Alzheimer’s is still considered a risky bet in research. The pharmaceutical company Roche also received this on Monday. The Alzheimer’s program with the candidate gantenerumab has failed to meet the goals set, as the company announced. Roche is a license partner of the German biotech company MorphoSys.
Roche reported that treatment with “gantenerumab” did not slow down the disease in the affected patients. The degree of beta-amyloid removal, the deposits in the brain typical of Alzheimer’s, was also lower than expected.
MorphoSys CEO Jean-Paul Kress was “disappointed” with the results. The global cooperation agreement with Roche, which has existed since 2000, stipulates that the Swiss company will be fully responsible for the clinical development and possible marketing of “gantenerumab”. According to MorphoSys, it is entitled to tiered royalties of between 5.5 and 7.0 percent of net sales as well as potential performance-based regulatory milestone payments. However, 60 percent of the royalties would go to Royalty Pharma, which made billions available to MorphoSys last year after a financial agreement so that the biotech company can develop into a biopharmaceutical company.
Roche said it will continue to develop and deliver tests for early and accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and has a pipeline of investigational drugs for different targets, types and stages of the disease.
Roche said it will continue to develop and deliver tests for early and accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and has a pipeline of investigational drugs for different targets, types and stages of the disease.
Even if analysts had repeatedly emphasized that they considered the chances of success of this study to be very low, some hope had recently spread on the market. The reason for this was the competitors Biogen/Eisai, who had recently achieved positive results and thus a breakthrough in a study with a similar approach.
The pharmaceutical industry is under great pressure when it comes to Alzheimer’s. According to calculations by the Alzheimer’s Disease International organization, 139 million people worldwide could develop Alzheimer’s by 2050. Already today, about 55 million are affected by this devastating disease. In addition, the global cost of illness could double to around two trillion US dollars by 2030.
Even if analysts had repeatedly emphasized that they considered the chances of success of this study to be very low, some hope had recently spread on the market. The reason for this was the competitors Biogen/Eisai, who had recently achieved positive results and thus a breakthrough in a study with a similar approach.
But for analyst Wimal Kapadi of Bernstein Research, the gantenerumab data is bad enough to know that it means the end of the drug candidate. He no longer considers the detailed data from the end of November to be particularly important.
The pharmaceutical industry is under great pressure when it comes to Alzheimer’s. According to calculations by the Alzheimer’s Disease International organization, 139 million people worldwide could develop Alzheimer’s by 2050. Already today, about 55 million are affected by this devastating disease. In addition, the global cost of illness could double to around two trillion US dollars by 2030.
Investors dump Morphosys shares after gantenerumab disappointment
A bitter disappointment in an Alzheimer’s drug triggered a slide in MorphoSys shares on Monday. By the end of trading, XETRA had fallen by 29.21 percent to EUR 14.80. The Roche paper fell on the SIX meanwhile 3.98 percent down to 312.65 francs.
The Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche failed to meet its goals in its Alzheimer’s program with the antibody gantenerumab. MorphoSys is Roche’s license partner for this Alzheimer’s candidate. A dealer said MorphoSys’s last hope was gone.
The analysts at Morgan Stanley justified the high price losses on the market by now calculating the license income for MorphoSys from the Gantenerumab program from the valuation models. However, the price reductions for Roche of almost four percent were still limited compared to the MorphoSys slump. Regardless of the disappointment, Roche still has something else to offer, according to the tenor in the market.
JPMorgan analyst James Gordon was disillusioned after the positive evaluation of Biogen’s latest data on its Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab, because positive conclusions had been drawn from the Biogen data. The US company Biogen and its Japanese partner Eisai recently reached an important milestone in the treatment of the degenerative disease with their research into the new Alzheimer’s drug.
Biogen shares were up 3 percent in premarket US trading on Monday. Eli Lilly, also involved in the market for Alzheimer’s drugs with the drug donanemab, gained one percent before the market.
The shares of Eisai’s development partner BioArctic also rose by a good eight percent on the stock exchange in Stockholm. A competitor of the Swedes for the drug lecanemab is now out of the running, wrote analyst Zoe Karamanoli from the Canadian bank RBC in a first reaction to the weak study results on gantenerumab. According to the expert, lecanemab slowed down the decline in the cognitive abilities of Alzheimer’s patients in his study much more significantly than placebos. However, the US health authority FDA is likely to look more closely at lecanemab for the reason why the active substance is the only one that helps against Alzheimer’s plaques (deposits – also amyloid plaques).
JPMorgan expert Gordon pointed out that market expectations had increased before the release of the gantenerumab data. This was possibly also due to the fact that MorphoSys CEO Jean-Paul Kress only expressed his confidence in the drug’s chances at the end of October. According to Gordon, there are hardly any other price drivers at MorphoSys in the short term, which is one of the reasons why the disappointment is now great. If gantenerumab were priced out of his valuation model at EUR 11.50 per share, his calculated NPV from MorphoSys would fall by 23 percent.
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