Biogen Inc (BIIB)

[sokol]

Biogen and Eisai stacked the deck:

The drug, BAN240, failed before. So what's new. Biogen and Eisai stacked the deck, that's what's new.

WSJ article: ”An­a­lysts said questions re­main about the re­sults of the BAN2401 study. For one thing, re­searchers used a novel mea­sure of ef­fi­cacy that was de­vel­oped by Ei­sai’s in-house re­searchers, rather than stan­dard mea­sures in the field.”

They, the foxes in the henhouse, arranged things for a desired outcome by internally coming up with a new measure of efficacy. Biogen’s partner Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, came up with a new standard to measure ”success”. Even then this ”success” is not so great considering their drug is an infusion and the same WSJ article points out: ”The study in­volved 856 sub­jects in the early stage of the dis­ease. Among the side ef­fects that the com­pa­nies reported were re­ac­tions at the sites of the in­fu­sion and swelling around blood ves­sels ob­served with brain imag­ing.” Making multiple trips to a clinic or medical office for infusions as opposed to taking a pill poses difficulties in addition to the risks of adverse events, and for what: BAN240 does not stop or reverse Alzheimer’s.