While it remains to be seen whether the FDA will break with its advisory panel and approve Biogen Inc.’s high-profile Alzheimer’s candidate by the June 7 PDUFA date, the clinical data for beta-amyloid-targeting aducanumab didn’t exactly impress experts at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, who suggested an annual price tag of $2,560 to $8,290.
In an unusual move, three members of the Nov. 6 FDA advisory committee that voted against recommending approval of Biogen Inc.’s high profile Alzheimer’s disease candidate, aducanumab, have doubled down on their argument in an editorial published in JAMA on March 31.
Triggering a wave of commentary over its import, Biogen Inc. on Jan. 29 said the FDA has extended to June 7 its review of a BLA for the experimental Alzheimer's disease therapy aducanumab after the company submitted additional analyses and clinical data, making for a major amendment to the application. The three-month delay, from an earlier assigned PDUFA date of March 7, followed a thumbs-down vote by agency advisors in November. It sparked both sunny optimism and a bit of pessimism about the program's prospects on Friday.
Talk turned skeptical well before lunchtime in the meeting of the FDA’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee to consider Biogen Inc.’s aducanumab for Alzheimer’s disease, and it stayed that way until the end, when panelists voted thumbs down.
The FDA posted briefing documents related to the Nov. 6 meeting of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee, and Wall Street’s opinion turned out decidedly mixed regarding the odds for aducanumab, the anti-amyloid beta monoclonal antibody for Alzheimer’s disease from Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen Inc. and Eisai Co. Ltd., of Tokyo.
With a Nov. 6 FDA adcom meeting on Biogen Inc.'s Alzheimer's candidate, aducanumab, creeping ever closer, the candidate's prospects stole the show in its third-quarter earnings report, even outshining attention to the cloud of generics raining on the company's years-long Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate) parade. FDA acceptance for aducanumab's BLA lines the candidate up for a priority review and regulatory action by March 7, the company said. Furthermore, global progress remains underway, with an EU marketing application now made and one in Japan on deck.
News from Biogen Inc. and partner Eisai Co. Ltd. that U.S. regulators accepted the BLA related to aducanumab for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) – and assigned it priority review, no less – set Wall Street abuzz.
News from Biogen Inc. and partner Eisai Co. Ltd. that U.S. regulators accepted the BLA related to aducanumab for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) – and assigned it priority review, no less – set Wall Street abuzz, especially as the companies noted in their press release that the FDA “if possible, plans to act early” on the anti-amyloid beta (a-beta) monoclonal antibody. Regulators’ decision came about 30 days after they took receipt of the submission; they could have waited 60.
Biogen Inc. handily beat earnings expectations in its first-quarter 2020 earnings report to investors but leavened the good news by adding that it now plans to submit its BLA for beta-amyloid-targeting aducanumab for treating Alzheimer’s disease in the third quarter of 2020.
