when you approach those opportunities.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. So for, Enhance, we are absolutely expecting to sign an additional deal this year. We’ve historically been working with companies who want to take their already successful IV drugs and turn them subcutaneous. And we continue to talk to pharma about several very exciting opportunities that exist there. But we also, see a lot of opportunity more and more in the area of taking sub q drugs and turning them into more extended dosing.

Today’s sub q drugs are limited by only being able to inject two mls at a single time. That sometimes doesn’t optimize the profile. And within hands, you can increase the volume from anything from four to six to eight to ten mls, which could allow you as an example for a drug used in inflammatory bowel disease to be able to take your drug from being every two weeks to every four weeks or even from every two weeks to every eight weeks. That’s where we’re seeing just an incredible demand and a and a lot of interest coming into Halozyme is about the subcutaneous extended dosing. Our overall approach to that would be the same.

They can be exclusive terms. They can be non exclusive terms, which tend to be overall lower, but we do have the opportunity to work with multiple partners when we do that type of deal. And so multiple conversations, ongoing, confident that we’re going to move one of them forward to announce a new deal this year on Enhance.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: And then beyond Enhance, obviously, you have years of pretty clearly derisk growth over the next couple of years ahead. But how are you thinking about what the Halozyme of 02/1930 looks like? And how to kind of position yourself today to make sure that you’re capitalizing the momentum that you’re establishing now, in the best possible way then.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. And and we have put out, as everybody knows, our our our long term guidance to 2028. And what you see there is is, as as Brandon mentioned, very strong revenue story, but we also have the benefit of having a very high, free cash flow margin. And so we are in a great position to be able to use that, free cash flow, to be able to either grow and add additional revenue streams on top of our already very attractive revenue growth to be able to accelerate the growth of the company and or do share buybacks to return capital to our shareholders, whichever approach appears to be able to deliver the best value to our shareholders. And so I do see a world in which by by 02/1930, we will have acquired additional, perhaps, drug delivery or other types of licensing platforms, which we can use our current model that we are very good at, which is building and and growing those collaboration agreements, to be able to add multiple additional platforms and and additional, royalty revenue streams, while still having sufficient free cash flow to also be returning capital to our shareholders in an ongoing way.

We’ve returned 155, sorry, $1,550,000,000 in, share buybacks since 02/2019. That’s about $250,000,000 a year, while we’ve been growing the company very nicely. And so, we will balance and toggle between those two, but we’re in a great position. And we’re in a great position of strength because it is the strength of our current business that’s giving us this opportunity to add new revenue streams by adding new platforms that we can maximize with our demonstrated competency at doing that.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Yeah. And I think, look, again, kind of getting back to even just the existing guidance for this year through 2028, right? And just to remind us, this is assuming the first ten enhanced products, right? So this includes the recent Ocovis, Unova, Opdivo, Cubantik, VivGuard, Hytroulo and then, Tecentriq, Hypereze, I think, right? So, and we put out a sensitivity analysis not long ago that kind of looks at the potential launch dynamics for some of these, but maybe give us a sense of what just really kind of rapid fire through those.

What are your internal assumptions about each of these And where are the real tangible opportunities just within those drugs that are already available, for pretty meaningful upside over the next few years?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yes. And we did take a look at your sensitivity analysis, Brandon. And I think there’s two areas where we’re pretty aligned with you in these two areas where I think you’re under calling the potential. And so I’ll start with the two areas where I think there’s even more potential than is perhaps thought about today. But it was a very good approach.

And if you haven’t looked at it, do it’s a very nice approach to see exactly where the upside can exist. I’ll start with Vipart Hytroulo. Vipart Hytroulo, in in the model, it says it’s going to be about $6,900,000,000 in total revenue in 02/1930. That is largely we know from today’s consensus bill on the currently approved indications, which are generalized myosin or gravis and CIDP. But by 2728, we’re going to see more approvals.

You know, there’s going to be approvals in seronegative myasthenia gravis, ocular myasthenia gravis, myositis, thyroid eye disease, and and potentially even Sjogren’s disease by then. So I do think that the TAM is going to be bigger than 6,900,000,000.0 by 02/1930. And then we look at the conversion rate, and I think you have about 45%. CIDP, which is a very attractive opportunity, it’s analysts, I think, have about 2,500,000,000.0 to 3,000,000,000 in that 6,900,000,000.0. That is only available as a sub Q.

So think about that. That’s a very large proportion of your 6 plus billion that’s already going to be sub q. And then when we think about what’s been happening with the, the the myasthenia gravis launch where we’re seeing a very nice acceleration, what has happened is that, the sub q has been able to bring on more doctors and move the, Vibhavart Hytulo earlier in therapy to immediately after orals. That gives the promise of, I think, even greater growth that’s going to happen, and we’re going to see a transition in the next year that sub q will become the predominant version, I predict, based on the the value proposition and the ease of use. And so, for both of those reasons, bigger TAM, bigger market, more than 45% of use being sub q, I I think there’s a bigger opportunity with Vygard Heartulo.

The other one I’ll mention is Ocrevus and Nuvo. Ocrevus, you know, the projection is that it’ll be a $10,000,000,000 brand. We’re pretty much aligned with that. But when we think about the value proposition for patients, the difference is going to be from a four and a half to six and a half hour treatment, which includes a treatment but observation to ten minute injection with perhaps a thirty minute observation for the first few visits, but then no observation. That is DARZALEX like in its reduced burden to the patient and the health care system.

That I think will be a stimulator or, very nice uptake there. And then your own survey, did say from from the KOLs, and we hear the same, that this, Ocrevus and Nuvo is going to be the biggest growth, drug in the whole CD 20 space and MS this year. Both of those, I think, are going to drive greater than the 40% share peak, you have as well.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: So I think that’s a great way to kind of break down some of this too and would be happy to see those launches progress accordingly. Again, so those are just the first ten NHANES drugs. So just remind us now beyond those 10 NHANES drugs, I mean the existing partnerships you already have on paper have additional assets already baked in, you know with the Roche deal, with the J and J even. So just give us a sense where is the way I think it’s wave four now beyond the first ten. What is the timing for some what are those drugs and what is the latest timing that we could see additional enhanced products into the clinic now or clinical updates, I should say?

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Yeah. And I’ll I’ll just mention that last year, and it’s a very nice opportunity for growth in our portfolio that is sometimes overlooked that we do have our current partners have opened slots that they move products into the clinic. And last year, argenx selected more four more products and feed one more product. And so that, is is obviously a way we continue to grow and expand our portfolio. And we do expect three new study starts entering the clinic this year that will add to and expand our wave four and five portfolio.

But if we talk about, the wave four, the two most advanced products there would be Bristol’s Abdualag, which is Raletimab and Opdivo, which is in phase three development as well as Takeda’s TAC eight eight one. So those are have readouts expected in the next twelve, eighteen months. And so, I think that we’re very excited that those are going to be soon to be derisked, soon to be adding, royalty revenue streams. Behind that, there’s a series of products that are in, phase one and two development. I’ll mention a couple of those, argenx’s, empabisrubar.

We’ve got several assets from Veeve, in there as examples. You know, what we want to see is those progressing into that phase three testing, then the timeline for approval becomes more clear, and that can allow us to be able to understand what the de risking profile for those are going to be as well. But a nice broad portfolio, it’s in our, our our presentation deck if you ever want to see it the last slide, and you see it’s a growing and expanding portfolio of the next royalty streams that are going to layer over and above what is in our guidance, which only goes out, as you said, to 2028 based on the currently launched products.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Okay. Sure. Well, last question.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: I’ll ask Mark to comment.

Mark Snyder, Chief Legal Officer, Halozyme Therapeutics: Thanks. The original disclosure was filed, I believe, back in 02/2012. And so the disclosure for which all these patents are based upon has been out there for quite some time. It it as Helen said, it’s a significant body of work that’s encapsulated in a very large disclosure, that contains essentially a library of the different ways that you can modify human derived hyaluronidases and the impacts that are conferred. And so, given the very large number of, of, entrance into that library, we’re talking about close to 7,000.

You can imagine there are a lot of innovations that are packed into that disclosure. And so we’ve had some patents that have issued early on. And then we’ve had some patents that are continued to be issued as we look at things that, we still haven’t claimed that we want to make sure that we encapsulate within our IP portfolio. And that’s a very standard thing that companies do is they look at and make sure that they’ve taken advantage of the full benefit of their disclosure.

Brandon Smith, Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Analyst, TD Cowan: Alright. I think with that, we’re already a couple of minutes over. But I really appreciate everybody for joining us today. Always a pleasure to see you, Helen. Great to have you, Mark.

Thanks, everybody. Stay tuned for the rest of the conference this afternoon.

Helen Torley, CEO, Halozyme Therapeutics: Thank you.

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Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
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