Alzheimer’s drug rollout off to slow start

It yields $300,000 in revenue during first full quarter on market, Biogen says

The drugmaker Biogen Inc. reported Wednesday that Aduhelm, its new Alzheimer’s drug, had brought in $300,000 in revenue from July to September, far short of the company’s goals and Wall Street’s expectations.

The sales figures, which Biogen disclosed in its financial report for the third quarter, the drug’s first full period of availability, represented a remarkably slow start for a treatment that was introduced with a $56,000 annual price tag and expectations that it would strain Medicare’s budget within a few years.

Sales have been substantially slowed by concerns among insurers, physicians and families that the drug is backed by little evidence of effectiveness while coming with significant risk of potentially serious side effects.

“It’s a huge disappointment,” said Brian Skorney, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

“People have for a while talked about this being potentially the biggest drug ever,” he added. “There’s no drugs that have been successful to that extent that have really had that slow of a start.”

Wall Street analysts had forecast that the drug would bring at least $12 million in the third quarter, though expectations had been tempered after the news organization STAT reported last month that just over 100 patients had received the treatment in its first few months of availability. Biogen’s stock fell 0.6% on Wednesday.

Biogen did not disclose how many patients received its treatment in the July-to-September quarter. In its first few weeks of availability in June, the treatment brought in $1.6 million in revenue, much of which came from stockpiled inventory.

Biogen’s chief executive, Michel Vounatsos, told analysts that the company was “not panicking” about the low sales numbers and continued “to believe in Aduhelm’s longterm potential.” He blamed the slow sales on a lack of clarity about the whether the drug would be paid for by insurers.

Several prominent academic medical centers have decided not to give the drug to patients. Several regional Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans have declined to cover it, and in August, the Department of Veterans Affairs decided not to add the drug to its formulary of available medicines.

“People have for a while talked about this being potentially the biggest drug ever. There’s no drugs that have been successful to that extent that have really had that slow of a start.”

— Brian Skorney, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

(AP/Steven Senne) Sales of Aduhelm, a new Alzheimer’s drug from Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen Inc., has had a slow debut complicated by coverage questions and concerns from doctors.