Biogen Pays $50 million to Reduce Future Royalty Payments on Alzheimer’s Drug Aducanumab

Biogen (Nasdaq: BIIB) and Neurimmune announced today that 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 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.

Aducanumab has been accepted into the European Medicines Agency’s PRIME program and it was awarded Fast Track status by the FDA in April of 2017. Biogen is currently enrolling patients in Ph III trials for aducanumab. Earlier this year, Biogen announced that it was increasing the number of patients enrolled in the trial due to, “more variability on the primary endpoint than assumed”.