‘We would have no choice’: Bio­gen CEO Vounatsos isn’t about to let go of the bud­get axe — un­less they break that los­ing streak

Bio­gen CEO Michel Vounatsos is bet­ting on suc­cess. But he’s keep­ing one hand firm­ly on the bud­get axe in case the cards stay cold. And he’s ready to chop as hard as nec­es­sary to keep the bot­tom line in shape.

In a fire­side chat on Mon­day dur­ing the Cowen con­fer­ence, Vounatsos re­peat­ed­ly hit on the com­pa­ny’s cam­paign to over­turn the pun­ish­ing ini­tial Medicare de­ci­sion deny­ing broad cov­er­age of Aduhelm (ad­u­canum­ab), in­sist­ing that Bio­gen can make a good case for ac­cess, promis­ing both added clin­i­cal da­ta as well as re­al world ev­i­dence. But un­less things start to go its way — on Aduhelm and the up­com­ing lecanemab read­out as well as the so-far com­mer­cial­ly awk­ward zu­ra­nolone read­out — the CEO stands ready to cut where he can’t add rev­enue.

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