The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Richard J. Parkes - Exane BNP Paribas, Research Division - Analyst
: Can you hear me okay?
Question: Richard J. Parkes - Exane BNP Paribas, Research Division - Analyst
: Okay, great. Just firstly, on faricimab. Obviously, that's the next sort of major pipeline readout. When we look at the Phase II data, it seems to suggest
that the addition of Ang2 inhibition can raise the bar in terms of efficacy for DME, but that wasn't the case in the AMD trials, where they didn't show
better efficacy. I wondered if you have a plausible biologic hypothesis as to why that might be? Or is there a risk that, that was a chance finding?
Just help us to maybe improve our confidence in that readout?
The second question, I think, for Bill. As you mentioned at the beginning, you've had some failures recently. And when we look forward, the pipeline
still has a number of what are called high-risk, high-reward programs such as faricimab, tominersen, gantenerumab, maybe Polivy in first-line and
some molecules that have moved pretty quickly into Phase III like the SERD. Can you just talk about the way you think about balancing risk/reward
in the pipeline? And do you think you've got that balance right at the moment? And how should we think about probability of success?
And if I can just squeeze in a third one, just on the SERD program. You've talked about the bradycardia being target related. And if I look at the data
with fulvestrant, the currently approved SERD, I don't see any evidence of bradycardia there. So I just wondered what gives you confidence that,
that bradycardia is target related?
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