Anon. Points Us To The Layoff News At BMS — As Its Keytruda® (Pembrolizumab) Competitor, Called Opdivo®, Saw Declining Sales Last Year, And In Q1 2024…

From about mid-2014 to late-2017, the immuno oncology “horse race” was on, between Merck’s bio-engineered PD-1 inhibitor (branded as Keytruda) and BMS’s. . . theirs being called Opdivo. We covered it with at least 100 posts in that time frame. [Search the upper left dialog box if you’d like some background, from our perspective — here. And, Merck has hit the $22 billion a year mark a year ahead of Wall Street’s estimates — here in 2024, not 2025.]

But as the markets matured in immuno-oncology, in the main, Rahway’s has shown stronger statistically better (longer term) survival data than BMS’s agent has. [In the US, it is difficult to get full reimbursement for a “second best” agent, with a winner already available, in many solid organ tumors.] And so — as of last Thursday, Bristol Myers Squibb began retrenching, thus:

. . .Bristol Myers Squibb on Thursday said that around 2200 staff will be impacted by cost-cutting measures designed to save about $1.5 billion by the end of 2025, with two-thirds of the savings coming from R&D. The initiative will reduce management layers in an effort to speed decision making, along with pipeline rationalisation and site consolidation. . . .

However, revenue from Opdivo fell 6% to $2.1 billion.

Chief commercialisation officer Adam Lenkowsky explained that the PD-1 inhibitor was hit by changes in buying patterns in the US, but the company is “confident we will see accelerating growth this year. . . .”

I would not bet on many more high growth quarters for BMS’s Opdivo — Keytruda has become the gold standard choice here (especially inside the US). So we extend our best meditations, to the families of the 2,200 BMS people being let go. Onward — now you know.

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