So they would be another funnel for our bariatric business. In the rest of our MedTech business, at this point, we continue to see robust procedure increase and we don’t anticipate that change, that thing — that trend changing in the foreseeable future.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Terence Flynn from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.
Terence Flynn: Great. Thanks so much for taking the question. I was just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more, John, on Nipocalimab in RA. I know we’re going to see the full data here at ACR, but is this a drug that you see potentially working in a broad population or is there a biomarker subset group that’s more likely to respond? And then how are you thinking about Phase 3 plans here in this indication? Thank you.
John Reed: Yes, thanks for the question and we look forward to sharing those data at the ACR in November in San Diego. We’re looking at Nipo as either a monotherapy combined with a precision medicine strategy or as a combination for a broad population where we aim to combine with an anti-TNF agent. We see those two mechanisms as being very complementary, reducing the levels of auto antibodies with Nipo and then inhibiting inflammatory mechanisms with the TNF. The so-called DAISY study, the Phase 2, is underway now and we’ll test that combination. So that in general has been the way we’re looking at RA, not only for Nipo, but other agents in our pipeline where we see the future being monotherapies that are targeted in a precision medicine way or broad therapies that are combos that can bring together synergistic mechanisms in a safe way.
We’re excited to be launching the DAISY program to look at that combo. And we’re hoping that that will bring deeper, more durable remissions for patients as we bring those new mechanisms together.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Joanne Wuensch from Citibank. Your line is now live.
Joanne Wuensch: Good morning and thank you for taking the questions. Is it possible to give us a little bit more detail on a couple of things? You mentioned headwinds from VBP and I’m just curious if there’s, A, way to quantify it; and B, a way to say if it’s at least better or worse or the same as it has been the last couple of quarters? And then similarly in other aspects of China, we’ve been hearing a lot about anti-corruption policies, et cetera. If you could comment on that, that would be great. Thank you.
Joaquin Duato: Thank you, Joanne. And first, let me say that China for us is a key market, and a market in which we are delivering growth now, and we are going to continue to deliver a strong growth into 2024. So it’s a key growth driver for us. So on one hand, certainly, VBP represents a headwind in price. And on the other hand, it also represents an opportunity as you can expand quality products, medical technologies into more patients. So there are a number of MedTech platforms now currently undergoing VBP headwinds, electrophysiology, spine, trauma, endocutters and energy, and these effects will last during 2023 and part of 2024. We have already anniversary our large joins VBP. So at this point, we have about 80% of our platforms that have been already affected by VBP.
Again, as we look into 2024, we expect to continue to deliver a strong growth in China, and China remaining a key part of our growth. When it comes to the question that you were asking in anti-corruption side, we have a strong culture of compliance in our business. And at this point, we may see some limitations related to physician and surgeon access, but we are not seeing any material impact in any part of our business due to that, and we’ll continue to monitor the situation. Overall, as I said, we continue to see China as a key driver of our growth and also as a key source of innovation moving into the future.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Vamil Divan from Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now live.
Vamil Divan: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I just want to maybe dive a little deeper on the immunology side. Appreciate some of the comments you made there already with — for the quarter, the performance was very strong for several of your products there? So I’m just curious if there were any sort of one-time items there that we should be aware of. It’s under like there’s a lot of patient mix and market growth that you are commenting on? I’m curious if you can just highlight any sort of stocking or sort of one-time pricing adjustments that we should take into account as we look at future quarters? Thank you.
Joaquin Duato: Thank you. We are very pleased with the performance of our immunology business, especially we’re pleased with the performance of TREMFYA with 25.1% growth in the quarter, which shows our ability to drive growth there. As I said before, TREMFYA currently is now indicated in psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis as an analog. In the case of STELARA, that represents about 25% of the sales. So with the upcoming readouts, filing and potential approvals of ulcerative colitis and Chron’s disease, we expect to have significant growth in TREMFYA. We talk about TREMFYA as a $5 billion product earlier in our Analyst Day in 2021. Now you can see clearly that we’re going not only to meet that, but to clearly exceed that benchmark for TREMFYA.
