As in­ves­ti­ga­tions mount and con­tro­ver­sy swirls, Bio­gen fights back against ICER — and then faces an­oth­er unan­i­mous slap­down

There’s been no short­age of words writ­ten about Bio­gen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, since its con­tro­ver­sial ap­proval last month. And on Thurs­day, the biotech at­tempt­ed to push back against the nar­ra­tive, blast­ing a re­port from the In­sti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Re­view char­ac­ter­iz­ing the ev­i­dence be­hind the drug as “in­suf­fi­cient.”

Dur­ing a pan­el con­vened by the Cal­i­for­nia Tech­nol­o­gy As­sess­ment Fo­rum, Bio­gen chief med­ical of­fi­cer Ma­ha Rad­hakr­ish­nan vil­i­fied the ICER re­port as “in­ap­pro­pri­ate” and “fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed.” Rad­hakr­ish­nan par­tic­u­lar­ly ob­ject­ed to ICER’s “blend­ing” of the two Phase III tri­als in its analy­sis, lead­ing to its flaws.

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