, Columnist
Biogen's Spinraza: Great Launch, Rough Ride
For such a clear success story, the drug has an unusually high risk of derailment.
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Biogen is something of a boom-or-bust company, with its heavy focus on lucrative but risky neuroscience research.
Thursday was a boom day, as Biogen released solid fourth-quarter earnings and 2018 guidance that exceeded analyst expectations. That success was driven largely by Spinraza, a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) licensed from Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc., which has dramatically exceeded expectations to become one of the best launches of a rare-disease drug in memory.