Amgen Enbrel Patent Victory

If you own a bunch of high-quality stocks in a portfolio, good things are always happening to them, and you only find out later. Here's a case in point, Amgen just had a major patent protection victory. The stock popped up to a new all-time high of $260 per share yesterday.

A US federal appeals court upheld Amgen's patents for its blockbuster arthritis drug Enbrel, a decision that will prevent biosimilar competition until 2029. The FDA approved the first biosimilar to Enbrel in 2016. That was awarded to Novartis, whose generic arm, Sandoz will be fuming.

Amgen makes lots of drugs for all kinds of ailments, but Enbrel is important because it brings in more than $5 billion in revenue per year (20% of the group total).

The news sent shares of Amgen soaring 8% on Wednesday and up another 1.5% on Thursday. Now they have almost another decade of monopoly control over the drug, which has a selling price in the US of $44 000 for a year of treatment.

The original formulation for Enbrel was discovered by Bruce Beutler, an academic researcher then at the University of Texas in 1989, and sold to and patented by a company called Immunex, which was acquired by Amgen in 2002. Beutler and his colleagues manufactured a stable protein that interferes with the tumor necrosis factor, which in turn counteracts overactive immune responses. Very useful!

More on the court decision here: Amgen Gets Favorable Appeals Court Ruling for Enbrel Patent.