Dive Brief:
- Celgene on Friday won U.S. approval for Inrebic, a treatment for myelofibrosis that is one of five drugs Bristol-Myers Squibb regarded as particularly valuable in its $74 billion deal to buy Celgene.
- Before Inrebic’s approval, only one other drug was cleared in the U.S. to treat myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow disorder that disrupts the production of blood cells.
- Celgene paid just over $1 billion upfront in January 2018 to acquire Inrebic’s latest developer, Impact Biomedicines. As part of that deal, Impact shareholders are entitled to up to $1.4 billion in milestone payments for regulatory approvals in myelofibrosis and other indications.
Dive Insight:
Approval of Inrebic, which was previously known as fedratinib, is the first domino to fall in Bristol-Myers bet on Celgene’s product pipeline.
While Celgene’s top-selling blood cancer drug Revlimid (lenalidomide) was a key draw for Bristol-Myers, the pharma also made a case to skeptical investors that Celgene’s experimental drugs could give it a foundation for the future.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
Among the five drugs highlighted by Bristol-Myers, Wall Street sales estimates for Inrebic are the lowest, ranging between $300 million to $500 million by 2028, according to an activist investor which opposed the Celgene deal.
Much more important are the multiple sclerosis drug ozanimod and the CAR-T cancer therapies bb2121 and lisocabtagene maraleucel.
All told, Bristol-Myers expects the five drugs plus one of its own to eventually generate more than $15 billion in annual revenue.
Date: August 20, 2019
Source: BiopharmaDIVE
