Biogen, which slashed 885 jobs last year after the disastrous rollout of its controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, on Monday confirmed it recently eliminated more jobs, including those of employees who worked on its multiple sclerosis medicines.
The Cambridge biotech said in a statement that “some of our colleagues in the US were recently informed that their roles are being impacted as a result of decisions designed to optimize our business strategies and align our cost and revenue base. We appreciate the contributions of our departing colleagues.”
The firm would not say how many employees were laid off or when it happened. But Biogen spokesman Jack Cox said the layoffs included employees who worked on MS drugs, long the company’s biggest source of revenue.
Biogen had 8,725 employees worldwide at the end of last year, down 885 from 9,610 the year before, according to securities filings.
Its Massachusetts workforce has also fallen sharply. It has about 2,300 employees in the state, according to company spokeswoman Allison Parks. That compares with 2,469 in the 2022 “industry snapshot” of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and 2,800 in the trade group’s 2021 report.
The latest cuts were first reported by the Boston Business Journal.
The departing employees included Matt Winton, senior vice president and head of Biogen’s MS drugs for more than two years. In a posting on his LinkedIn page two weeks ago, he said it was his last day. He worked there for more than nine years and had helped with Spinraza, the firm’s treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, a rare inherited neurodegenerative disease.
“I am so grateful for the opportunity to have worked with some of the most talented professionals in the industry and proud of all the work we did to support the MS and SMA communities,” Winton said on LinkedIn.
Biogen’s new chief executive, Christopher Viehbacher, told investors during the firm’s full 2022 earnings call in February that Biogen “has a cost base that is probably higher than most of its peers, and we need to think about that much more systematically.”
Although Biogen’s MS drugs account for most of its income, revenue has started to fall because of competition from generic rivals. Last October, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Biogen that sought to reinstate the patent of its blockbuster MS drug Tecfidera.
Viehbacher said in the recent earnings call that “the MS franchise still supports most of our revenue,” but “clearly, that’s a declining revenue base.” As a result, he said, investors were going to see “a shift in resources” as the company begins to roll out its recently approved Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi and seeks approval of an antidepressant, zuranolone.
Biogen and its Japanese partner, Eisai, won approval in January of Leqembi, which moderately slowed cognitive decline in a closely watched study of patients with early Alzheimer’s symptoms. Biogen and another partner, Cambridge’s Sage Therapeutics, are also seeking approval of zuranolone, a fast-acting medicine for postpartum depression and depression unrelated to pregnancy.
The cost-cutting and shift in spending follows Biogen’s debacle with Aduhelm, one of the biggest flops in recent pharmaceutical history.
Once considered a potential multibillion dollar blockbuster, Aduhelm was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June 2021 as the first new Alzheimer’s medication in nearly two decades. The FDA granted Aduhelm accelerated approval based on its undisputed ability to clear plaques of amyloid-beta proteins that build up in the brains of some people with Alzheimer’s ― even though neurologists disagreed on whether doing that actually benefits Alzheimer’s patients.
The approval came after an independent scientific advisory panel to the FDA voted 10-0 to recommend the drug be rejected, with one panelist voting “uncertain.” After the FDA brushed aside that vote, three committee members resigned in protest, including Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a Harvard Medical School professor who called the approval “perhaps the worst” drug authorization by the agency in recent history.
Then last April, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services dealt Aduhelm, which was initially priced at $56,000 a year, a death blow. It said the federal government would only pay for the drug for patients if they participated in clinical trials, where risks and benefits could be better assessed. It was an extraordinary decision, given that the federal insurer almost always pays for drugs the FDA has approved.
The following month, Biogen’s chief executive of five years, Michel Vounatsos, announced that he would be stepping down. Viebacher, the former chief executive of the French pharma giant Sanofi, was named his successor in November. Biogen also said it would cut an estimated $1 billion in costs and make an unspecified number of layoffs, including essentially its sales division for Aduhelm.
As it tries to regain its footing, Biogen is moving to scale back its real estate holdings in Kendall Square. In September, for example, it announced plans to vacate 300 Binney St. as part of an effort to “optimize its office footprint in Cambridge to align with reduced space requirements under hybrid work models.”
Biogen plans to turn the building back over to landlord Boston Properties, which will renovate it, add roughly 50,000 square feet, and lease the resulting 240,000-square-foot property to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard for 15 years.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.