On Wednesday, December 27, 2023, Bristol-Myers Squibb Research and Development Center in Cambridge Crossing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bristol-Myers Squibb Believes Alzheimer’s disease to be biggest market for its newly approved schizophrenia drug Coppenfeldexpected to eventually generate billions of dollars in revenue.
Executives at the company said in interviews that each therapeutic use they are studying for Cobenfy has billions of dollars in potential, including Alzheimer’s disease psychosis, Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s cognition, and Alzheimer’s disease cognition. Cognitive disorders and autism. But Alzheimer’s is “a really huge market here,” Bristol-Myers Chief Financial Officer David Elkins told CNBC on Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
Elkins said that there are nearly 6 million Alzheimer’s patients in the United States, and about half of them suffer from psychosis or symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. Cobenfy could be first drug approved specifically to treat Alzheimer’s-related psychosis, chief commercializer says Officer Adam Lenkoski.
Atypical antipsychotics (drugs used to treat a range of psychiatric disorders) are commonly used to treat psychosis in people with Alzheimer’s disease, although they are not approved for this purpose. But those treatments were associated with an increased risk of death, while Cobenfy was not, according to Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s agitation, a symptom that can cause patients to feel restless and worried, is estimated to affect about 60 to 70 percent of patients. some research.
Bristol-Myers Squibb said on Monday it plans to release preliminary late-stage trial data on Cobenfy in the treatment of Alzheimer’s-related psychosis in the second half of this year, earlier than expected. The company also expects to begin Phase 3 trials in 2025 for Alzheimer’s disease agitation, Alzheimer’s disease cognitive disease and bipolar disorder, while studies in autism will begin in 2026.
JPMorgan analyst Chris Schott expects Cobenfy sales to reach about $5 billion by 2030, with peak sales potential of $10 billion across multiple therapeutic uses, according to a Tuesday research note. That’s a huge boon for Bristol-Myers Squibb, which faces pressure to offset potential revenue losses from patent expirations on its best-selling treatments.
Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Cobenfy drug
Courtesy: Bristol-Myers Squibb
It’s a full-circle moment for Cobenfy, which, following approval in September, became the first new treatment in decades to treat schizophrenia, which affects about 3 million U.S. adults. The drug comes from Bristol-Myers Squibb’s $14 billion acquisition of biotech company Karuna Therapeutics at the end of 2023.
But the drug’s roots are in treating Alzheimer’s disease.
Eli Lilly originally tested part of the drug – xanomeline – in the 1990s to reduce cognitive decline, but shelved it due to serious side effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. Xanomeline activates certain so-called muscarinic receptors in the brain to reduce dopamine activity without causing the side effects associated with antipsychotics.
Andrew Miller, founder and former president of research and development at Karuna Therapeutics and now a consultant to Bristol-Myers Squibb, saw xanomeline’s potential in neuroscience and proposed combining xanomeline with another existing drug, trospium. (trospium) is used in conjunction with the theory to reduce these side effects. He later launched Karuna to develop the combination as a treatment for schizophrenia.
Other breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatments have recently entered the market, including Biogen and Eisai’s Lakeby and Eli Lilly and CompanyIt’s Kisunla. These therapies work in part by clearing the brain of toxic plaques called amyloid, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, to slow the decline of memory and thinking in early-stage Alzheimer’s patients.
But as people’s disease progresses, they can develop symptoms such as psychosis and agitation, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Elkins said.
“This is where Coppenfeld fits in,” he said. “If you can get rid of the psychosis, the agitation, people’s cognition will improve. Imagine the impact that this drug would have on these patients and their loved ones, for the entire nursing staff and the health care system. When you think about that It’s really exciting in this situation.