285 Jobs at Risk as Biogen to Stop Producing Drugs at Its Cambridge Plant
June 17, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Biogen ’s consolidation of its manufacturing operations could cost up to 285 jobs at its Cambridge, Mass. site as the company looks to shift the work to a new facility in its nearby Kendall Square complex, the Boston Globe reported this morning.
The company said the streamlining of its manufacturing operation is about efficiency. The Cambridge site is a 66,000-square-foot facility currently used to manufacture multiple sclerosis and hemophilia drugs.
Biogen spokesman Jason Glashow told the Globe that the company is looking to sublease the property to another pharma company and is talking to a “number of interested parties.” Some of those 285 positions will likely be shifted to the company’s Durham, N.C. manufacturing site, while others would be forced to find positions with other companies. The Cambridge plant being shut down currently makes the MS drugs Avonex and Plegridy, as well as the hemophilia A treatment Eloctate, the Globe said. The Durham site has a larger manufacturing capability that would allow Biogen to manufacture drugs for both commercial use as well as clinical trials, the Globe reported.
Another role that could have been a factor in the shuttering of the Cambridge plant is that Biogen has planned to spin off its hemophilia business as an independent company. The as-of-yet unnamed company will be anchored by its two lead products, Eloctate and Alprolix, which is used for the treatment of hemophilia B.
The streamlining of manufacturing operations comes about a week after the company announced its Phase II multiple-sclerosis drug failed to meet clinical trial endpoints, causing the company’s stock to tailspin, dropping more than $30 per share in one day – a one-day market value loss of about $8 billion. The company’s opicinumab (anti-LINGO-1), an investigational, fully human monoclonal antibody, was a product that Biogen hoped would actually repair the nerve damage due to multiple sclerosis. However, the Phase II SYNERGY study failed to hit the primary endpoint, a complex measure that evaluated improvement of physical function, cognitive function, and disability. The drug also failed to meet a secondary efficacy endpoint, looking at the slowing of disability of progression. Since the drug failure, the stock has been on a steady decline and is currently trading at $241.10 per share. Last year the company discontinued another late-stage MS trial that helped usher in the company’s streamlining plans that included the termination of about 11 percent of its workforce, about 880 employees.
Although that drug failed, in May the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the MS drug, Zinbryta, co-developed with Illinois-based AbbVie. Zinbryta was approved for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis. However, the drug comes with a boxed warning, the most serious warning label provided by the regulatory agency. The FDA recommends the drug be prescribed to patients who have had an “inadequate response to two or more MS drugs” due to safety concerns.