What does ‘anti-competitive’ mean nowadays, anyway?

A minor subplot to biopharma in 2019 is concern that the FTC is quietly cracking down on drug companies, with the best illustration being Bristol-Myers Squibb’s protracted effort to close its merger with Celgene. But yesterday’s news on that front made it all a bit confusing.

Celgene sold the anti-inflammatory drug Otezla to Amgen in a move meant to appease an FTC that was apparently concerned Bristol-Myers might do something monopolistic if it owned both Otezla and BMS-986165, a pipeline therapy meant to treat the same diseases. That seemed like a harsh interpretation in the minds of many analysts, as Otezla and BMS-986165 have different mechanisms of action.

But in light of the Amgen deal, one wonders how exactly the FTC is defining anti-competitive behavior. Amgen already markets Enbrel, a multibillion-dollar treatment for inflammatory disease, and it has a biosimilar of Humira, AbbVie’s top-selling drug that happens to be Enbrel’s biggest competitor. Now it’s adding Otezla, which is to say that instead of owning two similar medicines, as Bristol-Myers-Celgene would have, Amgen will market three, and this is apparently OK by regulators.