By Ransdell Pierson
(Reuters) – Disappointing data for Biogen Inc’s experimental Alzheimer’s drug dragged shares in the company lower on Wednesday, while investors took a slightly more positive view of new findings for a treatment from Eli Lilly and Co.
Shares in Biogen traded 2.7 percent lower after falling as much as 4.9 percent, while Lilly was up 0.3 percent, recovering from a decline of 4.7 percent after the two companies released study data at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Washington.
Wall Street analysts said the initial Lilly drop may have been influenced by the negative take on Biogen, since both companies’ drugs work by blocking formation of the protein beta amyloid, which is believed to cause brain plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s.
Biogen’s drug aducanumab had been hailed as a potential breakthrough in March, when a small study showed that 3 milligram and 10 mg doses appeared to slow cognitive decline and reduce toxic brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s.
Investors had hoped that a 6 mg dose could be a safer and effective alternative to the 10 mg dose, which had also produced a type of brain swelling. On Wednesday, researchers said the 6 mg dose failed to significantly slow mental decline.
“If they’re getting brain swelling at 10 mgs and their 6 mg dose is showing limited efficacy, it draws into question Biogen’s program,†said John Boris, an analyst with Suntrust Robinson Humphrey, who is attending the Alzheimer’s meeting.
Evercore ISI analyst Mark Schoenebaum said the fact that the 6 mg dose of aducanumab was less effective than the 3 milligram raised some concern. But he stuck to his estimate that planned late-stage trials of the drug have a 50 percent chance of success.
Lilly researchers on Wednesday said that patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease who took the company’s experimental drug solanezumab early in the course of their disease preserved more of their cognitive and functional ability than patients who received the treatment at a later stage.
Although the findings suggest that solanezumab may slow down disease progression among those with mild Alzheimer’s, the hypothesis must be proven in a new and larger Phase III study that is now in progress.
Morningstar analyst Damien Conover said the Lilly data was only “slightly encouraging†because it did not compare solanezumab with a placebo.
Boris said solanezumab, if successful in the new study, is likely to be approved by 2017, at least two years before aducanumab, and become the first medicine to slow progression of the disease affecting 5 million Americans.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Chris Reese)
- Biogen Inc
- Eli Lilly
- Alzheimer