April 16, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. -- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ‘s top executive Leonard Schleifer may be eying Cuba as a potential market for its top eye medication or business partnerships as relations have thawed between the United States and the island nation south of Florida.
Schleifer will be joining Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others as part of New York State’s first trade delegation to Cuba since President Barack Obama has pushed to remove the island nation from its list of terrorist-sponsoring states. As the head of New York State’s largest biotech firm, Schleifer was tapped to join Cuomo and other officials in the trip, a Regeneron spokesperson told Bloomberg News.
She added Schleifer has a commitment to supporting economic growth and development in the state. Schleifer has teamed with Cuomo before on economic development issues as co-chairman of the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council, one of several groups created by Cuomo in 2011 to encourage economic growth, Bloomberg reported.
Regeneron could look to partner with a Cuban biotech/pharma combine created several years ago. In 2012 Cuba created a government, called BioCubaFarma. The combine has a mission to manufacture medicine and equipment and provide hi-tech services.
Last year Regeneron boasted a spike in revenue, partly due to its injectable eye treatment Eylea, which is used for patients with eye disorders including diabetic macular edema and age-related macular degeneration. The Wall Street Journal reported demand for Regeneron’s vision-loss drug Eylea helped spur global sales to rise to $2.82 billion in 2014, up from $2.1 billion in 2013. Additionally shares in the company have jumped 46.3 percent to $481.06.
Not only is the company’s vision-loss drug doing well, Regeneron and partner Sanofi anticipate an anti-cholesterol drug will be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this summer, ahead of a similar medication being pushed to market by rival drugmaker Amgen . Praluent is expected to generate annual sales in 2019 of $4.4 billion -- twice that seen for Amgen‘s rival Repatha.
The revenue jumps and success of its eye drug and Sanofi partnership will lead to a goal for the company to double its employees over the next five years.
Last month Regeneron reduced executive perks and compensation for Schleifer and Scientific Officer George Yancopoulos, the two co-founders of the company. In its annual proxy filing statement the company said the benefits “were no longer consistent with our overall compensation program.”
Eliminated perks include $21,236 for a car allowance and related expenses, $1,655 for life insurance premiums, $21,296 for long-term disability insurance premiums, $15,133 for medical malpractice insurance premiums, $10,400 for 401(k) Savings Plan matching contributions in respect of 2014 paid in February 2015, $9,710 for tax and financial planning advisory services and $8,799 for tax gross-ups related to tax and financial planning advisory services. For Schleifer that also includes elimination of annual dues for his golf club, which the filing shows has an annual cost of $18,500.
In January Regeneron representatives, along with other pharmaceutical and healthcare specialists, went to Washington D.C. to back Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative that would allow scientists to collect medical information from volunteers to study their genetics, environmental information and microbial information to learn how to individualize medical care.
In March Regeneron’s Dupilumab, which is used to treat moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, met its safety endpoints in clinical trials, the company announced.
Schleifer founded Regeneron in 1988 and the company went public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1991. Shares of Regeneron are currently up this morning, trading at a high of $457.80 per share.
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