MS portfolio should be cause for concern for Biogen

Fol­low­ing Biogen’s Q4 and full year 2018 earn­ings call,  Antoine Grey, Phar­ma Ana­lyst at Glob­al­Da­ta, a lead­ing data and ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny, offers his view on the chains cur­rent challenges:

“Although Bio­gen had pos­i­tive results regard­ing total prod­uct sales and total rev­enues, com­pared to Q4 2017, total mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS) prod­uct rev­enues dropped from $2,219m to $2,195m. Like­wise, full year 2018 MS rev­enues dropped 4% from 2017’s $8,977m to 2018’s $8,595m. This can be attrib­uted to a drop in rev­enues from their Avonex and Ple­gridy brands in both the US and globally.

Con­sid­er­ing that MS is a flag­ship port­fo­lio for the com­pa­ny, it seems par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing that there is lit­tle growth. How­ev­er, there was also good news for Bio­gen in the MS space, with an NDA sub­mit­ted for BIIB098, to be mar­ket­ed as Vumer­i­ty in the US, which aims to reduce inflam­ma­tion and oxida­tive stress in MS patients. The com­pa­ny also has opicinum­ab in Phase II and BIIB061 in Phase I devel­op­ment, both for MS, although no oth­er drugs in late-stage devel­op­ment for MS is concerning.

Anoth­er wor­ry was the lack of update on Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug adu­canum­ab, which is cur­rent­ly in Phase III tri­als. Any sug­ges­tion of an inter­im analy­sis was shut down by Biogen’s chief med­ical offi­cer, Alfred San­drock Jr., M.D., Ph.D., even though Roche was expect­ed to dis­close data on rival Alzheimer’s drug can­di­date, crenezum­ab, at the time of the earn­ings call. Just a day after, Roche announced they were drop­ping crenezum­ab after a dis­ap­point­ing inter­im analy­sis dur­ing late-stage clin­i­cal tri­als. This should bring some relief to Bio­gen due to poten­tial­ly weak­er com­pe­ti­tion in Alzheimer’s.

Things were not all neg­a­tive for Biogen’s neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease port­fo­lio, as they announced col­lab­o­ra­tions with C4 Ther­a­peu­tics to dis­cov­er small mol­e­cules that induce ubiq­ui­ti­na­tion-medi­at­ed degra­da­tion of tar­get pro­teins in Alzheimer’s dis­ease and Parkinson’s dis­ease, and Sky­hawk ther­a­peu­tics, to dis­cov­er small mol­e­cules capa­ble of mod­u­lat­ing RNA splic­ing in spinal mus­cu­lar atro­phy (SMA) and MS. These col­lab­o­ra­tions will be a valu­able asset to Bio­gen, show­ing that the com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to keep­ing its focus on these core areas and demon­strat­ing lead­er­ship in the MS space, despite finan­cial setbacks.”