Nxera Pharma Co., Ltd. (TYO:4565)
Japan flag Japan · Delayed Price · Currency is JPY
1,212.00
-30.00 (-2.42%)
May 12, 2026, 3:30 PM JST
← View all transcripts

43rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference 2025

Jan 15, 2025

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. I'm Seiji Wakao, a Japan pharma analyst at JP Morgan, and it's my pleasure to introduce Chris Cargill, CEO of Nxera Pharma, and welcome him to the conference. With that, let me turn it over to Chris. Please go ahead.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Thank you very much, Seiji. Thank you, JP Morgan, for hosting us. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chris Cargill. I'm the CEO of Japan's Nxera Pharma Company. We're thrilled to announce our bold new name for the company at our first JP Morgan conference under this name, Nxera. We were formerly known as Sosei Group, but this rebranding is a constant reminder of our ambition to lead the next era of medicine. So hopefully, you may have seen some of our posters around the city this week celebrating this exciting shift in who we are and what we stand for. So for those of you that are just getting to know Nxera, we're a commercial-stage emerging biopharma company from Japan, and we've had a remarkable journey so far.

We started with a clear vision to bring the world's most innovative biotech breakthroughs to Japan, and this is an approach that remains at the heart of everything that we do. About a decade ago, we ramped up our capabilities by investing in the NxWave GPCR, our structure-based drug design platform. Since then, we've been accelerating the discovery, clinical development, and more recently, the commercial availability of life-changing medicines for patients, both in Japan and worldwide. Let's take a closer look at Nxera by the numbers. Annual revenues are approaching $200 million per annum or about JPY 29 billion. Cash on balance sheet and access to liquidity stands at $250 million or JPY 36 billion. This provides us with the runway that we need to support R&D and strategic licensing for many years to come. We now have a commercial presence.

We've got two innovative products available in Japan, both launched recently in 2022 and 2024, respectively. In terms of clinical programs, we have 13 partnered programs in various stages of clinical development, and we've got three emerging wholly owned programs in phase 1. Our therapeutic focus is very much around high-growth areas of unmet needs, so neurology, neuropsychiatry, metabolic disease, immunology, and GI. Each therapeutic area is primed to become a significant opportunity over the next five to ten years. Our expertise lies in GPCRs, so we're focused on that vast opportunity. There's 400 potential GPCR targets of interest in human disease, many of which remain untapped. We've got a patent portfolio of over 1,500 granted patents and more than 10 discovery programs in the works. The most important number of all is 4565. That's our ticker on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

We are not your typical Japanese pharma company. We think globally, we innovate globally, yet we specialize locally in Japan and Korea. Our research and technical operations groups run from centers of excellence in Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Basel in Switzerland, where we have around 200 team members. Our clinical development and commercial teams in Japan and Korea are fully bilingual with deep global backgrounds and expertise, and there's another 200 team members in this region. We also collaborate with world-class partners to serve patients in the U.S. and other markets where we don't have a direct presence. Just to say it again, we're not a traditional Japanese pharma company. Our mission is to move swiftly and with operational excellence, and here's how we do it. In Japan, where our commercial business is now thriving, we prioritize in a few areas.

So we focus on diseases that truly matter in the region, such as age-related conditions and quality-of-life diseases. We recruit the best team and talent in the industry, and collectively, our colleagues have contributed to nine Japanese NDA approvals in recent history. And we like to stay lean and agile. So we believe we're second only to Chugai in sales force efficiency in Japan, generating over JPY 400 million per sales rep annually. In the U.K., the hub of our research activities, we focus on continual investment in the NxWave structure-based drug design platform. We aim to become the definitive leader in the GPCR space. We innovate in areas that matter. As I mentioned previously, neurology, metabolic disease, and immunology are a focus for us. And we entrust our programs to the best possible partners.

We want to ensure our medicines have the best chance of reaching patients in markets where we don't operate, such as the U.S. Our broad muscarinic agonist collaboration with Neurocrine is a prime example, which I'll detail soon. There's much that we could talk about today, but I'm going to focus on some core products and our clinical pipeline. Over the next few slides, I'm going to highlight the two products we've recently commercialized in Japan, as well as our most advanced programs in the clinic, including both the partnered ones and the emerging wholly owned programs. Firstly, commercialized products in Japan. Pivlaz, or Clazosentan, is an endothelin A receptor antagonist launched in April 2022, and it's our first commercially available product indicated for the prevention of cerebral vasospasm associated with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, or aSAH.

Now, although it's currently Japan only, we're preparing to launch in Korea soon as well. We're incredibly proud of Pivlaz. It's quickly gained reputation among the Japanese neurosurgeon community, and especially after being included in Japan's stroke management guidelines. Now, it's on track to become the standard of care in its field, and we anticipate reaching peak sales of around JPY 20 billion within four to five years post-launch. Next up, we have Quvivic, or daridorexant. This is a dual orexin receptor antagonist which was approved in September last year and launched most recently in December by our commercial partner, Shionogi. It's our second commercialized product in Japan, and it's indicated for treating insomnia in adult patients. Now, why do we think Quvivic is special? Well, it's because it was designed specifically to address the shortcomings of existing DORA therapies.

It effectively alleviates excessive wakefulness by strongly inhibiting the orexin receptors. It's the only DORA recommended by the European insomnia guidelines and has an excellent PK profile. It's got rapid onset and a roughly six-hour half-life, leading to big improvements in next-day sleepiness and daytime functioning, as proven in global phase three studies. We believe Quvivic has what it takes to be the best in-class DORA therapy. Why are we so excited about Quvivic in Japan? It's because sleep disorders, they significantly impact the quality of life for patients in this market. Physicians are looking for better options than the older, now genericized anti-anxiety meds and Z-class drugs like Zolpidem. In fact, the DORA class is set to capture a whopping 40%-50% share of the Japanese sleep drug market, making it a total $1 billion market opportunity in Japan alone.

So with Shionogi's robust commercial support, we think Quvivic could be the game changer that adults living with insomnia in Japan really need. So now, moving on to our partnered products and starting with our extensive development collaboration with Neurocrine. So you might recall two major acquisitions in the neuropsych space just before the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference last year: AbbVie's $9 billion purchase of Cerevel and BMS's $14 billion purchase of Karuna Therapeutics. And both of these transactions gave the acquirers lead programs targeting muscarinic pathways, a groundbreaking approach to treating schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. And if you fast forward to today, BMS has successfully launched Cobenfy, formerly KarXT, last year. And this became the first new mode of action for treating schizophrenia in decades.

In the muscarinic field, Nxera has been at the forefront since 2012, building on data that originally stemmed from a 2008 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry highlighting the efficacy of xanomeline in schizophrenia. So this foundation enabled us to strike our collaboration with Neurocrine Biosciences in 2021. And we believe Neurocrine is absolutely the best partner in this space, and we see tremendous potential for the next generation muscarinic therapies. So our partnership with Neurocrine is so broad that it now boasts the world's most comprehensive muscarinic agonist portfolio in clinical development. So this includes orthosteric agonists that are either highly selective for or preferring the M4 receptor for psychosis-related conditions, orthosteric agonists that are highly selective for or preferring the M1 receptor for cognition-focused conditions, and additionally, dual M1, M4 agonists to address illnesses involving both cognition and psychosis.

Every single program in the clinic leveraged our NxWave platform for its foundational structure. The lead candidate from this collaboration, NBI-568, is a highly selective muscarinic M4 orthosteric agonist that showed positive phase 2 results in 2024. It is now headed for a phase 3 trial in the first half of 2025. Based on the phase 2 data, we believe NBI-568 has prime potential for a best-in-class profile. On efficacy, the once-daily 20 mg dose demonstrated comparable results to current competitors. On tolerability, there was strong tolerability across all doses, suggesting excellent long-term patient compliance. On convenience, it has once-daily dosing with or without food. On breadth, there are multiple indications where an M4 agonist could be beneficial to patients. Following its recent successful end-of-phase 2 meeting, Neurocrine is planning to launch a phase 3 trial in schizophrenia in the first half.

Furthermore, later in the year, another phase 2 study in bipolar mania. While Neurocrine actually, sorry, Neurocrine has also announced it will advance another compound, NBI-570, a dual M1, M4 agonist into phase 2 in schizophrenia in 2025, which further showcases the broad utility of this collaboration and the muscarinic pipeline. Now, we are equally enthusiastic about another few of our partnered programs. Centessa Pharmaceuticals is advancing a potent selective orexin-2 agonist series discovered using NxWave. Their lead compound, ORX750, is now in a phase 2A study for narcolepsy type 1, narcolepsy type 2, and idiopathic hypersomnia, with data across all three of those indications expected in 2025. ORX750 is hot on the heels of Takeda's orexin efforts. We believe ORX750 could redefine the standard of care in sleep-wake disorders, which would be another major commercial opportunity.

In metabolic disease, we're collaborating with multiple partners alongside our own in-house initiatives. But the most advanced product in this area is with a partner with Pfizer. The compound code PFE-522 is a once-daily oral small molecule GLP-1 agonist for type 2 diabetes and obesity, and it was discovered by Pfizer chemists using our NxWave platform, and it's now in phase 1. At Pfizer's presentation earlier this week, their CEO reiterated that the company is all in on tackling obesity with oral small molecules, which is an area that's crying out for scalable, cost-effective alternatives to injectables, and so we look forward to hopefully more potential updates regarding PFE-522 over the course of 2025, so now moving to our emerging wholly owned pipeline.

We're forging ahead with our own clinical pipeline, and we've got three wholly owned programs in phase one designed to address pivotal unmet needs in neuropsych and immune oncology and immunology. So we have a program, NXE-149. This is a novel selective GPR52 receptor agonist that may alleviate the positive and negative symptoms plus cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and other psychosis disorders without the usual antipsychotic side effects. The program remains wholly owned and is being advanced by our team, but it is under an exclusive option-to-license agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim. Next, we have NXE-732, which is a novel, highly selective, and potent EP4 receptor antagonist designed to overcome Prostaglandin E2-driven immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. Now, we're testing it in combination with the PD-L1, working alongside Cancer Research UK to ensure we're optimizing the clinical strategy.

Lastly, we've got NXE-744, which is a potent, selective, gut-restricted EP4 agonist aimed at healing damaged epithelial mucosa and suppressing excess gut inflammation without systemic side effects. The NxWave platform has already proven itself, and it will remain a key differentiator for us going forward. While the cornerstone is really based around small molecule drug discovery, we are also taking steps to expand it into other modalities, such as antibodies and peptides, so that we can tackle targets and diseases that small molecules can't address as effectively. Now to the big picture for Nxera. We've got two recently launched products, Pivlaz and Quvivic. These are growing, saving lives, and improving patient quality of life every day. Both of these products should soon be available in Korea as well.

And after a decade of steady investment in our platform, we're ready for a very significant uptick in late-stage clinical development, which will bring us even closer to delivering more innovative treatments to patients. And looking at the pipeline from a slightly different perspective, you can see that it's very strategically positioned across some of the fastest-growing areas of healthcare. As I mentioned earlier, neurology, neuropsych, metabolic disease, immunology, and GI, where there is huge unmet medical need. So our approach to building this pipeline has really harnessed major GPCR target classes, and we've clustered them into two waves of development and potential launch timing. So the wave one programs are all programs that could potentially commercially launch by 2030, and the wave two programs could potentially launch in the 2030 to 2035 window.

The value to Nxera in terms of milestones and royalties could be transformative for our company if even only one or two of these programs were to successfully make it to market. By 2030, we aim to lead the next era of medicine in Japan. And we're aiming to build a high-growth, high-profit enterprise that consistently invests in the best innovations for patients. And so specifically, we're on track to grow our top line from JPY 11 billion-JPY 50 billion by the 2029 to 2030 timeframe. So that's an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 26%. We aim to achieve profitability, and we can potentially unlock significant upside, as I mentioned, if just one to two of the wave one launches take off, and the wave two launches can drive much further growth into 2035 and beyond.

Now, looking ahead to the potential catalysts, you can see on this slide, we have a packed agenda in the coming year, loaded with possible catalysts from both our partnered and wholly owned products. And what will success look like for Nxera? Well, basically hitting every milestone on time, which is what we're confident we can do together with our partners, and we are certain that we will. And finally, I'll leave the audience with this. So it is an incredibly exciting time to be at Nxera, and it's equally an exciting time to invest in Nxera. We're shaping up to be one of Japan's most transformative emerging biopharma companies. There have been multiple GPCR-focused biotech companies that have listed on NASDAQ in recent times with capabilities that are comparable to ours and targeting the same areas of high unmet medical need.

But we believe Nxera's decade-long head start means our clinical pipeline and target product profiles are even further along and primed for major success in the mid to long term. So thank you very much for your time today. And the management team and I are here and ready to take any questions if you have them. So thank you.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Thank you, Chris. I'm moving to Q&A session. In addition to Chris, I'm pleased to announce Sugita-san, Chief Medical Officer, Matt Barnes, President of Nxera Pharma UK and Head of R&D, and Noguchi-san, CFO, will also be joining us. If you have a question, please raise your hand, or you can ask online from our homepage. I'll kick off with my question. The day before yesterday, first day at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Pfizer and Neurocrine, your two important partners had presentations. What impression did you have, and what should investors know? This is the first question.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Thank you, Seiji. I'll start, and then I think I'll let Matt chime in, given a lot of the programs originate from our research team. I'll start with Neurocrine. Obviously, they announced, well, they confirmed they'll be moving towards phase three with NBI-568 in schizophrenia. So that's great. Fantastic to see that program moving forward. It was a very good result that was achieved last year, and we're very, very happy that they're investing the full weight of their resources behind it. I guess what was great for Nxera shareholders as well was to hear that there will be another second phase two study with the same compound in bipolar mania starting towards the end of the year, and the additional information around the dual M1, M4 moving forward in schizophrenia as well.

On top of that, there's just the broad-based commitment that they also have to move a number of the phase 1 programs forward, all of which they expect to achieve clinical data readouts on this year. I speak for the whole team at Nxera. We couldn't be more proud or happy to have Neurocrine as a partner. With Pfizer, it's a slightly different relationship, truth be told. As I mentioned in my presentation, that program, that molecule was discovered by Pfizer chemists utilizing our technology. It's not a collaboration in the traditional sense like what we have with Neurocrine. However, we did attend the presentation that the CEO gave on Monday morning, and we were pleased to hear that they're all in the metabolic disease space, particularly in terms of developing small molecule approaches to treating type 2 diabetes and obesity.

That, yes, there's a lot of work that they are doing with regards to assessing whether they can reformulate Danuglipron into a once-daily treatment approach. But behind that, they have a GLP-1 agonist program, and they did specifically mention that they have the backup, which is the program that came from our original discovery collaboration. We're very happy that they are committed to an all-in investment strategy in this area. That's a good thing for Nxera shareholders as well. Matt, did you want to add anything?

Matt Barnes
President and Head of R&D, Nxera Pharma

Yeah, maybe just to echo some of your points, Chris. Very excited and pleased to see Neurocrine's progression of these muscarinic assets. They've invested really significantly in these programs. And as Chris said, we couldn't be more happy to have them as a partner to progress these assets. We know just from our collaboration with them that they take great care in those assets, which, of course, for a site where those assets originated, is very pleasing to see. And I think the potential of these assets is really significant, right? So as well as seeing the nomination for the phase three start earlier this year, we're very happy for them to start thinking about indication expansion as well into bipolar. And also very pleased to see the second molecule then moving into phase two. So Neurocrine are really investing in this.

For us in the U.K., personally, where these assets originated, the initiation of that phase 3 actually is a real milestone for us because that would be the first program to reach phase 3 from our platform. It's taken more than 10 years, of course, to do that. It's had lots of homes along the way. We were really, really excited to see that move forward. Thank you.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay, thank you. So do you know when Pfizer will announce the update to PFE-522?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

No, I don't have any clarity on that. What they did say on Monday, which was limited, was that they look forward to updating the market throughout the year on what their plans will be for Danuglipron and the broader franchise. So I think we'll hear something at some point during the year, but there was nothing said with specific reference to PFE-522.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Yes, thank you. So last year was very significant for your company because your out-licensed compounds obtained a POC, which are M4 agonist and OX2 agonist. However, there has been minimal impact on the value of your company, the share price. Why do you think that is?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

That's a very good question. You see, it's interesting. So for us, we think it takes a long time to build a biopharma company. And unlike most of our peer set who are listed on NASDAQ in the world's largest capital market for healthcare and biotech investing, we trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. So the investor base is slightly different, and their expectations are perhaps slightly different from a US investor base. When it comes to the things within our control, we can only control the business. As you quite rightly mentioned, we achieved proof of concept last year via our partners on two programs. And in particular, with reference to NBI-568, the M4 with Neurocrine, we received a $35 million milestone. I think people forget that actually a lot of work has been put into moving those programs forward to that stage.

It is moving to phase three. We did receive a milestone. Actually, on a fundamental basis, the business is moving forward. So I believe that we are incredibly undervalued, which is why I sort of ended my presentation with the callout that actually now is a great time to invest in us because actually I think investors in the Japanese market do not understand the underlying value that sits within our company. And for that reason, I think there's fantastic upside potential for us. I mean, we've got two commercially available assets that are very clearly growing, very clearly revenue-generating, and we have an enormous pipeline which is being invested behind comprehensively by our partners, and there's multiple shots on goal. It's properly diversified across therapeutic areas.

There's not the binary risk in an investment in us that you would have in a biotech stock that was a single asset company, for example. So basically, in summary, I don't know the answer except that a lot of the things are outside of our control. When it comes to the things that we do control, the business is moving forward and it's growing. So the time will come when investors wake up and realize that actually there is a lot of growth potential in owning Nxera shares.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay, thank you. So please wait. Microphone.

Just one question. You said it's in Japan, potentially going to Korea soon. Is there any plans to take it elsewhere, or is it just going to be limited to those two markets?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Yeah, so we have Asia-Pacific rights for that drug, excluding China. So we will expand it throughout APAC. The drug is already commercially available in the U.S. and Europe. It is marketed by Idorsia Pharmaceuticals in those markets. But in the APAC region, yes, after Korea, the next plan would be to probably go to Taiwan, and then we will expand through other markets. But the reality is the largest market in APAC for this drug is Japan. So the core focus is on Japan, and that's why we made a strategic decision to partner with a company that had the right commercial muscle. And we think Shionogi is the best partner to maximize the potential of that product in Japan. But yes, in summary, we will expand through other markets, through Asia. We'll use distributors in certain markets.

In other markets, we may go it alone, but the real focus is Japan and Korea, to be honest with you. Thanks.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Other question? Please.

Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. You mentioned the R&D center in Cambridge in the U.K. I just wanted to know if also the other sites that you mentioned in Switzerland and in Japan have got R&D departments, and what is the share, more or less, roughly of the projects in each country?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

In terms of how much capital we allocate or where the people are located?

In terms of numbers of projects or new projects?

Yeah, sure. So in the U.K., that's the only market where we do research, so the United Kingdom, our base is in Cambridge, U.K., and that's where all of our research activities are located. Basel is a specialist operations center for tech ops where we do CMC, supply chain quality management. In Japan, we have everything that you would expect you need across clinical development and commercialization, regulatory affairs, etc., and in Korea, we have a small tactical team that is capable of taking products through clinical development, the regulatory process, and getting them prepared for market, and they sort of do that in lockstep with our team in Japan.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay. So your partner pipeline is positioned extremely well across four areas: neurology, neuropsych, metabolic disease, and immunology. What comes next for the internal discovery engine?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

That's a good question for the head of the internal discovery engine. Thanks, Seiji.

Matt Barnes
President and Head of R&D, Nxera Pharma

Yes, thank you for the question. So I think actually Chris touched on this in his presentation. So our focus has always been in GPCRs. Historically, we've been doing this for more than 15 years. And I think Chris mentioned in his presentation there are advantages to focusing on a single drug target class, which is arguably one of the most tractable drug target classes. There's only 400 of these proteins, right? And many of them are the targets of marketed drugs, but there's still a lot of potential in terms of targeting this family. So we will continue to do that, and we will continue to use structure-based drug discovery with small molecules to prosecute interesting targets in that space. Some of the additional research that we're doing in Cambridge, actually, though, is to think more broadly about how we invest in that platform. And that takes two forms.

One is thinking about different modalities that we could use as well, and again, Chris mentioned this in his presentation. We're thinking about antibodies. We're thinking about peptides. We have done some antibody programs previously with collaborators, so we know that our platform is suitable for that, and there are some targets where maybe an antibody would be more appropriate than a small molecule, so we really want to try to build out that capability as well, and then the second point I would like to make is around the platform itself. We've mentioned this a few times at various investor and financial results presentations. We're starting to explore areas outside of GPCRs to other membrane protein classes. Like ion channels and like transporter proteins, we want to see if our technology is suitable for those as well. No one is really doing structure-based drug design with ion channels.

We think there's a real opportunity there if our technology plays out in that space, so we're really never resting. We're always trying to innovate and trying to think of new ways to use our platform.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay, very exciting, so also I'd like to ask about your midterm vision, so thank you for sharing your vision toward 2030. This may be first time we see this chart, so very exciting chart, so how about your confidence on achieving these numbers, and what kind of discussion was behind that?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

I'm extremely confident in hitting those numbers. I mean, you need a little bit of luck along the way. That's this industry, right? You need a little bit of luck when it comes to drug discovery and drug development. But I think what makes us differentiated is we've got so many programs positioned across such a spectrum that, as I mentioned in the presentation, you only need one or two to work from that sort of gamut of investment that will be transformative enough for us. So we now have two products that are commercially under our control, effectively. And we will have new programs that we are currently in discussions on that we will in-license, develop, and I'm very confident have commercial launch potential on those timelines. And we've spoken today about the broad-based investment that Neurocrine is making across multiple programs.

We must remember the M4 program that is the lead program. That's following Cobenfy or what was formerly known as KarXT. That is an approved drug with that mechanism of action now, so we see the portfolio moving forward is increasingly de-risked, which is why I think I can confidently say, certainly by the 2030 timeframe, that we will be able to grow our revenue base to the number that I've set, and at that point in time, managing the costs within the business is within our control, so we can pull those levers to drive profitability at the point where the top line has gotten to where we need it to get to, so I'm very confident. With that comes a significant uptick in valuation, of course.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Yeah, understood. Okay, any question? Okay. Next, about your business structures. After the acquisition of the Idorsia Japan, Nxera covering four fundamental functions. What's the next step for strategic growth?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Sorry, can you repeat that?

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

So you covered four functions from the research to sell, marketing. So what is the next?

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Next step in strategic growth?

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Growth.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

What we're focused on. Matt has covered the point around all of the emerging in-house discovery. I think that's pretty clear what we're doing. We're continuing to invest and expand the platform. With that comes more programs through discovery. Those discovery programs that are worth their salt and are solving our needs move into the clinic. On the Japan side of the business, where we've got a commercial platform, we need to add programs to that pipeline. We are going to have to be involved in strategic in-licensing initiatives and/or acquisitions. We absolutely plan to do that. Right now, we've probably got seven to 10 discussions ongoing with various companies. I'd say three are at an advanced stage. I'm certain that this year we will complete one to two in-licensing transactions to fill the late-stage pipeline in Japan.

As I said, those programs will become programs that I expect will contribute to that 2030 target of JPY 50 billion at the top line. Yeah, so the areas that we're looking, we're really looking at programs that will form part of that kind of, I guess you'd call it an acute care franchise that we now have with Pivlaz. We're in the major hospitals. We're in with the neurosurgeons. We want to add products to that field force. Then in other areas of unmet need, mostly around immunology and rare diseases, because those are where the opportunities are for Japan.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay, thank you. So I have one minute 40 seconds left. So last question. Please define significant catalysts for 2025.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

There's a number of them. I think in terms of the things that are within our control, we're pushing really hard to ensure that the EP4 antagonist program, which is an immune oncology program, is in a position to move towards a phase 2 towards the second half of the year. Similarly, the EP4 agonist, which is indicated for IBD, that is something that we're working very, very hard to be phase 2 ready by the end of the year. Those are significant internal milestones for us. The GPR52 program, while it has a little bit further to run, there's an opportunity that we may be able to get to an interim data point at some point throughout the year that would enable the partner, the potential partner, Boehringer Ingelheim, to trigger an option if they want to.

Those are the three things within our control that we're most excited about. But of course, as I put up on the catalyst slide, there's so much activity at Neurocrine, at Pfizer, at Centessa, where we're probably likely to hear about progress across all of those collaborations over the course of this year. So we're looking forward to that. But those events we don't control so much, but we're very confident that our partners are incentivized to move quickly.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Okay, thank you.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Thank you.

Seiji Wakao
Japan Pharma Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Just over time. Thank you. So I'd like to close this Q&A session. Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for joining us. I appreciate your presentation and Q&A session. Thank you.

Chris Cargill
CEO, Nxera Pharma

Excellent. Thank you very much, Seiji. Thank you, JP Morgan. Cheers.

Powered by