ICER of­fers fi­nal ver­dict against Bio­gen's ad­u­canum­ab: No proof it works, clear prospect of harm, wild­ly over­priced

The folks at ICER have crunched the da­ta on ad­u­canum­ab. The in­de­pen­dent drug watch­dog brought to­geth­er a pan­el of Alzheimer’s ex­perts to re­view the tri­al re­sults, queried ex­ecs at Bio­gen and as­sessed the $56,000 price.

And here’s their fi­nal ver­dict that ac­com­pa­nies the de­tailed as­sess­ment:

“The clin­i­cal tri­al his­to­ry and ev­i­dence re­gard­ing ad­u­canum­ab are com­plex,” said David Rind, ICER’s CMO. “We have spent eight months an­a­lyz­ing the study re­sults, talk­ing with pa­tient groups and clin­i­cal ex­perts, and work­ing with the man­u­fac­tur­er to un­der­stand their po­si­tion. At the con­clu­sion of this ef­fort, de­spite the tremen­dous un­met need for new treat­ments for Alzheimer’s dis­ease, we have judged the cur­rent ev­i­dence to be in­suf­fi­cient to demon­strate that ad­u­canum­ab slows cog­ni­tive de­cline, while it is clear that it can harm some pa­tients.”

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