By Deena Beasley
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Biogen expects income from new launches to exceed its present gross sales by 2028 and doesn’t really feel the necessity to chase extra enterprise improvement offers, the corporate’s CEO stated.
“The view on the market within the analyst neighborhood is that the way forward for Biogen relies on the subsequent deal that we do and that is not a view that we share inside Biogen,” CEO Chris Viehbacher informed Reuters in an interview on Monday through the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Convention in San Francisco.
Final Friday, Biogen supplied to purchase Sage Therapeutics, its advertising and marketing accomplice on a drug to deal with postpartum despair. Sage noticed its share value fall round 76% final 12 months after a sequence of scientific setbacks.
Viehbacher declined to touch upon the transaction, citing authorized restrictions.
Shares of Biogen have dropped about 42% over the past 12 months.
“Whereas the deal could make monetary sense for Biogen, we expect it does little to alter the narrative across the firm, and extra revenue-generating offers are wanted to alter the corporate’s progress profile,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman stated in a analysis be aware.
Viehbacher stated Biogen as “gained conviction” on the energy of its present pipeline, together with amyloid-targeting Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi and BIIB080, an experimental drug that targets tau, a unique protein discovered within the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers.
“We’re doubling down in Alzheimer’s,” the CEO stated, noting that information is anticipated this 12 months on an FDA submitting for subcutaneous Leqembi and use of the drug as upkeep remedy.
He acknowledged that Leqembi gross sales haven’t lived as much as the loftiest expectations, however stated the trajectory is stable and the corporate is shifting its advertising and marketing technique to focus on newly-diagnosed sufferers.
Viehbacher stated Biogen additionally has late-stage research underway with felzartamab in uncommon immune-related indications together with kidney transplant sufferers and for experimental lupus medication.
“It’s laborious to search out property price paying for … there’s nonetheless an expectation of some fairly excessive premiums out there,” he stated.
The CEO stated Biogen has “groups of individuals” on the healthcare convention this week. Eventually 12 months’s assembly, these groups checked out 100 corporations and ended up doing two offers: a collaboration to discover molecular glue degraders with Neomorph and the acquisition of Human Immunology Biosciences.
(Reporting By Deena Beasley)
