Biogen Idec sells Benlysta royalty rights to DRI for initial $18.3 million

US biotech firm Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB) has sold to a Canada-based DRI Capital managed fund its royalty and other rights relating to the lupus drug Benlysta (belimumab) to which it is entitled under a license agreement with Human Genome Sciences, which has now been acquired by UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK).

Benlysta was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in March 2011 and by the European Medicines Agency in July 2011 to treat systemic lupus erythematosus.  The drug has an annual treatment cost of $35,000 and sales so far have been disappointing, coming in at just £12 million ($19 million) in the second quarter of 2012. HGS’s chief executive had previously projected peak revenues of as much as $7 billion.

The global systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) therapeutics market in the seven leading countries (the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan) was estimated to be worth $256 million in 2010 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.7% to reach $1.6 billion in 2018, according to industry analysis specialist GlobalData (The Pharma Letter November 10, 2011).