Biogen slices price of Alzheimer’s drug

Biogen slashed the price of its new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, on Monday as the drug faces weak sales and mounting criticism.

The price was reduced to $28,200 a year from $56,000 on the same day a group of Alzheimer’s disease experts and health advocates called on the Food and Drug Administration to pull the drug off the market and said they were supporting an effort to file a formal petition with the agency to withdraw it.

“The FDA’s decision to approve Aduhelm is indefensible in both scientific and clinical terms,” said a statement signed by 18 scientists, most of them doctors. “This drug should be withdrawn from the market immediately.”

The agency approved Aduhelm in June, even though a council of senior FDA officials, an advisory committee of outside experts and many Alzheimer’s specialists said the scientific evidence showed that the drug did not provide a clear benefit to patients and that it carried risks of dangerous side effects.

In a statement about the price-cutting Monday, Biogen

CEO Michel Vounatsos said the company had “listened to the feedback of our stakeholders” and believed that “too many patients are not being offered the choice of Aduhelm due to financial considerations.”

But Brian Skorney, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., said after the price announcement: “For the broad majority of people who are critical of Aduhelm, $56,000 and $28,000 are both exceptionally high prices for a drug that a lot of people perceive doesn’t work at all.”

The statement calling on the FDA to withdraw Aduhelm grew out of a threehour video meeting among the scientists last week.

“We’re not just saying the approval was probably the worst decision the FDA ever made,” Dr. Peter Whitehouse, a neurologist and Alzheimer’s expert at Case Western Reserve University, told attendees during the session.

“It’s so bad that we should advocate for withdrawal,” Whitehouse said.

In response to the call to withdraw approval of Aduhelm, an FDA spokeswoman said that “the data set for Aduhelm was very complex, and our review has been thorough.”