Biogen to Spin Off Multi-Million-Dollar Hemophilia Biz

May 4, 2016

Biogen Inc. intends to spin off its hemophilia business as an independent, publicly traded company. The company says the strategic goal of this transaction is to create two focused companies dedicated to driving current and future value in their respective therapeutic areas of expertise.

“We expect that the new company will be a leader in discovering, developing, and commercializing innovative therapies for hemophilia, built on remarkable science and a deep understanding of how to continually improve treatment for patients,” said George Scangos, Ph.D., Biogen’s CEO. “Our expanding hemophilia business continues to perform very well. ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX provide meaningful benefits for people living with hemophilia and continue to gain market share.”

The new company, to be named at a later date, will focus on the discovery and development of therapies for the treatment of hemophilia, with existing marketed products to include ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX, indicated for the treatment of hemophilia A and B, respectively. The new company is expected to continue to develop and commercialize those products under Biogen's existing collaboration agreement with Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (publ)(Sobi). ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX generated combined revenues of $640 million during the twelve-month period ended March 31, 2016.

The new company plans to bring longer acting therapies utilizing the XTEN technology into clinical development in the first half of 2017 and to accelerate the development of bispecific antibodies and hemophilia-related gene therapy programs. The new company also plans to conduct additional studies to confirm early data that suggest ELOCTATE’s potential to rapidly induce immune tolerance in hemophilia patients who develop inhibitors.

The new company is expected to be headquartered in the Boston area. It will retain commercial rights for ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX for North America and for rest of the world markets outside of, essentially, Europe, North Africa, Russia and certain countries in the Middle East. Biogen is expected to provide transition services to the new company for some period of time and is expected to remain the manufacturer of ELOCTATE and ALPROLIX for the next three to five years. The full management team and board of directors of the new company will be named at a later date.