Airsupra is part of a growing portfolio of new drugs that are helping offset wilting sales of older AstraZeneca respiratory medicines such as Pulmicort. It’s an essential therapeutic area for the British drugmaker; in the third quarter, respiratory and immunology drugs accounted for 14% of overall revenue.
The company’s current top-selling respiratory medicine, an inhaler called Symbicort, brought in $630 million in the third quarter. But it’s facing increased competition as patents expire, leaving AstraZeneca to depend more on products such as Fasenra, an asthma drug approved in 2017 that had revenue of $353 million in the third quarter.
