AstraZeneca said on July 27 that the recent failure of its antisense therapy Wainua in a late-stage ATTR-cardiomyopathy study will not alter its approach to mergers and acquisitions. Chief Financial Officer Aradhana Sarin told reporters during a press call presenting the company’s second quarter earnings report, “It doesn’t really impact our M&A strategy. This is one setback amongst a whole slew of several positive studies.”
Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot echoed this sentiment, saying that while the result was unfortunate, “it happens, and it’s included in our risk adjustment.” Soriot added that AstraZeneca does not “need M&A to deliver,” referencing the company’s broad drug development pipeline.
Wainua, developed with Ionis Pharmaceuticals as a transthyretin silencer for ATTR-related conditions, had previously been approved for ATTR-polyneuropathy in December 2023. The partners aimed to expand into cardiomyopathy through the Phase 3 CARDIO-TTRansform trial, which failed earlier this month. The outcome has raised questions about AstraZeneca’s ability to achieve its $80 billion revenue target by 2030—a goal set in 2024 with Wainua identified as an important contributor.
Soriot addressed these concerns directly: “Of course, as you would expect, we are disappointed by this failure,” he said during his opening remarks on Monday. However, he asserted that AstraZeneca remains “very much on track” to meet its long-term objectives. Commenting further on clinical unpredictability, he said: “Biology is not mathematics, it’s not as predictable. Biology doesn’t always behave the way you would expect.”
The company also reported additional late-stage setbacks including Ultomiris’ inability to significantly improve event-free survival versus placebo in patients with thrombotic microangiopathy following stem cell transplant; other failures were noted across cancer portfolio trials such as PACIFIC-8 and CLARITY-Gastric01.
Despite these results, AstraZeneca posted nearly $15.4 billion in second-quarter revenues—a 5% increase year-on-year at constant currencies—driven largely by growth in oncology and rare disease units.
