00:00The AstraZeneca team has really built up this reputation for airtight final stage trials.
00:05So what went wrong that this wasn't a success?
00:10I mean, they have, but look, clinical trials, biology has a nasty habit of trumping you
00:17sometimes, of catching you off target. I mean, you know, if Lionel Messi or one of the big
00:25football players misses a penalty, you don't write them off, right? It doesn't change the
00:31trajectory of the game significantly. So here I think it's a bit unfair to particularly pick
00:38on this issue. The point for AstraZeneca is that this was supposed to be the less risky of the
00:43trials that were supposed to read out. And now we have two other sets of data coming by the end
00:48of
00:48the year where people have already assumed there's a high risk of, I don't want to say failure, but
00:54disappointment. So now it's hard to know who's going to be stepping in to buy ahead of those
00:59readouts. Yeah, I mean, they're essentially all moonshots, Sam, right? I mean, you hope that one
01:04of these will work and you try and do your best to make sure the outcome is positive, but you
01:08just
01:08never know. And the ones you think may not have the better chance may end up being the ones that
01:13are the moneymakers for you. Is there anything salvageable from this for AstraZeneca or does
01:18have to throw away the technology completely? Oh, not at all. The product's still on the market.
01:22This was going to be an extra layer, a significant layer on top of what they already have in terms
01:27of
01:28approval. So this is the for a cardio disease that's caused by abnormal accumulation of a protein
01:38in the heart muscle. So they have an approval. This is going to be heading to the 1.5 to
01:451.8 billion
01:46dollar revenue anyway. And what I think has upset people here, or at least has created the situation
01:53here, is that it's hard to see how people are going to step in to buy unless they're long-term
01:59investors and look at the value proposition in general. So, but I mean, let's face it, these
02:05companies do, they're not complete moonshots. They do phase ones, they do phase twos, they do
02:10translational biology. A lot of that happens before they go into a very expensive phase three. Some
02:16companies have the luxury of taking bigger risk because they have the cash flow to do that and
02:22they want to do that. They have the different risk appetite to others. So I think AstraZeneca
02:26probably belongs to that category of they're prepared to take bigger risks in some things that
02:31they're doing. And I guess part of this is all part of the goal of hitting 80 billion dollars in
02:35sales
02:35by 2030. Sam, how important is it that AstraZeneca also does more to expand away from what they're
02:42known for, which is oncology? Maybe not a way for it, but add on these additional types of treatments
02:47and diseases? Yeah, I mean, it's important. Oncology is their key, is one of their key areas,
02:54probably the largest space that they're in. The point is they do have a whole bunch of other work
02:59that they're doing. PCSK9 for lipids, a drug for for obesity, which we'll have to see how that pans
03:06out. They're moving into different areas in general. The thing is, and the company has talked
03:12about today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I think what people are going to start beginning to
03:16think about now, remember, it's 2026. The day after tomorrow is 2030. So as you go to 27, people are
03:22going to start thinking about sorry about this, the day after after tomorrow, right? What's going to be
03:27driving there? And it becomes less obvious. So that's where I think folks get a bit more nervous
03:32when it comes to failures for that longer term support.
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