As AstraZeneca exited the first quarter, initially skeptical analysts were coming around to the potential for the drugmaker to hit its goal of growing sales to $80 billion by 2030. But less than three months later, the shocking Phase 3 failure of rare disease drug Wainua has left the company needing wins in two high-risk readouts to maintain its trajectory toward the towering target.
The FDA approved Wainua, an antisense oligonucleotide inhibitor, in December 2023 for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR) with polyneuropathy. Months later, AstraZeneca named Wainua as one of the drugs underpinning its belief that it could grow sales to $80 billion by 2030. At the time, the consensus estimate of analysts put AstraZeneca’s 2030 sales at $66.8 billion