Near-term capital for Neurimmune

Biogen will make a one-time $50 million payment to Swiss Neurimmune in exchange for a 5% reduction in the original royalty rates on potential commercial sales of aducanumab, Biogen’s Phase 3 investigational treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease. “At Neurimmune, we are pleased with the continuous progress of our long-term successful collaboration with Biogen”, states Roger Nitsch, CEO of Neurimmune. “This non-dilutive financing supports our growth strategy focused on bringing human-derived antibodies through clinical proof-of-concept in disease areas with high medical need.”

Aducanumab (BIIB037) is a human recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) derived from a de-identified library of B cells collected from healthy elderly subjects with no signs of cognitive impairment or cognitively impaired elderly subjects with unusually slow cognitive decline using Neurimmune’s technology platform called Reverse Translational Medicine (RTM). Aducanumab is thought to target aggregated forms of beta amyloid including soluble oligomers and insoluble fibrils which can form into amyloid plaque in the brain of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Based on pre-clinical and Phase 1b data to date, treatment with aducanumab has been shown to reduce amyloid plaque levels.

Biogen licensed aducanumab from Neurimmune under a collaborative development and license agreement in 2007.