Biogen CEO is shopping for biotechs: ‘We will be doing deals’

SAN FRANCISCO — Biogen would like to make additional biotech acquisitions in 2025 beyond Friday’s offer to buy its financially troubled partner Sage Therapeutics, chief executive Chris Viehbacher told me Sunday.

“We will be doing deals — the size of those deals, I cannot say,” he said in an interview ahead of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. 

Biogen offered to buy Sage, its marketing partner on Zurzuvae, a pill to treat postpartum depression, for $469 million — less than the $569 million in cash that Sage has on hand as of September. The lowball offer is unlikely to be accepted, but Sage also has little leverage after a series of clinical failures last year wiped out its research pipeline and decimated its stock price.