Why This Heart Drug Could Be a $5B Blockbuster for Novartis

ZURICH (Reuters) - A Novartis executive said the Swiss company’s heart failure medicine Entresto could be used more widely in future, potentially making it a blockbuster drug with revenue potential of $4 billion to $5 billion a year.

Entresto, introduced in 2015, got off to a slow start but brought in $507 million in revenue last year, just surpassing Novartis’s target of half a billion dollars and beating some analysts’ predictions.

Paul Hudson, head of the Swiss drugmaker’s pharmaceuticals unit, told Reuters in an interview that Entresto has the potential for more than $3 billion annual sales in its current usage, for reduced ejection fraction heart failure in patients whose heart muscles do not contract effectively.