Pascal Soriot’s comments came during AstraZeneca’s Q2 earnings call in regard to President Donald Trump’s newly announced European pharma tariffs. The company also announced estimate-beating earnings, with its cancer portfolio driving earnings despite clinical roadblocks.
In AstraZeneca’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, CEO Pascal Soriot said the U.S. pays too much to support global pharmaceutical R&D.
“We’ve had many interactions with administration at different levels,” Soriot said, after being asked about the effects of newly announced European pharmaceutical tariffs and the prospect of President Trump’s Most Favored Nation drug pricing plan.
“The U.S. can no longer pay for the R&D for the world, it’s not sustainable. We need to have a fairer sharing of R&D costs across richer countries. Rich countries need to share. And we’ve made a number of proposals to the Trump administration related to tariffs and R&D expenditures,” he added.
CFO Aradhana Sarin referenced tariffs announced Monday between the U.S. and the European Union. “We only have a handful of products that we import from Europe, and we have capacity for those products and are already doing tech transfer. Any impact from tariffs will be short-lived,” she said.
The comments came after the company announced estimate-beating Q2 earnings. AstraZeneca’s cancer portfolio has had an eventful Q2, delivering a quarterly performance that comfortably exceeded analyst expectations while also weathering several clinical speedbumps.
In the second quarter, AstraZeneca’s product revenues surged 11% to bring in $14.45 billion, a sum that comfortably beat estimates, according to its earnings report on Tuesday. In a research note on July 24, Zacks Equity Research forecasted Q2 revenues of $14.03 billion at an 8.3% growth year-on-year. Writing to investors on Tuesday, Leerink analysts chalked up the beat to AstraZeneca’s oncology business, which made more than $6.3 billion in the quarter.
Specifically, the analysts pointed to the breast cancer drug Enhertu, which earned $666 million in the quarter, representing a 42% year-on-year growth, 15% over the consensus. Truqap, also indicated for breast cancer, was similarly a strong contributor to AstraZeneca’s strong Q2 showing, surpassing expectations by 10% to bring in $170 million.
Lung cancer drugs Tagrisso and Imfinzi were also among AstraZeneca’s best-selling assets overall, with $1.8 billion and $1.45 billion in Q2 revenues, respectively.
During the Q&A section of its earnings call, Soriot demurred when asked how the company planned to continue pushing Enhertu into other indications and more front-line roles.
“At the end of the day, medical practice is led by data,” he said. “Patients’ lives depend on those treatments. Doctors should stick to the data.”
Nevertheless, AstraZeneca’s oncology line still posed some pipeline problems for the pharma. Two key readouts for its Daiichi Sankyo-partnered Datroway, for instance, have been delayed. Results from the Phase III AVANZAR study, which is testing the antibody-drug conjugate in combination with Imfinzi as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, have been delayed to the first half of 2026. The pharma had previously been expecting data in the back half of this year.
Similarly, a readout from the Phase III Tropion-Breast02 trial, also for Datroway, in triple-negative breast cancer, is now expected later this year. The pharma had initially expected results to come in during the top half of 2025.
AstraZeneca also revealed on Tuesday that it had discontinued the development of NT-125, an autologous, multi-specific neoantigen-targeting cell therapy, which the pharma had been developing for solid tumors. The termination, as per a company presentation, is “due to strategic portfolio prioritization.”
NT-125 came into the AstraZeneca fold in late 2022 when it acquired cancer specialist Neogene Therapeutics for $200 million upfront and the promise of $120 million more in milestones.
Alongside NT-125, AstraZeneca on Tuesday also axed two CAR-T therapies: the claudin-targeting AZD6422 and the GPC3-directed AZD5851. The former was being tested for solid tumors and was discontinued due to disappointing efficacy, while the latter was being studied for gastrointestinal cancer and was abandoned for strategic reasons.
