Biogen Idec Will Be Hiring in R&D After Around 20 Employees Leave Following Review
March 12, 2015
By Riley McDermid and Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Nearly two dozen research and development staffers have been let go from Biogen after the company reviewed its chemistry and neurology teams, but a spokeswoman told BioSpace that Biogen will soon be hiring to find new candidates.
“We plan to hire new employees in both areas in the near future to ensure we have the right capabilities to execute on our long-term strategy,” said Biogen spokeswoman Kate Niazi-Sai.
She also went to pains to stress that Biogen is not making sweeping cuts to its R&D units, but instead had around 20 employees who will leave as a result of an internal alignment review.
“There has been no reduction to our R&D workforce. As we plan for the future, we took a close look at our Chemistry and Neurology Research teams and determined that some skillsets did not align with our long-term goals. Unfortunately, as part of this assessment, some employees will be leaving Biogen Idec,” said Niazi-Sai. “ We sincerely appreciate their contributions and are taking meaningful steps to support their transition and help them find their next career opportunity.”
Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen has been undergoing a widespread expansion, including spreading out its Kendall Square operations as it increases its footprint. Part of that has been hiring, mostly recently expanding its team in North Carolina. In January, and right on the heels of strong fourth quarter numbers, Biogen Idec said it would create 100 new jobs at its Research Park Triangle facility.
The new positions include manufacturing associates, engineers and quality assurance technicians. The new positions are for the biologics facility in Morrisville, N.C. and the solid dose facility in Durham, N.C. Biogen Idec currently employs about 1,300 in Research Triangle Park.
Over the past three years the company has grown both employment and revenue by 50 percent. Biogen reported strong growth in 2014 with $9.7 billion in revenue, up 40 percent over 2013. CEO George Scangos touted the strong growth over 2014 to the “growth of TECFIDERA in world markets” and “the improved performance of TYSABRI.” Additionally Scangos said he expects 2015 to be another strong year for Biogen.
Scangos also touted Biogen’s work in the treatment of hemophilia A and B. To further such treatment, the company entered into a research deal with the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (TIGET) to develop a durable treatment for hemophilia. The gene therapy research could dramatically change the way the disease is currently treated. Hemophilia is an inherited bleeding disorder in which the blood does not clot properly, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. People with hemophilia often require life-long treatment.
In addition, news in December that Biogen Idec will be fast-tracking an experimental Alzheimer’s drug from Phase Ib trials to Phase III trials because of its enormously effective results on patients being studied has sent shares of the company up more for months, swelling its market cap to around $95 billion.
The drug, dubbed BIIB037, binds to amyloid plaques in the brain as a way to slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Biogen's head of research and development, Doug Williams, said at the time it had achieved those endpoints and more, reducing amyloid levels in “both a dose- and time-dependent fashion."
Williams said that BIIB037 improved cognition in patients with early signs of the disease 54 weeks after starting treatment, in a Phase I trial involving 200 patients. He added that Biogen will present full results of the trial at a medical meeting next year.
Because of those encouraging results at such an early stage of testing, the company will be leap-frogging BIIB037 into Phase III trials, said Biogen. It did not give a date for when the trials would start but analysts have projected the likely start will be mid-2015.
Wall Street analysts presented with the data at Deutsche Bank's BioFEST conference in Boston Dec. 2 were literally speechless at the impact of the results in a field known for chronic failures.
"You've got me tongue-twisted with the Alzheimer's data," Deutsche Bank analyst Robyn Karnauskas told Williams during the presentation, reported CNBC.
The overwhelmingly encouraging results were a surprise to biotech watchers, because several large companies have tried and failed to develop similar Alzheimer’s therapies in recent year, including Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.
The size of the market for patients with AD varies in estimates, but analyst Mark Schoenebaum with ISI Group said in a note Wednesday that he expects pricing to weigh in at around $25,000 per course.
“There are 600,000 mild AD patients in the U.S.,” he wrote. “At a net price of around $20,000 (below TNFs), 65 percent penetration would yield a potential sales opportunity of around $8 billion in the U.S. alone. The ex-U.S. patient opportunity is similar, but price will probably be lower.”
BioSpace Temperature Poll
Vertex Pharmaceuticals made news last week when it terminated leases on three properties in Cambridge, Mass, that freed up 313,000 square feet of space in the Genetown area. The company has spent a significant part of 2014 consolidating its operations on the South Boston waterfront, leasing 291,000 square feet of office space at West Kendall Street in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. So we wanted to ask the BioSpace community: Is Boston going to be getting more biotech leases anytime soon, or fewer tenants?