Viridian Launches Lumvoa as Commercial Spending Drives Wider Loss
Cash climbed 29% sequentially to $981.5 million after a May financing.
Viridian Therapeutics (VRDN), the biotechnology company developing treatments for thyroid eye disease, entered commercialization after winning early U.S. approval for Lumvoa and launching the drug immediately.
The transition reshaped the quarter before product sales began. Lumvoa received Food and Drug Administration approval on June 26, four days ahead of its target date, and became Viridian’s first commercial product. By July 31, the sales team had engaged 95% of 2,000 core prescribing physicians, patient enrollment forms indicated broad physician demand, and the first doses had been administered.
Second-quarter revenue rose to $284,000 from $75,000 a year earlier, comprising $233,000 of license revenue and $51,000 of related-party collaboration revenue. Viridian reported no product-sales revenue because the first Lumvoa doses were administered in July, after the quarter ended. Net loss widened 26% to $127.1 million from $100.7 million, while the operating loss increased to $126.3 million from $106.8 million.
Commercial investment drove the higher loss. Selling, general and administrative expense rose 172% to $55.0 million as Viridian added personnel and built Lumvoa’s commercial infrastructure. Total operating expenses increased 18% to $126.6 million, with the $34.8 million rise in SG&A outweighing a $15.0 million decline in research and development spending.
Research and development expense fell 17% to $71.6 million as spending declined on the veligrotug and elegrobart studies. Greater investment in thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor programs and higher personnel costs partly offset those reductions.
Viridian ended June with $981.5 million of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, up from $762.2 million at the end of March, after completing $394 million of gross convertible-debt and equity financing in May. Existing cash, anticipated Lumvoa revenue and potential elegrobart revenue should fund its current plans through profitability, strengthening its previous funding outlook.
Elegrobart also completed a positive pivotal package across active and chronic thyroid eye disease after progressing through separate phase 3 readouts. Viridian continues to plan a biologics license application in the first quarter of 2027, leaving Lumvoa’s early prescription conversion and elegrobart’s regulatory path as the next measures of its commercial transition.