Celgene expects to prosper in the years ahead not only with the expanded success of its products already on the market, but with a potential blockbuster advancing through its pipeline. Right now Celgene projects $6 billion in sales from its blood cancer drugs, Revlimid, Thalomid, and Vidiza by 2015 as the company expands the number of indications those drugs address and the markets in which they're sold. The Summit, New Jersey-based company also predicts its lead drug candidate, Apremilast, will generate $2 billion to $3 billion in annual psoriasis-related sales.

That prediction, made during an April 8 presentation highlighting the company's R&D progress, is based on convincing 400,000 or more patients to give up current indicated biologic treatments for Apremilast's less pointed oral delivery.

 

Should Celgene secure approval for Apremilast, it will join an increasingly crowded field of psoriasis therapies, including Enbrel, sold by Amgen and Pfizer, Merck and J&J's Remicade, Abbott's Humira.

 

Showing the diversity and potential of its pipeline is important for Celgene because the company is so heavily dependent on Revlimid and its predecessor, Thalomid, drugs which accounted for nearly 80 percent of the company's 2009 sales.

 

That doesn't mean the company will be depending any less on Revlimid though. A label expansion, indicating the drug as a maintenance therapy for multiple myeloma could boost sales of that drug from $1.7 billion in 2009 to $3.82 billion by 2013, according to a Thomson Pharma consensus forecast.

 

The company also trumpeted the positive results of a small and early-stage study of PDA-001, a potential treatment for Crohn's Disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease. PDA-001 is made from human placenta-derived cells. That's giving Celgene Cellular Therapeutics, the Celgene subsidiary managing the program, the confidence to scale up for larger mid-stage studies in a number of new but undisclosed indications.