Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE:JNJ) diabetes therapy Invokana needs a strong result in its cardiovascular outcomes trials this year if it is to hold off the threat of Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Boehringer Ingelheim’s rival SGLT2 inhibitor Jardiance (see table).
But with J&J not giving anything away about the timing of the Canvas and Canvas-R readouts during its fourth-quarter call, some analysts have become less optimistic about the chance of a positive outcome. Wells Fargo Securities noted that, “while pure speculation on our part, it’s possible that J&J has seen more of the Canvas/Canvas-R data since the Q3 call and feels less confident in the outlook”.
During the call J&J’s Chief Executive Alex Gorsky would only say there were “very important, very promising trials coming up in Invokana this year”. This was a contrast to the previous quarter when William Hait, head of R&D at Janssen, said the two trials would read out in mid-2017, and that he was confident that the data would look similar to those seen in the Empa-Reg Outcome study of Jardiance.
