Astellas’ “strategic brands” and “primary focuses” after XTANDI 

Astellas has always been a bit of a franchise company, strong in a handful of areas, then willing to reshape itself when one of those areas starts to dominate. Over the past decade, that reshaping of Astellas’s strategy has been largely driven by oncology, with XTANDI becoming the centerpiece of the business and a major contributor to growth. In its Corporate Strategic Plan 2021, Astellas frames a big part of the job as maximizing XTANDI while building up a set of other growth drivers, which it calls “strategic products” and “strategic brands.” 

What we are starting to see with the patent cliff, however, is that a cornerstone product can eventually become a constraint. Astellas has been quite direct about that trade-off. When it agreed to acquire Iveric Bio in 2023, it described Iveric’s lead asset as a “revenue-generating pillar” meant to help compensate for the expected decline of XTANDI as patent expiry approaches later this decade. And if you look at how management talks today, the message is still pretty consistent: Astellas has been trying to lean harder on a small set of “strategic brands” rather than letting everything orbit around XTANDI, while also pushing the pipeline forward in parallel.  

Astellas: A history of select strong franchises 

For much of its modern history, Astellas’ strategy has been built around the idea of durable franchises rather than constant reinvention. Some of its most important products were not defined by novelty, but by longevity. In transplant medicine, tacrolimus became a cornerstone therapy for preventing graft rejection, anchoring Astellas in a field where treatment decisions are cautious, switching costs are high, and drugs can remain standards of care for years. 

Urology followed a similar logic, with drugs like solifenacin for overactive bladder, and later mirabegron, which introduced a β3-adrenergic agonist mechanism as an alternative to antimuscarinics, while targeting the same large, chronic patient population. Astellas found sizeable specialty markets, established a strong commercial presence, and defended those positions over time.  

XTANDI, which entered the prostate cancer market in 2012, initially looked like an extension of that same model. It, too, became a long-lived therapy, expanded methodically across disease stages, and benefiting from aggressive lifecycle management. The difference was scale. As XTANDI moved earlier in the treatment cycles and spread across broader patient populations, it grew into a multi-billion-dollar product that increasingly defined Astellas’ revenue profile, and, by extension, its strategic priorities. 

That is where the company’s historical model began to strain. Astellas was used to relying on a handful of strong franchises and was less accustomed to being shaped so heavily by a single one. As XTANDI approached the later stages of its commercial lifecycle, the question was no longer whether Astellas could build successful drugs, but whether it could rebalance the business. 

Replacing XTANDI: Astellas’ multi-pillar revenue strategy 

As XTANDI moves into the later part of its lifecycle, Astellas’ most visible response has been to assemble a small number of other brands that are either already commercial or close to it, and that can plausibly sustain meaningful revenue on their own.  

What stands out in these “strategic brands” is not the novelty of any individual product, but the way these assets are positioned relative to one another. They sit in different markets, follow different adoption dynamics, and are unlikely to peak at the same time, a structure that suggests an attempt to smooth revenue rather than replace XTANDI with another single blockbuster. 

Oncology anchors: PADCEV and VYLOY 

In oncology, Astellas’ post-XTANDI strategy is built around two assets that are often mentioned together but play very different roles. 

PADCEV is the more established of the two and the closest thing Astellas has to a near-term oncology anchor. Developed in partnership with Seagen, it’s an externally sourced asset that Astellas has helped steer through late-stage development and commercial expansion. PADCEV is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that targets Nectin-4, a cell-surface protein commonly expressed in urothelial cancer, delivering a cytotoxic payload directly to tumor cells. 

Its early positioning in later-line urothelial cancer limited its reach, as is often the case in oncology, where therapies confined to heavily pretreated patients tend to remain niche. The commercial equation changed once PADCEV moved earlier in the treatment pathway. 

In bladder cancer, first-line treatment has increasingly been defined by combinations with checkpoint inhibitors, and PADCEV’s pairing with pembrolizumab placed it naturally in that context. In phase 3, the combination improved both progression-free and overall survival compared with chemotherapy in previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic disease, supporting regulatory approvals that repositioned PADCEV as part of front-line care. 

First-line use extends PADCEV’s commercial lifespan and materially raises its revenue potential, and that positioning is what allows the drug to function as a meaningful pillar. 

VYLOY sits at the other end of the spectrum. Licensed from Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, the antibody targets CLDN18.2 and was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2024 for a biomarker-defined subset of gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancers. The label is narrow, limited to HER2-negative tumors expressing CLDN18.2 and tied to a companion diagnostic. 

CLDN18.2 provides a way to segment a disease area that has historically been treated as relatively undifferentiated, allowing Astellas to anchor the drug in a clearly defined patient population.  

Alongside these newer oncology assets, Astellas also continues to rely on XOSPATA, an approved FLT3 inhibitor in acute myeloid leukemia, which contributes steady revenue in a well-defined niche but is not positioned as a major growth engine. 

Diversifiers outside oncology: VEOZAH and IZERVAY 

Alongside its oncology assets, Astellas’ Strategic Brands include two commercial-stage products outside cancer: VEOZAH in menopause care and IZERVAY in ophthalmology. Both broaden the company’s revenue base as XTANDI approaches loss of exclusivity, without relying on the same therapeutic area or development dynamics as oncology. 

VEOZAH (fezolinetant) was approved by the FDA in May 2023 for the treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms due to menopause. The drug is a non-hormonal neurokinin-3 (NK3) receptor antagonist and represents Astellas’ entry into a large, established symptom-management market outside oncology. 

IZERVAY (avacincaptad pegol) entered the portfolio through Astellas’ acquisition of Iveric Bio and received FDA approval in August 2023 for geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration. It is administered as a monthly intravitreal injection. 

In communications around the Iveric deal, Astellas explicitly grouped IZERVAY with its other strategic brands and linked the acquisition to preparations for XTANDI’s eventual loss of exclusivity. Beyond the asset itself, the transaction brought ophthalmology-specific commercial capabilities, establishing a foothold in a specialty area where Astellas had not previously operated at scale. 

These pillars are all approved products, but they operate in different markets and sit at different points in their commercial lifecycle. Their revenue trajectories are unlikely to align perfectly. That makes them suitable for collective reliance, even if none individually reaches the scale of XTANDI. Astellas is not attempting to replace one blockbuster with another; it is spreading that dependency across several brands with distinct risk profiles. 

Beyond the pillars: building capabilities that don’t have to pay off immediately

Astellas’ “strategic brands” are the visible stabilizers in the near term. In parallel, the company has also been building a smaller set of longer-cycle capabilities that sit elsewhere in its R&D framing, areas Astellas labels as “primary focuses.” 

One of those focus areas in Astellas’ pipeline strategy is targeted protein degradation (TPD), where Astellas’ stated flagship program is ASP3082. ASP3082 targets mutant KRAS G12D, and is in a phase 1 clinical trial in patients with solid tumors with that mutation. The goal is to reduce the amount of mutant KRAS protein in the cell by selectively degrading KRAS G12D and suppressing downstream signaling. 

KRAS G12D is a high-profile target where a degrader approach is meant to demonstrate that the platform can work in humans, not a near-term commercial pillar in the way PADCEV or VEOZAH are.  

The other obvious area it is venturing into is cell and gene therapy, where Astellas has assembled a cluster of assets and platforms through acquisitions. 

Astellas’ cell and gene therapy push has been built step by step, largely through acquisitions. It started in 2018 with the purchase of Universal Cells, which Astellas described as bringing “universal donor cell” technology designed to reduce the need for HLA matching, an attempt to make allogeneic cell therapies easier to scale. 

In late 2019, Astellas acquired Xyphos Biosciences, positioning the deal as a way to strengthen its immuno-oncology pipeline by adding a cell-therapy platform (ACCEL) and related expertise. 

The most consequential step came next with the acquisition of Audentes Therapeutics, which Astellas framed as foundational for building out gene therapy capabilities, including AAV pipeline development and manufacturing. 

The company has also had to acknowledge the uncertainty that comes with this technology. In 2021, Astellas recorded a $540 million impairment charge linked to a clinical hold affecting an Audentes gene therapy program. 

This layer of assets in Astellas’ strategy shows it is willing to invest in longer-cycle, higher-uncertainty technologies, while keeping the task of replacing XTANDI with products that are already on the market. The company’s own categorization of commercial “strategic brands” on one side, longer-cycle “primary focus” capabilities on the other, tells us how it wants these efforts to be read.