Speaking of big biotech inertia

Amgen will update the world on how well its business is going Monday, and analysts expect mixed results. The aging Neulasta and Enbrel, still Amgen’s biggest products, are on the decline, and the company’s latest treatments, for migraine and high cholesterol, are unproven quantities when it comes to commercial success.

Amgen is in better shape than its peers at Gilead and Biogen, but it’s hardly immune to the calcifying pressures facing biotech’s biggest players. Biosimilars are eating into legacy revenue, and launching new drugs is hard.

Repatha, its cholesterol drug, is outperforming a rival treatment from Sanofi and Regeneron, but it’s still far from becoming the billion-dollar product Amgen once envisioned. And Aimovig, the recently approved migraine therapy, competes in a crowded market and — pending a lawsuit — Amgen has to split the proceeds with Novartis.