Biogen has exercised its option to further reduce the previously negotiated royalty rates payable on potential future sales of aducanumab, Biogen’s Phase 3 investigational treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease.
Biogen will make a one-time $50 million payment to Neurimmune in exchange for a 5% reduction in the original royalty rates on potential commercial sales of aducanumab, which follows the 15% reduction in royalty rates announced in October 2017. The reduced royalty rates on potential commercial sales of aducanumab will be in the high single digits to low-teens. Biogen licensed the worldwide rights to aducanumab from Neurimmune in 2007.
“Biogen values our collaboration with Neurimmune, and this step is aligned with our amended agreement from 2017,” said Michel Vounatsos, chief executive officer of Biogen. “As we progress our pipeline of candidates for Alzheimer’s disease including aducanumab, we hope that a potential treatment for this devastating and debilitating disease will be realized.”
Aducanumab (BIIB037) is an investigational compound being developed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Aducanumab is a human recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) derived from a de-identified library of B cells collected from healthy elderly subjects with no signs of cognitive impairment or cognitively impaired elderly subjects with unusually slow cognitive decline using Neurimmune’s technology platform called Reverse Translational Medicine (RTM). Biogen licensed aducanumab from Neurimmune under a collaborative development and license agreement.
Aducanumab is thought to target aggregated forms of beta amyloid including soluble oligomers and insoluble fibrils which can form into amyloid plaque in the brain of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Based on pre-clinical and Phase 1b data to date, treatment with aducanumab has been shown to reduce amyloid plaque levels.
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In August 2016 aducanumab was accepted into the European Medicines Agency’s PRIME program. In September 2016 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted aducanumab into its Fast Track program and in April 2017 aducanumab was accepted into the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s (MHLW) Sakigake Designation System.
As of October 2017, Biogen and Eisai entered into a global collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize aducanumab.