Written by John Carroll
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE: BMY) has forged a pair of separate pacts with Roche Holding Ltd. (PINK: RHHBY) and Biogen Inc. (Nasdaq: BIIB) to out-license two drugs, grabbing a whopping $470 million upfront for the deals. With $615 million in milestones possible the deals total about $1.1 billion, plus royalties.
Roche is getting its myostatin drug in Phase I. Biogen says it will now launch the Phase II studies for its drug in both Alzheimer’s disease as well as PSP…
Said Michael Ehlers, executive vice president, research & development of Biogen:
“Biogen aims to be a leader in Alzheimer’s disease and we are building a pipeline with multiple approaches to address the complex, devastating process of neurodegeneration.
Based on encouraging safety and efficacy data, we believe BMS-986168 is a promising anti-tau candidate that may represent the next wave of medicines for Alzheimer’s disease as well as the first real answer for progressive supranuclear palsy.”
Biogen has been under intense pressure to add new drugs to its pipeline, which is concentrated on neurological conditions. Roche, though, has been coming through with a variety of major league approvals, including the recent OK for Ocrevus, and has been choosy about what it wants to add to the pipeline.
Bristol-Myers, meanwhile, has been shaking up its R&D group in recent months, after the fiasco with the checkpoint Opdivo as it slipped behind Merck’s Keytruda on non-small cell lung cancer. Bristol-Myers brought in a new R&D chief, Thomas Lynch, and has been selectively looking for ways to economize as it looks to make a comeback in a field that it helped to pioneer.
