JP Morgan 2026: Biogen’s New Company Emerges

During the first day of the 44^th Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, a clear narrative emerged. With the looming patent cliff, companies are focused on their pipelines and making sure they can fill the gaps left by the loss of blockbuster patents.

During the Biogen presentation, the company’s president and CEO Christopher Viehbacher outlined the company’s strategy of bolstering its pipeline to be less reliant a small number of blockbuster drugs.¹

“The first year I was CEO of Biogen, I spoke about the melting iceberg,” he said at the start of his presentation. “This is a period where every pharma company gets to at one point, where the growth drivers of the business are at the end of their intellectual property lives. The new company must emerge.”

He continued, “The playbook for that is what we've been doing. First, we need to manage our cost base, and it's not just about cutting costs. We achieved a billion dollars in gross savings, $800 million in net, but it was around redesigning the organization. Biogen had been historically focused on multiple sclerosis, and yet we were launching new drugs in Alzheimer's, postpartum depression, and other areas. We needed to retool the company and rebuild it for the future.”

Biogen’s presentation detailed how the company is expanding from MS treatments. Recently, the company has launched four first-in-class therapies in Alzheimer’s, Friedreich Ataxia, postpartum depression, and ALS. According to the presentation, the revenue from these product launches more than offset the declines in MS sales during the first three quarters of 2025.

In the second half of the presentation, in response to questions about developing a more balanced pipeline with less binary risk, Viehbacher said, “In terms of the pipeline, we have 10 phase three programs (which is quite a lot for us) and five new product launches.”

He continued, “Obviously, not everything is going to work, but supposing that everything did work, that's about one to one-and-one-half times our current business. From a late-stage pipeline, we're in good shape. Where we're still lacking is that we are somewhat bare in the early-stage R&D. However, we took a radical approach to research this year and are more focused on external collaboration.”

Focusing specifically on key asset Leqembi, Viehbacher explained, “We've been seeing consistent quarter-on-quarter growth on Leqembi, and there are a couple of things that are coming to help us. The first thing we had to deal with was some level of residual skepticism around amyloid beta as a target, and that was the result of many years of investing against that with no results. What we're seeing out there in the market is physicians are actually seeing the real benefit of treating this disease.”

The day of the conference, Biogen announced Spinraza’s approval by the European Commission for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy.² Data from the DEVOTE study showed the drug’s benefit in both untreated and previously treated patients.

In a press release, Biogen executive vice president and head of development Priya Singhal, MD, MPH, said, “Since its approval in the European Union in 2017, SPINRAZA has helped set a new standard in patient care and treated more than then 10,000 infants, children, teens and adults worldwide. We are proud to introduce the high dose regimen of SPINRAZA, which we have developed to address the evolving needs of individuals living with SMA, and are deeply committed to bringing it to the European SMA community as quickly as possible. We are grateful for all of the contributions of the SMA community who made today’s approval possible.”

Eugenio Mercuri, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatric Neurology at the Catholic University, Rome, Italy, added, “The DEVOTE results provide encouraging evidence that this new dosing option could deliver meaningful treatment outcomes with a safety profile generally consistent with the 12 mg dosing regimen. I have witnessed the remarkable strides that have been made in treating SMA, but it is clear challenges remain. The European Commission approval of the high dose regimen of SPINRAZA is an important step toward addressing those challenges and advancing how we care for people living with SMA.”

Sources

1. Biogen to Present at the 44th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Biogen. January 12, 2026. https://investors.biogen.com/events/event-details/biogen-present-44th-annual-jp-morgan-healthcare-conference
2. Biogen Receives European Commission Approval for High Dose Regimen of SPINRAZA® (nusinersen) for Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Biogen. January 12, 2026. https://investors.biogen.com/news-releases/news-release-details/biogen-receives-european-commission-approval-high-dose-regimen