ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
We operate in an environment that involves a number of significant risks and uncertainties. We caution you to read the following risk factors, which have affected, and/or in the future could affect, our business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition. The risks described below include forward-looking statements, and actual events and our actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Additional risks and uncertainties not currently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also impair our business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition. Furthermore, additional risks and uncertainties are described under other captions in this report and should also be considered by our investors.
SUMMARY OF MATERIAL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH OUR BUSINESS
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, discussed in more detail in the following section. These risks include, among others, the following key risks:
Business Related Risks – Risks Related to Our Financial Results
•The current pandemic of COVID-19 and its variants and the future outbreak of other highly infectious or contagious diseases, could continue to have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations, including our commercial operations and sales, clinical trials and pre-clinical studies, and could impact other areas of our business as well.
•The marketing and sale of ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO or any future products, including vutrisiran, may be unsuccessful or less successful than anticipated and we may be unable to expand the indication for ONPATTRO, or, if approved, vutrisiran.
•We have a history of losses and may never become and remain consistently profitable.
•We will require substantial funds to continue our research, development and commercialization activities.
•Although we sold a portion of the expected royalty stream and commercial milestones related to global sales of Leqvio by Novartis, we are entitled to retain the remaining portion of such future royalties and, if certain specified thresholds are met, to the remaining portion of commercial milestone payments, and any negative developments related to Leqvio could have a material adverse effect on the timing or amount of those payments.
Risks Related to Our Dependence on Third Parties
•We may not be able to execute our business strategy if we are unable to maintain existing or enter into new alliances with other companies that can provide business and scientific capabilities and funds for the development and commercialization of certain of our product candidates.
•If any collaborator materially amends, terminates or fails to perform its obligations under agreements with us, the development and commercialization of certain of our product candidates could be delayed or terminated and we could suffer other economic harm.
•We have limited manufacturing experience and resources, and we must incur significant costs to develop this expertise and/or rely on third parties to manufacture our products.
•We rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials, and if they fail to fulfill their obligations, our development plans may be adversely affected.
Risks Related to Managing Our Operations
•If we are unable to attract and retain qualified key management and scientists, development, medical and commercial staff, consultants and advisors, our ability to implement our business plan may be adversely affected.
43
Table of Contents
•We recently underwent our first CEO succession.Any leadership transition carries with it disruption risks that could have a negative impact on the execution of ourAlnylam P5x25 strategy.These risks include our ability to attract and retain qualified employees.
•We may have difficulty expanding our operations successfully as we continue our evolution from a U.S.- and Europe-based company primarily involved in discovery, pre-clinical testing and clinical development into a global company that develops and commercializes multiple drugs in multiple geographies including Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
•We may experience computer system failures or unauthorized or inappropriate use of or access to our information systems or those of our contractors or collaborators, potentially resulting in substantial loss of data, business interruption or other harm.
Industry Related Risks – Risks Related to Development, Clinical Testing and Regulatory Approval of Our Product Candidates and the Commercialization of Our Approved Products
•Any product candidates we or our partners develop may fail in development or be delayed to a point where they do not become commercially viable.
•We or our partners may be unable to obtain U.S. or foreign regulatory approval for our or our partnered product candidates.
•Even if we or our partners obtain regulatory approvals, our marketed drugs will be subject to ongoing regulatory oversight.
•Even if we receive regulatory approval to market our product candidates, and our collaborators receive regulatory approval to market product candidates discovered by us or developed with our technology, the market may not be receptive to such product candidates upon their commercial introduction, which could prevent us from becoming profitable.
•We are a multi-product commercial company and expect to continue to invest significant financial and management resources to continue to scale our marketing, sales, market access and distribution capabilities and further establish our global commercial and compliance infrastructure, and our commercial efforts may not be successful.
•The patient populations suffering from hATTR amyloidosis with polyneuropathy, AHP, and PH1 are small and have not been established with precision.
•We may incur significant liability if enforcement authorities allege or determine that we are engaging in commercial activities or promoting our commercially approved products in a way that violates applicable regulations, including in connection with the ongoing DOJ investigation.
•Any drugs we develop may become subject to unfavorable pricing regulations, third-party reimbursement practices or healthcare reform initiatives, thereby harming our business.
•Governments outside the U.S. may impose strict price controls, and the U.S. government may impose price controls or reference pricing, which may adversely affect our revenues.
Risks Related to Patents, Licenses and Trade Secrets
•If we are not able to obtain and enforce patent protection for our discoveries, our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates will be harmed.
•We license patent rights from third-party owners. If such owners do not properly or successfully obtain, maintain or enforce the patents underlying such licenses, our competitive position and business prospects may be harmed.
•Other companies or organizations may challenge our patent rights or may assert patent rights that prevent us from developing and commercializing our products.
•If we become involved in patent litigation or other proceedings related to a determination of rights, we could incur substantial costs and expenses, substantial liability for damages or be required to stop our product development and commercialization efforts.
•If we fail to comply with our obligations under any licenses or related agreements, we may be required to pay damages and could lose license or other rights that are necessary for developing, commercializing and protecting our RNAi technology.
44
Table of Contents
Risks Related to Competition
•The pharmaceutical market is intensely competitive. If we are unable to compete effectively with existing drugs, new treatment methods and new technologies, we may be unable to commercialize successfully any drugs that we or our collaborators develop.
•We face competition from other companies that are working to develop novel drugs and technology platforms using technology similar to ours, as well as from companies utilizing emerging technologies, including gene therapy and gene editing.
Risks Related to Our Common Stock
•If our stock price fluctuates, purchasers of our common stock could incur substantial losses.
•We may incur significant costs from class action litigation.
•Future sales of shares of our common stock, including by our significant stockholders, us or our directors and officers, could cause the price of our common stock to decline.
•Regeneron’s ownership of our common stock could delay or prevent a change in corporate control.
Risks Related to Our Business
Risks Related to Our Financial Results
The current pandemic of COVID-19 and its variants, and the future outbreak of other highly infectious or contagious diseases, could continue to have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations, including our commercial operations and sales, clinical trials and pre-clinical studies.
The novel coronavirus identified in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has led to an ongoing global pandemic that continues to evolve and the ultimate impact of this pandemic remains highly uncertain. To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the implementation of various responses, including government-imposed quarantines, travel restrictions and other public health safety measures. COVID-19 has and may continue to impact our operations and those of our third-party partners and the ultimate impact on our business and financial results remains uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, and will depend on many factors, including the scope, severity, duration and any recurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, including through any new variant strains of the underlying virus, the actions taken to contain the pandemic or mitigate its impact, the direct and indirect economic effects of the pandemic and containment measures, the effectiveness of vaccination and booster vaccination campaigns, among others. The continued development and fluidity of the COVID-19 pandemic precludes any prediction as to its full impact on our business.
In response to the spread of COVID-19, we took, and have continued to take, both temporary and ongoing precautionary measures, intended to help minimize the risk of the virus to our employees and their families, including implementing a global work from home policy in early March 2020 for nearly all employees who were able to perform their duties remotely. In addition, in October 2021, we implemented a mandatory vaccination policy requiring all U.S. employees and contractors to be fully vaccinated, subject to certain medical and religious accommodations. Where and to the extent permitted to be open under local regulations, our office sites are operational with appropriate safety precautions based on COVID-19 vaccination rates and local guidance, and in October 2021, we formally re-opened our U.S. offices to those employees who have been fully vaccinated. Working arrangements for many of our employees differ from the arrangements before the COVID-19 pandemic, and we expect a number of employees will continue to work in a remote capacity or a hybrid of in-person and remote work. We may face several challenges or disruptions during our return to the workplace transition, including re-integration challenges for our employees, and our hybrid of in-person and remote work option may negatively impact productivity, or disrupt, delay, or otherwise adversely impact our business. Compliance with governmental measures imposed in response to COVID-19 has caused and will continue to cause us to incur additional costs, and any inability to comply with such measures can subject us to restrictions on our business activities, fines, and other penalties, any of which can adversely affect our business. We cannot predict when certain restrictions that are in place to protect our employees can be further reduced or will no longer be needed. In addition, the increase in certain of our employees working remotely has amplified certain risks to our business, including increased demand on our information technology resources and systems, increased phishing and other cybersecurity attacks, and any failure to effectively manage these risks, including to timely identify and appropriately respond to any cyberattacks, could adversely impact our business operations.
As the pandemic continues, and if conditions worsen or if the duration of the pandemic extends significantly, we may experience disruptions that could severely impact our business and operations, including our ability to successfully commercialize our approved products, and we may not be able to meet expectations with respect to commercial sales. In addition, we may also experience decreased patient demand for our approved products if current or potential patients decide to delay treatment as a result of the COVID-19 or a future pandemic. Business interruptions from the current or future pandemics, including staffing shortages, raw material or other supply chain shortages, production slowdowns and disruptions in delivery
45
Table of Contents
systems, may also adversely impact the third parties we or our partners rely on in the U.S. and abroad to sufficiently manufacture our approved products and to produce product candidates in quantities we require, which may impair our commercialization efforts, our research and development activities and the potential commercialization of our product candidates.
Additionally, timely completion of pre-clinical activities and initiation of planned clinical trials are dependent upon the availability of, for example, pre-clinical and clinical trial sites, researchers and investigators, patients or healthy volunteer subjects available for recruitment and enrollment, and regulatory agency personnel, which may be adversely affected by global health matters, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We are conducting and plan to continue to conduct pre-clinical activities and clinical trials for our drug product candidates in geographies which have been and continue to be affected by COVID-19, and believe that the COVID-19 pandemic will have an impact on various aspects of our ongoing clinical trials and on the clinical trials and pre-clinical studies we expect to initiate in 2022. For example, certain trial sites in some of our ongoing clinical trials were restricted temporarily by the institutions where they are located from scheduling patient visits or permitting onsite monitoring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in some of our ongoing trials, delayed or missed doses of study drug have been reported. Any business interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could also delay necessary interactions with local regulators, ethics committees, manufacturing sites, research or clinical trial sites and other important agencies and contractors, which could adversely impact the clinical trials of our product candidates.
Health regulatory agencies globally may also experience disruptions in their operations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may impact review, inspection and approval timelines. Since March 2020, when foreign and domestic inspections of facilities were largely placed on hold, the FDA has been working to resume routine surveillance, bioresearch monitoring and pre-approval inspections on a prioritized basis. Since April 2021, the FDA has conducted limited inspections and employed remote interactive evaluations, using risk management methods, to meet user fee commitments and goal dates. Ongoing travel restrictions and other uncertainties continue to impact oversight operations both domestic and abroad and it is unclear when standard operational levels will resume. The FDA is continuing to complete mission-critical work, prioritize other higher-tiered inspectional needs (e.g., for-cause inspections), and carry out surveillance inspections using risk-based approaches. Should the FDA determine that an inspection is necessary for approval of a marketing application and an inspection cannot be completed during the review cycle due to restrictions on travel, and the FDA does not determine a remote interactive evaluation to be adequate, the FDA has stated that it generally intends to issue, depending on the circumstances, a complete response letter or defer action on the application until an inspection can be completed. For example, in December 2020, the FDA issued a complete response letter regarding Novartis' NDA for inclisiran, stating that the agency could not approve the NDA by the PDUFA action date due to unresolved facility inspection-related conditions. The FDA ultimately approved Novartis' NDA in December 2021. Regulatory authorities outside the U.S. may adopt similar restrictions or other policy measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and may experience delays in their regulatory activities.
Some factors from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that may delay or otherwise adversely affect enrollment in and the conduct of the clinical trials of our product candidates, as well as adversely impact our business generally, include:
•the diversion of healthcare resources away from the conduct of clinical trials to focus on pandemic concerns, including the availability of materials necessary to conduct our clinical trials;
•limitations on travel that could interrupt key trial activities, such as clinical trial site initiations and monitoring, domestic and international travel by employees, contractors or patients to clinical trial sites, including any government-imposed travel restrictions or quarantines that will impact the ability or willingness of patients, employees or contractors to travel to our research, manufacturing and clinical trial sites or secure visas or entry permissions, any of which could delay or adversely impact the conduct or progress of our clinical trials; and
•interruption of, or delays in receiving, supplies of our product candidates from our CMOs due to staffing shortages, production slowdowns, raw material or other supply shortages, or stoppages and disruptions in delivery systems.
These and other factors arising from the COVID-19 pandemic could worsen in countries with higher infection rates and case counts, or could return to countries where the pandemic has been partially contained, each of which could further adversely impact our ability to conduct clinical trials and our business generally, and could have a material adverse impact on our operations and financial condition and results. In addition, a recession, depression or other sustained adverse market event resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic could materially and adversely affect our business and the value of our common stock.
The marketing and sale of ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO or any future products, including vutrisiran, may be less successful than anticipated, and we may be unable to expand the indication for ONPATTRO, or, if approved, vutrisiran.
In 2018, our first commercial product, ONPATTRO, was approved by the FDA and EMA, and we have since received approval and launched ONPATTRO in several additional territories. In 2019, the FDA approved our second product, GIVLAARI, which was also approved by the EMA and has since received approval in several additional territories, and in 2020, the FDA and EMA approved our third product, OXLUMO, which received additional regulatory approvals in 2021. We also have several product candidates in late-stage clinical development, including vutrisiran, which is currently under review by the FDA, and has a PDUFA date of April 14, 2022, as well as other agencies. While we have commercially launched three
46
Table of Contents
products, we cannot predict whether we will successfully overcome many of the risks and uncertainties encountered by companies commercializing products in the biopharmaceutical industry. To execute our business plan of building a profitable, top five biotech company over the next 5 years and achieving our Alnylam P5x25 strategy and the metrics associated with such strategy, in addition to successfully marketing and selling our approved products we will need to successfully:
•execute product development activities and continue to leverage new technologies related to both RNAi and to the delivery of siRNAs to the relevant tissues and cells, including the liver, CNS, eye, lung and muscle;
•successfully execute our leadership succession plan;
•build and maintain a strong intellectual property portfolio;
•gain regulatory acceptance for the development and commercialization of our product candidates and market success for our approved products, as well as any other products we commercialize;
•attract and retain customers for our products;
•develop and maintain successful strategic alliances; and
•manage our spending as costs and expenses increase due to clinical trials, regulatory approvals and commercialization.
If we are unsuccessful in accomplishing the objectives set forth above, we may not be able to develop product candidates, successfully commercialize our approved products or any future products, raise capital, if needed, repay the debt we incurred in 2020 and 2021, expand our business, achieve financial self-sustainability or continue our operations.
We have a history of losses and may never become and remain consistently profitable.
We have experienced significant operating losses since our inception. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of 5.44 billion. Although to date we have launched three products in the U.S., EU and various other countries globally, and expect to launch our commercially approved products in additional countries during 2022 and beyond, we may never attain profitability or positive cash flow from operations. For the year ended December 31, 2021, we recognized $662.1 million in net product revenues from sales of ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO. While our full year operating loss for 2021 and 2020 each improved relative to the prior year, marking 2019 as our peak operating loss year, we expect to continue to incur annual operating losses, and will require substantial resources over the next several years as we expand our efforts to discover, develop and commercialize RNAi therapeutics, and aim to achieve self-sustainability by the end of 2025. While we believe the funding provided by our strategic financing collaboration with Blackstone should enable us to achieve a self-sustainable profile without the need for future equity financing, we will depend on our ability to generate revenues to achieve this goal. In addition to revenues derived from sales of our current and future, if any, commercially approved products, we anticipate that a portion of any revenues we generate over the next several years will continue to be from alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including Novartis and Regeneron. We cannot be certain that we will be able to maintain our existing alliances, secure and maintain new alliances, meet the obligations, or achieve any milestones that we may be required to meet or achieve to receive payments under our existing or new alliances. Moreover, we cannot be certain that our partners, including Novartis, will continue to successfully execute their obligations under our alliance agreements and generate additional revenues for us.
We believe that to become and remain consistently profitable, we must succeed in discovering, developing and commercializing novel drugs with significant market potential. This will require us to build upon the success we have had in a range of challenging activities, including continued platform innovation, pre-clinical testing and clinical trial stages of development, obtaining regulatory approval and reimbursement for these novel drugs and manufacturing, marketing and selling them. We may never generate revenues that are significant enough to achieve profitability and, even if we do achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis. If we cannot become and remain consistently profitable, the market price of our common stock could decline. In addition, we may be unable to raise capital, expand our business, develop additional product candidates or continue our operations.
We will require substantial funds to continue our research, development and commercialization activities and if the funds we require are greater than what we have estimated, we may need to critically limit or significantly scale back or cease our operations.
We have used substantial funds to develop our RNAi technologies and will require substantial funds to conduct further research and development, including pre-clinical testing and clinical trials of our product candidates, and to manufacture, market and sell our three approved products and any other products that are approved for commercial sale. Because the length of time or activities associated with successful development of our product candidates, including vutrisiran, may be greater than we anticipate, we are unable to estimate the actual funds we will require to develop and commercialize them.
We believe 2019 was our peak operating loss year, and believe that our strategic financing collaboration with Blackstone will enable us to achieve a self-sustainable financial profile without need for future equity financing. However, our future capital requirements and the period for which we expect our existing resources to support our operations may vary from what we expect. We have based our expectations on a number of factors, many of which are difficult to predict or are outside of our control, including:
47
Table of Contents
•progress in our research and development programs, including programs in both rare and prevalent diseases as well as what may be required by regulatory bodies to advance these programs;
•the timing, receipt and amount of milestone and other payments, if any, from present and future collaborators, if any, including milestone payments related to Leqvio, which is being commercialized by our partner, Novartis;
•our ability to maintain and establish additional collaborative arrangements and/or new business initiatives;
•the potential for improved product profiles to emerge from our new technologies and our ability to successfully advance our delivery efforts in extrahepatic tissues;
•the resources, time and costs required to successfully initiate and complete our pre-clinical and clinical studies, obtain regulatory approvals, prepare for global commercialization of our product candidates and obtain and maintain licenses to third-party intellectual property;
•our ability to establish, maintain and operate our own manufacturing facilities in a timely and cost-effective manner;
•our ability to manufacture, or contract with third parties for the manufacture of, our product candidates for clinical testing and commercial sale;
•the impact of COVID-19 on the initiation or completion of pre-clinical studies or clinical trials and the supply of our products or product candidates;
•the resources, time and cost required for the preparation, filing, prosecution, maintenance and enforcement of patent claims;
•the costs associated with legal activities, including litigation and government investigations, arising in the course of our business activities and our ability to prevail or reach a satisfactory result in any such legal disputes and investigations;
•the timing, receipt and amount of sales and royalties, if any, from our approved products and our potential products, if and when approved; and
•the outcome of the regulatory review process and commercial success of drug products for which we are entitled to receive royalties, including Leqvio.
If our estimates, predictions and financial guidance relating to these factors are incorrect, we may need to modify our operating plan and may be required to seek additional funding in the future. We may do so through either collaborative arrangements, public or private equity offerings or debt financings, royalty or other monetization transactions or a combination of one or more of these funding sources. Additional funds may not be available to us on acceptable terms or at all.
In April 2020, we entered into a credit agreement, or Credit Agreement, for up to $750.0 million among us, certain of our subsidiaries (together with us, the Loan Parties), funds or accounts managed or advised by GSO Capital Partners LP (now Blackstone Alternative Credit Advisors LP) and certain other affiliates of Blackstone, and the other lenders from time to time party thereto and Wilmington Trust, National Association, as the administrative agent for the lenders. The Credit Agreement provided for a senior secured delayed draw term loan facility, funded in three tranches, or Term Loans, each tranche as requested by certain dates specified in the Credit Agreement, and subject to customary terms and conditions in the case of each tranche. The Term Loans mature seven years from the date of the first draw, and bear interest at a variable rate. All obligations under the Credit Agreement are secured, subject to certain exceptions, by security interests in certain assets, including the intellectual property owned by us relating to ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and vutrisiran, the equity interests held by the Loan Parties in their subsidiaries, all of our ownership of the inclisiran royalty remaining after the royalty purchase and material real property, and certain personal property, including, without limitation, cash held in certain deposit accounts of the Loan Parties and equipment. The Credit Agreement contains negative covenants that, among other things and subject to certain exceptions, could restrict our ability to, incur additional liens, incur additional indebtedness, make investments, including acquisitions, engage in fundamental changes, sell or dispose of assets that constitute collateral, including certain intellectual property, pay dividends or make any distribution or payment on or redeem, retire or purchase any equity interests, amend, modify or waive certain material agreements or organizational documents and make payments of certain subordinated indebtedness. The Credit Agreement also requires us to have consolidated liquidity of at least $100.0 million as of the last day of each fiscal quarter. Additionally, the Credit Agreement contains certain customary representations and warranties, affirmative covenants and provisions relating to events of default. In August 2020, in connection with execution of the funding agreement for the clinical development of vutrisiran and zilebesiran (formerly ALN-AGT), or Funding Agreement, we entered into the First Amendment to the Credit Agreement. The First Amendment added certain intellectual property owned by us relating to zilebesiran as collateral under the Credit Agreement, as amended, and made certain other amendments related thereto and the Funding Agreement. In December 2020, we drew down the first tranche of $200.0 million and the second and third tranches of $250.0 million each, were drawn under the Credit Agreement, as amended, in June and December 2021, respectively. Our ability to satisfy our obligations under the Credit Agreement, as amended, and meet our debt service obligations will depend upon our future performance, which will be subject to financial, business and other factors affecting our operations, many of which are
48
Table of Contents
beyond our control. If we default on our Term Loans, we may not be able to replace the financing commitment on favorable terms, or at all.
The terms of any financing we may be required to pursue in the future notwithstanding the funds due or available to us from Blackstone may adversely affect the holdings or the rights of our stockholders. If we raise additional funds by issuing equity securities, further dilution to our existing stockholders will result. In addition, as a condition to providing additional funding to us, future investors may demand, and may be granted, rights superior to those of existing stockholders. For example, pursuant to our stock purchase agreement with Blackstone, we agreed to register the resale of the shares purchased on a registration statement and filed a registration statement on June 5, 2020. In addition, subject to certain conditions, Blackstone will be entitled to participate in registered underwritten public offerings by us if other selling stockholders are included in the registration.
If we are unable to obtain additional funding on a timely basis, we may be required to significantly delay or curtail one or more of our research or development programs, or delay or curtail the further development of our global commercial infrastructure, and our ability to achieve our long-term strategic goals may be delayed or diminished. We also could be required to seek funds through arrangements with collaborators or others that may require us to relinquish rights to some of our technologies, product candidates or products that we would otherwise pursue on our own.
Although we sold a portion of the royalty stream and commercial milestones from the global sales of Leqvio by our collaborator, Novartis, we are entitled to retain the remaining portion of future royalties from the global sales of Leqvio and, if certain specified thresholds are met, to the remaining portion of commercial milestone payments, and any negative developments related to Leqvio could have a material adverse effect on our receipt of those payments.
In April 2020, we sold to Blackstone 50% of the royalties payable to us with respect to net sales by Novartis, its affiliates or sublicensees of Leqvio and 75% of the commercial milestone payments payable to us under the MDCO agreement. If Blackstone does not receive royalty payments in respect of global sales of Leqvio equaling at least $1.00 billion by December 31, 2029, Blackstone’s royalty interest will increase to 55% effective January 1, 2030. Our receipt of future royalty payments and a portion of commercial milestone payments may be negatively impacted if the Leqvio royalty stream and commercial milestones payments are insufficient to meet the specified thresholds. For example, in December 2020, the FDA issued a complete response letter regarding Novartis' NDA for inclisiran, stating that the agency could not approve the NDA by the PDUFA action date due to unresolved inspection-related conditions at a third party manufacturing facility, delaying the potential approval and launch of Leqvio in the U.S., as well as payment of an associated approval milestone and potential royalties. While Leqvio was granted marketing authorization by the EC in Europe in December 2020, and was approved by the FDA in December 2021, any negative impact to future royalty payments and commercial milestone payments could affect our ability to meet the specified repayment thresholds. Additional factors that may have an adverse effect on the Leqvio royalty stream and commercial milestones include:
•companies working to develop new therapies or alternative formulations of products for ASCVD;
•foreign currency movement, which could have a negative impact on Novartis’ sales of Leqvio, thereby reducing the royalties;
•any negative developments relating to Leqvio, such as safety, efficacy, or reimbursement issues, could reduce demand for Leqvio;
•any disputes concerning patents, proprietary rights, or license and collaboration agreements could negatively impact our receipt of commercial milestone payments or royalties; and
•adverse regulatory or legislative developments could limit or prohibit the sale of Leqvio, such as restrictions on the use of Leqvio or safety-related label changes, including enhanced risk management programs, which may significantly reduce expected royalty revenue and commercial milestone payments and could require significant expense to address the associated legal and regulatory issues.
If the revenues generated by sales of Leqvio are lower than expected, our business could be materially adversely affected.
We expect our operating results to fluctuate in future periods, which may adversely affect our stock price.
Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated in the past, and may continue to do so in the future. Our operating results may fluctuate due to the impact of the COVID-19 and related variants or a future pandemic, the level of success of our commercial efforts and resulting revenues, as well as the variable nature of our operating expenses as a result of the timing and magnitude of expenditures. For example, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, product revenues in the second quarter of 2020 for ONPATTRO were less than originally forecast. In addition, in one or more future periods, our results of operations may fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors. In that event, the market price of our common stock could substantially decline.
49
Table of Contents
If the estimates we make, or the assumptions on which we rely, in preparing our consolidated financial statements and/or our projected guidance prove inaccurate, our actual results may vary from those reflected in our projections and accruals.
Our consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, or GAAP. The preparation of these consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of our assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses, the amounts of charges accrued by us and related disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. We cannot assure you, however, that our estimates, or the assumptions underlying them, will be correct.
Further, from time to time we issue financial guidance relating to our expectations regarding our combined product sales, collaboration and royalty revenues, and GAAP and non-GAAP research and development and selling, general and administrative expenses, and expectations for our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities available for operations, which guidance is based on estimates and the judgment of management. If, for any reason, our revenues and/or expenses differ materially from our guidance or we utilize our cash more quickly than anticipated, we may have to adjust our publicly announced financial guidance. If we fail to meet, or if we are required to change or update any element of, our publicly disclosed financial guidance or other expectations about our business, our stock price could decline.
The investment of our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities is subject to risks which may cause losses and affect the liquidity of these investments.
As of December 31, 2021, we had $2.44 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. We historically have invested these amounts in high–grade corporate notes, commercial paper, securities issued or sponsored by the U.S. government, certificates of deposit and money market funds meeting the criteria of our investment policy, which is focused on the preservation of our capital. Corporate notes may also include foreign bonds denominated in U.S. dollars. These investments are subject to general credit, liquidity, market and interest rate risks. We may realize losses in the fair value of these investments or a complete loss of these investments, which would have a negative effect on our consolidated financial statements. In addition, should our investments cease paying or reduce the amount of interest paid to us, our interest income would suffer. The market risks associated with our investment portfolio may have an adverse effect on our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition.
Changes in foreign currency exchange rates could have a material adverse effect on our operating results.
Our revenue from outside of the U.S. will increase as our products, whether commercialized by us or our collaborators, gain marketing approval in such jurisdictions. Our primary foreign currency exposure relates to movements in the Japanese yen, Euro and British pound. If the U.S. dollar weakens against a specific foreign currency, our revenues will increase, having a positive impact on net income, but our overall expenses will increase, having a negative impact. Conversely, if the U.S. dollar strengthens against a specific foreign currency, our revenues will decrease, having a negative impact on net income, but our overall expenses will decrease, having a positive impact. Therefore, significant changes in foreign exchange rates can impact our operating results and financial condition.
Changes in tax law could adversely affect our business and financial condition.
Our business is subject to numerous international, federal, state, and other governmental laws, rules, and regulations that may adversely affect our operating results, including, taxation and tax policy changes, tax rate changes, new tax laws, or revised tax law interpretations, which individually or in combination may cause our effective tax rate to increase. In the U.S., the rules dealing with federal, state, and local income taxation are constantly under review by persons involved in the legislative process and by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Treasury Department. Changes to tax laws (which changes may have retroactive application) could adversely affect us or holders of our common stock. In recent years, many such changes have been made and changes are likely to continue to occur in the future. Future changes in tax laws could have a material adverse effect on our business, cash flow, financial condition or results of operations.
Additionally, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, the EC, and individual taxing jurisdictions where we and our affiliates do business have recently focused on issues related to the taxation of multinational corporations. The OECD has released its comprehensive plan to create an agreed set of international rules for fighting base erosion and profit shifting. In addition, the OECD, the EC and individual countries are examining changes to how taxing rights should be allocated among countries considering the digital economy. As a result, the tax laws in the U.S. and other countries in which we and our affiliates do business could change on a prospective or retroactive basis and any such changes could materially adversely affect our business.
Risks Related to Our Dependence on Third Parties
We may not be able to execute our business strategy if we are unable to maintain existing or enter into new alliances with other companies that can provide business and scientific capabilities and funds for the development and commercialization of our product candidates. If we are unsuccessful in forming or maintaining these alliances on terms favorable to us, our business may not succeed.
50
Table of Contents
We are continuing to advance our commercial capabilities, including in marketing, sales, market access and distribution, to support our wholly-owned products. We also continue to advance our growing pipeline of RNAi therapeutic opportunities. However, we may not have adequate capacity or capabilities to advance all of our therapeutic opportunities. Accordingly, we have entered into alliances with other companies and collaborators that we believe can provide such capabilities in certain territories and/or for certain product candidates, and we intend to enter into additional such alliances in the future. Our collaboration strategy is to form alliances that create significant value for us and our collaborators in the advancement of RNAi therapeutics as a new class of innovative medicines. Specifically, with respect to our Genetic Medicine pipeline, as a result of our broad strategic alliance with Sanofi formed in 2014, Sanofi has the right to develop and commercialize fitusiran globally. In addition, we formed a collaboration with MDCO (which was acquired by Novartis in January 2020) to advance inclisiran. In March 2018, we entered into a discovery collaboration with Regeneron to identify RNAi therapeutics for NASH and potentially other related diseases, and in November 2018, we and Regeneron entered into a separate, fifty-fifty collaboration to further research, co-develop and commercialize any therapeutic product candidates that emerge from these discovery efforts. In October 2017, we announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Vir for the development and commercialization of RNAi therapeutics for infectious diseases, including chronic HBV infection. In April 2020, we entered into a development and commercialization collaboration with Dicerna (which was acquired by Novo Nordisk in December 2021) to advance investigational RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of alpha-1 liver disease. With respect to our CNS/Ocular Disease pipeline, in April 2019, we announced a global, strategic collaboration with Regeneron to discover, develop and commercialize RNAi therapeutics for a broad range of diseases by addressing therapeutic targets expressed in the eye and CNS, in addition to a select number of targets expressed in the liver.
In such alliances, we expect our current, and may expect our future, collaborators to provide substantial capabilities in clinical development, regulatory affairs, and/or marketing, sales and distribution. Under certain of our alliances, we also may expect our collaborators to develop, market and/or sell certain of our product candidates. We may have limited or no control over the development, sales, marketing and distribution activities of these third parties. Our future revenues may depend heavily on the success of the efforts of these third parties. For example, we will rely entirely on (i) Regeneron for the development and commercialization of all programs targeting eye diseases (subject to limited exceptions), and potentially other CNS and liver programs, (ii) Novartis for all future development and commercialization of Leqvio worldwide, and (iii) Sanofi for the development and commercialization of fitusiran worldwide. In the case of each such collaboration referenced in clauses (i)-(iii) above, we are entitled to royalties on the sales of each of these products. If our collaborators are not successful in their development and/or commercialization efforts, our future revenues from RNAi therapeutics for these indications may be adversely affected. For example, while Leqvio was granted marketing authorization by the EC in Europe, in December 2020, Novartis received a complete response letter from the FDA stating that the agency could not approve the NDA by the PDUFA action date due to unresolved inspection-related conditions at a third party manufacturing facility. While Leqvio was approved by the FDA in December 2021, the resolution of the complete response letter resulted in a delay in the payment of an approval milestone and potential U.S. royalties. If the revenues generated by the royalties received by Blackstone from us with respect to Leqvio sales do not reach a certain level by the end of 2029, Blackstone will be entitled to a higher royalty percentage beginning in 2030, which would have an adverse impact on our revenues beginning in 2030.
We may not be successful in entering into future alliances on terms favorable to us due to various factors, including our ability to demonstrate improved product profiles from our new technologies, including our IKARIA and GEMINI platforms, our ability to successfully demonstrate proof-of-concept for our technology in humans in certain tissues or disease areas, including our alternative conjugate approach for delivering CNS or ocular product candidates or other extrahepatic approaches, our ability to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of our specific drug candidates, our ability to manufacture or have third parties manufacture RNAi therapeutics, the strength of our intellectual property and/or concerns around challenges to our intellectual property. For example, our decision in October 2016 to discontinue development of revusiran could give rise to concerns around the safety and/or efficacy of our technology platform or product candidates. In addition, the occurrence of a fatal thrombotic serious adverse event, or SAE, in our fitusiran study in 2017 and a subsequent pause in dosing and enrollment in fitusiran clinical studies in 2020 could contribute to further concerns about the safety of specific therapeutic candidates or therapeutic candidates for specific diseases. Even when we succeed in securing such alliances, we may not be able to maintain them if, for example, development or approval of a product candidate is delayed, challenges are raised as to the validity or scope of our intellectual property, we are unable to secure adequate reimbursement from payors or sales of an approved drug are lower than we expected.
Furthermore, any delay in entering into collaboration agreements would likely either delay the development and commercialization of certain of our product candidates and reduce their competitiveness even if they reach the market, or prevent the development of certain product candidates. Any such delay related to our collaborations could adversely affect our business.
For certain product candidates, we have formed collaborations to fund all or part of the costs of drug development and commercialization, such as our collaborations with Regeneron, Novartis, Vir, Dicerna (acquired by Novo Nordisk) and Sanofi. We may not, however, be able to enter into additional collaborations for certain other programs, and the terms of any collaboration agreement we do secure may not be favorable to us. If we are not successful in our efforts to enter into future collaboration arrangements with respect to one or more of our product candidates, we may not have sufficient funds to develop
51
Table of Contents
these product candidates or other product candidates internally, or to bring our product candidates to market. If we do not have sufficient funds to develop and bring our product candidates to market, we will not be able to generate revenues from these product candidates, and this will substantially harm our business.
If any collaborator materially amends, terminates or fails to perform its obligations under agreements with us, the development and commercialization of our product candidates could be delayed or terminated.
Our dependence on collaborators for capabilities and funding means that our business could be adversely affected if any collaborator materially amends or terminates its collaboration agreement with us or fails to perform its obligations under that agreement. Our current or future collaborations, if any, may not be scientifically or commercially successful. Disputes may arise in the future with respect to the ownership of rights to technology or products developed with collaborators, which could have an adverse effect on our ability to develop and commercialize any affected product candidate. Our current collaborations allow, and we expect that any future collaborations will allow, either party to terminate the collaboration for a material breach by the other party. In addition, our collaborators may have additional termination rights for convenience with respect to the collaboration or a particular program under the collaboration, under certain circumstances. For example, our agreement with MDCO, which was acquired by Novartis in January 2020, relating to the development and commercialization of inclisiran worldwide may be terminated by Novartis at any time upon four months’ prior written notice, provided if the agreement is terminated by Novartis for convenience, Novartis must grant a license to us under certain of our technology developed in the course of MDCO's activities under the agreement, subject to a royalty to be negotiated between the parties. Moreover, any adverse actions by Novartis with respect to the MDCO agreement or disputes with Novartis regarding each party's rights and obligations under the MDCO agreement could adversely impact our ability to comply with our obligations under our agreements with Blackstone. If we were to lose a commercialization collaborator, we would have to attract a new collaborator or develop expanded sales, distribution and marketing capabilities internally, which would require us to invest significant amounts of financial and management resources.
In addition, if we have a dispute with a collaborator over the ownership of technology or other matters, or if a collaborator terminates its collaboration with us, for breach or otherwise, or determines not to pursue the research, development and/or commercialization of RNAi therapeutics, it could delay our development of product candidates, result in the need for additional company resources to develop product candidates, require us to expend time and resources to develop expanded sales and marketing capabilities on a more expedited timeline, make it more difficult for us to attract new collaborators and could adversely affect how we are perceived in the business and financial communities.
Moreover, a collaborator, or in the event of a change in control of a collaborator or the assignment of a collaboration agreement to a third party, the successor entity or assignee, as in the case of MDCO and Novartis, could determine that it is in its interests to:
•pursue alternative technologies or develop alternative products, either on its own or jointly with others, that may be competitive with the products on which it is collaborating with us or which could affect its commitment to the collaboration with us;
•pursue higher-priority programs or change the focus of its development programs, which could affect the collaborator’s commitment to us; or
•if it has marketing rights, choose to devote fewer resources to the marketing of our product candidates, if any are approved for marketing, than it does for product candidates developed without us.
If any of these occur, the development and commercialization of one or more products or product candidates could be delayed, curtailed or terminated because we may not have sufficient financial resources or capabilities to continue such development and commercialization on our own.
We have limited manufacturing experience and resources and we must incur significant costs to develop this expertise and/or rely on third parties to manufacture our products.
We have limited manufacturing experience. In order to continue to commercialize our approved products, continue to develop our current product candidates, including vutrisiran, apply for regulatory approvals and, if approved, commercialize future products, we will need to develop, contract for, or otherwise arrange for the necessary manufacturing capabilities. Historically, our internal manufacturing capabilities were limited to small-scale production of material for use in in vitro and in vivo experiments that is not required to be produced under cGMP standards. During 2012, we developed cGMP capabilities and processes for the manufacture of patisiran formulated bulk drug product for late stage clinical trial use and commercial supply. In addition, during 2020, we completed construction and qualification of our cGMP manufacturing facility in Norton, Massachusetts where we manufacture drug substance for clinical and, eventually, will manufacture for commercial use. In December 2020, we began cGMP operations, and we believe this facility will enable us to initiate manufacturing for multiple new early-stage programs over the next few years, as well as provide us the manufacturing capabilities to support our late-stage and commercial programs in the future.
52
Table of Contents
At the present time, we may manufacture limited quantities of clinical trial materials ourselves, but otherwise we continue to rely on third parties to manufacture the drug substance and finished product we will require for any clinical trials that we initiate and to support the commercial supply of our approved products and any of our other product candidates. There are a limited number of manufacturers that supply synthetic siRNAs. We currently rely on a limited number of CMOs for our supply of synthetic siRNAs. There are risks inherent in pharmaceutical manufacturing that could affect the ability of our CMOs to meet our delivery time requirements or provide adequate amounts of material to meet our needs, and ultimately delay our clinical trials and potentially put at risk commercial supply, as well as result in additional expense to us. To fulfill our siRNA requirements, we will likely need to secure alternative suppliers of synthetic siRNAs and such alternative suppliers are limited and may not be readily available, or we may be unable to enter into agreements with them on reasonable terms and in a timely manner. As noted above, in order to ensure long-term supply capabilities for our RNAi therapeutics, we are developing our own capabilities to manufacture drug substance for clinical and commercial use.
In addition to the manufacture of the synthetic siRNAs, we may have additional manufacturing requirements related to the technology required to deliver the siRNA to the relevant cell or tissue type, such as LNPs or conjugates. In some cases, the delivery technology we utilize is highly specialized or proprietary, and for technical and/or legal reasons, we may have access to only one or a limited number of potential manufacturers for such delivery technology. In addition, the scale-up of our delivery technologies could be very difficult and/or take significant time. We also have very limited experience in such scale-up and manufacturing, requiring us to depend on a limited number of third parties, who might not be able to deliver in a timely manner, or at all. Failure by manufacturers to properly manufacture our delivery technology and/or formulate our siRNAs for delivery could result in unusable product, supply delays and shortages. Furthermore, competition for supply from our manufacturers from other companies, a breach by such manufacturers of their contractual obligations or a dispute with such manufacturers would cause delays in our discovery and development efforts, as well as additional expense to us. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, was enacted in March 2020, and requires that manufacturers have in place a risk management plan that identifies and evaluates the risks to the supply of approved drugs for certain serious diseases or conditions for each establishment where the drug or active pharmaceutical ingredient is manufactured. The risk management plan will be subject to FDA review during an inspection. If we experience shortages in the supply of our marketed products, as a result of COVID-19 or otherwise, our results could be materially impacted. To date, three vaccines for COVID-19 have received Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA and two of those have since received marketing approval. Additional vaccines may be authorized or approved in the future. The resultant demand for vaccines and potential for manufacturing facilities and materials to be commandeered under the Defense Production Act of 1950, or equivalent foreign legislation, may make it more difficult to obtain materials or manufacturing slots for the products needed for our clinical trials or commercial products, which could lead to delays in these trials or issues with our commercial supply.
In developing manufacturing capabilities by building our own manufacturing facilities, we have incurred substantial expenditures, and expect to incur significant additional expenditures in the future. Also, we have had to, and will likely need to continue to, hire and train qualified employees to staff our facilities. If we are unable to manufacture sufficient quantities of material or if we encounter problems with our facilities in the future, we may also need to secure alternative suppliers, and such alternative suppliers may not be available, or we may be unable to enter into agreements with them on reasonable terms and in a timely manner. Given our dependence on a limited number of CMOs to supply our commercial products and clinical candidates, and our dependence on our own facility, any delay in supply caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could impact our ability to procure sufficient supplies for our approved products, and the development of our product candidates could also be delayed. Any delay or setback in the manufacture of our approved products could impede ongoing commercial supply, which could significantly impact our revenues and operating results. In addition, to the extent we or our partners rely on CMOs outside of the U.S. to supply drug substance for our product candidates, any delays or disruptions in supply caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could have a material adverse impact on the research and development activities and potential commercialization of our or our partners' product candidates.
The manufacturing process for our approved products and any other products that we may develop, is subject to the FDA and foreign regulatory authority approval process and we will need to meet, and will need to contract with CMOs who can meet, all applicable FDA and foreign regulatory authority requirements on an ongoing basis. In addition, if we receive the necessary regulatory approval for any product candidate, we also expect to rely on third parties, including potentially our commercial collaborators, to produce materials required for commercial supply.
To the extent that we have existing, or enter into future, manufacturing arrangements with third parties, we depend, and will depend in the future, on these third parties, to perform their obligations in a timely manner and consistent with contractual and regulatory requirements, including those related to quality control and quality assurance. The failure of any CMO to perform its obligations as expected, or, to the extent we manufacture all or a portion of our product candidates ourselves, our failure to execute on our manufacturing requirements, could adversely affect our business in a number of ways, including:
•we or our current or future collaborators may not be able to initiate or continue clinical trials of product candidates that are under development;
53
Table of Contents
•we or our current or future collaborators may be delayed in submitting regulatory applications, or receiving regulatory approvals, for our product candidates;
•we may lose the cooperation of our collaborators;
•our facilities and those of our CMOs, and our products could be the subject of inspections by regulatory authorities that could have a negative outcome and result in delays in supply;
•we may be required to cease distribution or recall some or all batches of our products or take action to recover clinical trial material from clinical trial sites; and
•ultimately, we may not be able to meet commercial demands for our products.
We rely on third parties to conduct our clinical trials, and if they fail to fulfill their obligations, our development plans may be adversely affected.
We rely on independent clinical investigators, contract research organizations, or CROs, and other third-party service providers to assist us in managing, monitoring and otherwise carrying out our clinical trials. We have contracted, and we plan to continue to contract with, certain third parties to provide certain services, including site selection, enrollment, monitoring, auditing and data management services. These investigators and CROs are not our employees and we have limited control over the amount of time and resources they dedicate to our programs. These third parties may have contractual relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors, which may draw their time and resources away from our programs. Although we depend heavily on these parties, we control only certain aspects of their activity and therefore, we cannot be assured that these third parties will adequately perform all of their contractual obligations to us in compliance with regulatory and other legal requirements and our internal policies and procedures. Nevertheless, we are responsible for ensuring that each of our studies is conducted in accordance with the applicable protocol, legal, regulatory and scientific standards, and our reliance on third parties does not relieve us of our regulatory responsibilities. We and our CROs are required to comply with applicable GCP requirements, which are regulations and guidelines enforced by the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities for all of our product candidates in clinical development, and to implement timely corrective action to any non-compliance. Regulatory authorities enforce these GCP requirements through periodic inspections of trial sponsors, principal investigators and trial sites, including in connection with the review of marketing applications. If we or any of our CROs fail to comply with applicable GCP requirements, or fail to take any such corrective action, the clinical data generated in our clinical trials may be deemed unreliable and the FDA, the EMA, the PMDA in Japan or comparable foreign regulatory authorities may require us to take additional action or perform additional clinical trials before approving our marketing applications. We cannot assure you that upon inspection by a given regulatory authority in the future, such regulatory authority will determine that any of our clinical trials comply with GCP regulations.
If our third-party service providers cannot adequately and timely fulfill their obligations to us for any reason, including due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on their operations or at the sites they are overseeing, or if the quality and accuracy of our clinical trial data is compromised due to failure by such third party to adhere to our protocols or regulatory requirements or if such third parties otherwise fail to meet deadlines, our development plans and/or regulatory reviews for marketing approvals may be delayed or terminated. As a result, our stock price would likely be negatively impacted, and our results of operations and the commercial prospects for our product candidates would be harmed, our costs could increase and our ability to generate additional revenues could be delayed.
Risks Related to Managing Our Operations
If we are unable to attract and retain qualified key management and scientists, development, medical and commercial staff, consultants and advisors, in particular following our recent leadership transition, our ability to implement our business plan may be adversely affected.
We are highly dependent upon our senior management and our scientific, clinical, sales and medical staff. We recently underwent our first leadership transition, and we believe our current management team is well-positioned to execute our strategy. Nonetheless, this recent leadership transition may be viewed negatively by employees, investors and/or our strategic partners. Moreover, attrition associated with this transition could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of product development and commercialization, and other business objectives, and adversely impact our stock price. Our employment arrangements with our key personnel are terminable without notice. We do not carry key person life insurance on any of our employees.
We have grown our workforce significantly over the past several years and anticipate continuing to add additional employees as we focus on achieving our Alnylam P5x25 strategy. We face intense competition for qualified individuals from numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities, governmental entities and other research institutions, many of which have substantially greater resources with which to attract and reward qualified individuals than we do. In addition, due to the risks associated with developing a new class of medicine, we may face additional challenges in attracting and retaining employees. If we are not successful commercializing our approved products, we may be unable to attract and retain highly qualified sales and marketing professionals to support our approved products and our future products, if approved,
54
Table of Contents
including vutrisiran. Accordingly, we may be unable to attract and retain suitably qualified individuals in order to support our growing research, development and global commercialization efforts and initiatives, and our failure to do so could have an adverse effect on our ability to implement our future business plans.
We may have difficulty expanding our operations successfully as we continue our evolution from a U.S.- and EU-based company primarily involved in discovery, pre-clinical testing and clinical development into a global company that develops and commercializes multiple drugs.
As we continue the commercial launches of our approved products, and increase the number of product candidates we are developing, we will need to continue to expand our operations in the U.S. and further develop operations in the EU and other geographies, including Asia and Latin America. To date, we have received regulatory approval for three products, which we have launched in multiple geographies globally, and we continue to expand the reach of these products with additional regulatory filings and launches. In addition, we have a fourth product under review by regulatory authorities.
We have grown our workforce significantly over the last five years and anticipate continuing to hire additional employees globally in the future as we focus on the commercialization of ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO, preparing for the potential launch of vutrisiran and achieving our Alnylam P5x25 strategy. This growth has placed a strain on our administrative and operational infrastructure and, as a result, we will need to continue to develop additional and/or new infrastructure and capabilities to support our growth and obtain additional space to conduct our global operations in the U.S., the EU, Japan, Latin America and other geographies. If we are unable to develop such additional infrastructure or obtain sufficient space to accommodate our growth in a timely manner and on commercially reasonable terms, our business could be negatively impacted. As we continue the commercialization of our approved products, and as the product candidates we develop enter and advance through clinical trials, we will need to continue to expand our global development, regulatory, manufacturing, quality, compliance, and marketing and sales capabilities, or contract with other organizations to provide these capabilities for us. In addition, as our operations continue to expand, we will need to successfully manage additional relationships with various collaborators, suppliers, distributors and other organizations. Our ability to manage our operations and future growth will require us to continue to enhance our operational, financial and management controls and systems, reporting systems and infrastructure, ethics and compliance functions, and policies and procedures. We may not be able to implement enhancements to our management information and control systems in an efficient or timely manner and may discover deficiencies in existing systems and controls.
The use of social media presents risks and challenges.
Social media is being used to communicate about our clinical development programs and the diseases our investigational RNAi therapeutics are being developed to treat, and we are utilizing what we believe is appropriate social media in connection with our commercialization efforts for our approved products, and we intend to do the same for our future products, if approved, including vutrisiran. Social media practices in the biopharmaceutical industry continue to evolve and regulations and regulatory guidance relating to such use are evolving and not always clear. This evolution creates uncertainty and risk of noncompliance with regulations applicable to our business, resulting in potential regulatory actions against us, along with the potential for litigation related to off-label marketing or other prohibited activities. For example, for our clinical-stage candidates, patients may use social media channels to comment on their experience in an ongoing blinded clinical study or to report an alleged AE. When such disclosures occur, there is a risk that study enrollment may be adversely impacted, we fail to monitor and comply with applicable adverse event, or AE, reporting obligations or that we may not be able to defend our business or the public’s legitimate interests in the face of the political and market pressures generated by social media due to restrictions on what we may say about our investigational products. There is also a risk of inappropriate disclosure of sensitive information or negative or inaccurate posts or comments about us on any online platform, including a blog on the internet, or a post on a website, that can be distributed rapidly and could negatively harm our reputation. If any of these events were to occur or we otherwise fail to comply with applicable regulations, we could incur liability, face regulatory actions or incur other harm to our business.
Our business and operations could suffer in the event of system failures or unauthorized or inappropriate use of or access to our systems.
We are increasingly dependent on our information technology systems and infrastructure for our business. We collect, store and transmit sensitive information including intellectual property, proprietary business information and personal information in connection with business operations. The secure maintenance of this information is critical to our operations and business strategy. Some of this information could be an attractive target of criminal attack or unauthorized access and use by third parties with a wide range of motives and expertise, including organized criminal groups, “hacktivists,” patient groups, disgruntled current or former employees and others. Cyber-attacks are of ever-increasing levels of sophistication, and despite our security measures, our information technology and infrastructure may be vulnerable to such attacks or may be breached, including due to employee error or malfeasance.
The pervasiveness of cybersecurity incidents in general and the risks of cyber-crime are complex and continue to evolve. Although we are making significant efforts to maintain the security and integrity of our information systems and are exploring various measures to manage the risk of a security breach or disruption, there can be no assurance that our security efforts and
55
Table of Contents
measures will be effective or that attempted security breaches or disruptions would not be successful or damaging. Despite the implementation of security measures, our internal computer systems and those of our contractors and consultants are vulnerable to damage or interruption from computer viruses, unauthorized or inappropriate access or use, natural disasters, pandemics (including COVID-19), terrorism, war, and telecommunication and electrical failures. Such events could cause interruption of our operations. For example, the loss of pre-clinical trial data or data from completed or ongoing clinical trials for our product candidates could result in delays in our regulatory filings and development efforts, as well as delays in the commercialization of our products, and significantly increase our costs. To the extent that any disruption, security breach or unauthorized or inappropriate use or access to our systems were to result in a loss of or damage to our data, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, including but not limited to patient, employee or vendor information, we could incur notification obligations to affected individuals and government agencies, liability, including potential lawsuits from patients, collaborators, employees, stockholders or other third parties and liability under foreign, federal and state laws that protect the privacy and security of personal information, and the development and potential commercialization of our product candidates could be delayed.
Our business and operations may be negatively impacted by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU.
Following the results of a referendum in 2016, the United Kingdom, or UK, left the EU on January 31, 2020, commonly referred to as “Brexit.” Pursuant to the formal withdrawal arrangements agreed between the UK and the EU, the UK was subject to a transition period until December 31, 2020, or the Transition Period, during which EU rules continued to apply, while the future relationship between the UK and EU was formally negotiated. The UK and the EU have signed an EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, or TCA, which became provisionally applicable on January 1, 2021 and has been formally applicable since May 1, 2021. The TCA includes specific provisions concerning pharmaceuticals, which include the mutual recognition of GMP, inspections of manufacturing facilities for medicinal products and GMP documents issued, but does not foresee wholesale mutual recognition of UK and EU pharmaceutical regulations. At present, Great Britain has implemented EU legislation on the marketing, promotion and sale of medicinal products through the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 (as amended) (under the Northern Ireland Protocol, the EU regulatory framework will continue to apply in Northern Ireland). The regulatory regime in Great Britain therefore currently aligns with EU regulations, however it is possible that these regimes will diverge in future now that Great Britain’s regulatory system is independent from the EU and the TCA does not provide for mutual recognition of UK and EU pharmaceutical legislation. It remains to be seen how Brexit will impact regulatory requirements for medicinal products and devices in the UK in the long-term.
Since the expiry of the Transition Period, Great Britain is no longer covered by centralized marketing authorizations (under the Northern Ireland Protocol, centralized marketing authorizations will continue to be recognized in Northern Ireland). For a period of two years from January 1, 2021, the MHRA, the UK medicines regulator, may rely on a decision taken by the EC on the approval of a new marketing authorization in the centralized procedure, in order to more quickly grant a new Great Britain marketing authorization. A separate application will, however, still be required. Any new divergent regulations in Great Britain and the EU could add time and expense to the conduct of our business, as well as the process by which our products receive regulatory approval in the UK, the EU and elsewhere. Any of these longer-term effects of Brexit, and others we cannot anticipate, could negatively impact our business and results of operations.
Risks Related to Our Industry
Risks Related to Development, Clinical Testing and Regulatory Approval of Our Product Candidates and the Commercialization of Our Approved Products
Any product candidates we or our partners develop may fail in development or be delayed to a point where they do not become commercially viable.
Before obtaining regulatory approval for the commercial distribution of our product candidates, we must conduct, at our own expense, extensive nonclinical tests and clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and/or efficacy in humans of our product candidates. Nonclinical and clinical testing is expensive, difficult to design and implement, can take many years to complete and is uncertain as to outcome, and the historical failure rate for product candidates is high. We currently have multiple programs in clinical development, including internal and partnered programs in Phase 3 development, as well as several earlier-stage clinical programs. In January 2021, we announced positive topline results from the HELIOS-A Phase 3 study of vutrisiran, an investigational RNAi therapeutic in development for the treatment of ATTR amyloidosis. Based on these positive results in patients with hATTR amyloidosis with polyneuropathy, we submitted an NDA for vutrisiran with the FDA in April 2021, which was accepted by the FDA. The FDA has set an action date of April 14, 2022 under PDUFA, and indicated that they were not currently planning an advisory committee meeting as part of the NDA review. In September 2021, we presented additional 9-month data from the HELIOS-A Phase 3 study of vutrisiran, and submitted an MAA in the EU with the EMA. Further, in January 2022, we reported positive full results for 18-month endpoints and safety from the HELIOS-A Phase 3 study of vutrisiran. We are also conducting additional Phase 3 trials of vutrisiran and patisiran in ATTR patients with cardiomyopathy. However, we may not be able to further advance these or any other product candidate through clinical trials and regulatory approval.
56
Table of Contents
Additionally, several of our planned and ongoing clinical trials, such as our HELIOS-A study, utilize an “open-label” trial design. An “open-label” clinical trial is one where both the patient and investigator know whether the patient is receiving the investigational product candidate or either an existing approved drug or placebo. Most typically, open-label clinical trials test only the investigational product candidate and sometimes may do so at different dose levels. Open-label clinical trials are subject to various limitations that may exaggerate any therapeutic effect as patients in open-label clinical trials are aware when they are receiving treatment. Open-label clinical trials may be subject to a “patient bias” where patients perceive their symptoms to have improved merely due to their awareness of receiving an experimental treatment. In addition, open-label clinical trials may be subject to an “investigator bias” where those assessing and reviewing the physiological outcomes of the clinical trials are aware of which patients have received treatment and may interpret the information of the treated group more favorably given this knowledge. The results from an open-label trial may not be predictive of future clinical trial results with any of our product candidates for which we include an open-label clinical trial when studied in a controlled environment with a placebo or active control.
If we enter into clinical trials, the results from nonclinical testing or early or late stage clinical trials of a product candidate may not predict the results that will be obtained in subsequent subjects or in subsequent human clinical trials of that product candidate or any other product candidate. For example, we are conducting the APOLLO-B and HELIOS-B Phase 3 clinical trials of patisiran and vutrisiran, respectively, which are investigating the potential of patisiran and vutrisiran to treat the cardiac manifestations of disease in patients with ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. While both patisiran and vutrisiran have demonstrated positive results in patients with hATTR amyloidosis with polyneuropathy, we cannot be certain that the results from APOLLO-B and/or HELIOS-B will be positive or support approval of patisiran and/or vutrisiran for the treatment of patients with ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. There is a high failure rate for drugs proceeding through clinical studies. A number of companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have suffered significant setbacks in clinical development even after achieving promising results in earlier studies, and any such setbacks in our clinical development, including with respect to patisiran and/or vutrisiran, could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results. Moreover, our approved products and our current product candidates, employ novel delivery technologies that, with the exception of inclisiran, have yet to be extensively evaluated in human clinical trials and proven safe and effective.
In addition, we, the FDA or other applicable regulatory authorities, or an IRB, or similar foreign review board or committee, may delay initiation of or suspend clinical trials of a product candidate at any time for various reasons, including if we or they believe the healthy volunteer subjects or patients participating in such trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks. Among other reasons, adverse side effects of a product candidate or related product on healthy volunteer subjects or patients in a clinical trial could result in our decision, or a decision by the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities, to suspend or terminate the trial, or, in the case of regulatory agencies, a refusal to approve a particular product candidate for any or all indications of use. For example, in October 2016, we announced our decision to discontinue development of revusiran, an investigational RNAi therapeutic that was being developed for the treatment of patients with cardiomyopathy due to hATTR amyloidosis. Our decision followed the recommendation of the revusiran ENDEAVOUR Phase 3 study Data Monitoring Committee to suspend dosing and the observation of an imbalance in mortality in revusiran-treated patients as compared to those on placebo.
Clinical trials of a new product candidate require the enrollment of a sufficient number of patients, including patients who are suffering from the disease the product candidate is intended to treat and who meet other eligibility criteria. Rates of patient enrollment are affected by many factors, including the size of the patient population, the age and condition of the patients, the stage and severity of disease, the availability of clinical trials for other investigational drugs for the same disease or condition, the nature of the protocol, the proximity of patients to clinical sites, the availability of effective treatments for the relevant disease, and the eligibility criteria for the clinical trial. For example, we or our partners may experience difficulty enrolling our clinical trials, including, but not limited to, the ongoing clinical trials for fitusiran, due to the availability of existing approved treatments, as well as other investigational treatments in development. In addition, in November 2018 we announced that due to recruitment challenges, we had discontinued a Phase 2 study of cemdisiran in atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome and are focusing our cemdisiran clinical development efforts in a different indication. Delays or difficulties in patient enrollment or difficulties retaining trial participants, including as a result of the availability of existing or other investigational treatments or safety concerns, including the impact of public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can result in increased costs, longer development times or termination of a clinical trial.
Although our investigational RNAi therapeutics have been generally well-tolerated in our clinical trials to date, new safety findings may emerge. For example, in September 2017, we announced that we had temporarily suspended dosing in all ongoing fitusiran studies pending further review of a fatal thrombotic SAE that occurred in a patient with hemophilia A without inhibitors who was receiving fitusiran in our Phase 2 OLE study. More recently, in October 2020, Sanofi voluntarily paused dosing in all ongoing fitusiran clinical studies to assess reports of non-fatal thrombotic events in patients participating in the ATLAS Phase 3 program. Following an assessment of available data and alignment with regulators, patients restarted on fitusiran under amended protocols in ongoing adolescent and adult clinical studies. In October 2021, Sanofi announced that a potential filing date for fitusiran has been moved to 2024 due to the introduction of a lower dose cohort in the ongoing phase 3 studies.
57
Table of Contents
As demonstrated by the discontinuation of our revusiran program in October 2016, the temporary suspension of dosing in September 2017 in our fitusiran studies, as well as Sanofi's voluntary pause of fitusiran studies in October 2020, the occurrence of SAEs and/or AEs can result in the suspension or termination of clinical trials of a product candidate by us, our partners, or the FDA or a foreign regulatory authority. The occurrence of SAEs and/or AEs could also result in refusal by the FDA or a foreign regulatory authority to approve a particular product candidate for any or all indications of use.
Clinical trials also require the review, oversight and approval of IRBs, or, outside of the U.S., an independent ethics committee, which continually review clinical investigations and protect the rights and welfare of human subjects. Inability to obtain or delay in obtaining IRB or ethics committee approval can prevent or delay the initiation and completion of clinical trials, and the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities may decide not to consider any data or information derived from a clinical investigation not subject to initial and continuing IRB or ethics committee review and approval, as the case may be, in support of a marketing application.
Our product candidates that we develop may encounter problems during clinical trials that will cause us, an IRB, ethics committee or regulatory authorities to delay, suspend or terminate these trials, or that will delay or confound the analysis of data from these trials. If we experience any such problems, we may not have the financial resources to continue development of the product candidate that is affected, or development of any of our other product candidates. We may also lose, or be unable to enter into, collaborative arrangements for the affected product candidate and for other product candidates we are developing.
A failure of one or more of our clinical trials can occur at any stage of testing. We may experience numerous unforeseen events during, or as a result of, nonclinical testing and the clinical trial process that could delay or prevent regulatory approval or our ability to commercialize our product candidates, including:
•our nonclinical tests or clinical trials may produce negative or inconclusive results, and we may decide, or regulators may require us, to conduct additional nonclinical testing or clinical trials, or we may abandon projects that we expect to be promising;
•delays in filing IND applications or comparable foreign applications or delays or failure in obtaining the necessary approvals from regulators or IRBs/ethics committees in order to commence a clinical trial at a prospective trial site, or their suspension or termination of a clinical trial once commenced;
•conditions imposed on us by an IRB or ethics committee, or the FDA or comparable foreign authorities regarding the scope or design of our clinical trials;
•problems in engaging IRBs or ethics committees to oversee clinical trials or problems in obtaining or maintaining IRB or ethics committee approval of trials;
•delays in enrolling patients and volunteers into clinical trials, and variability in the number and types of patients and volunteers available for clinical trials, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic;
•disruptions caused by man-made or natural disasters or public health pandemics or epidemics or other business interruptions, including the current COVID-19 pandemic;
•high drop-out rates for patients and volunteers in clinical trials;
•negative or inconclusive results from our clinical trials or the clinical trials of others for product candidates similar to ours;
•inadequate supply or quality of product candidate materials or other materials necessary for the conduct of our clinical trials or disruption or delays in the clinical supply due to the COVID-19 or a future pandemic;
•greater than anticipated clinical trial costs;
•serious and unexpected drug-related side effects experienced by participants in our clinical trials or by individuals using drugs similar to our product candidates;
•poor or disappointing effectiveness of our product candidates during clinical trials;
•unfavorable FDA or other regulatory agency inspection and review of a clinical trial site or records of any clinical or nonclinical investigation;
•failure of our third-party contractors or investigators to comply with regulatory requirements, including GCP and cGMP, or otherwise meet their contractual obligations in a timely manner, or at all;
•governmental or regulatory delays and changes in regulatory requirements, policy and guidelines, including the imposition of additional regulatory oversight around clinical testing generally or with respect to our technology in particular; or
•interpretations of data by the FDA and similar foreign regulatory agencies that differ from ours.
58
Table of Contents
Even if we successfully complete clinical trials of our product candidates, any given product candidate may not prove to be a safe and effective treatment for the disease for which it was being tested.
We or our partners may be unable to obtain U.S. or foreign regulatory approval for our or our partnered product candidates and, as a result, we or our partners may be unable to commercialize such product candidates.
Our and our partnered product candidates are subject to extensive governmental regulations relating to, among other things, research, testing, development, manufacturing, safety, efficacy, approval, recordkeeping, reporting, labeling, storage, pricing, marketing and distribution of drugs. Rigorous nonclinical testing and clinical trials and an extensive regulatory approval process are required to be successfully completed in the U.S. and in many foreign jurisdictions before a new drug can be marketed. Satisfaction of these and other regulatory requirements is costly, time consuming, uncertain and subject to unanticipated delays. It is possible that the product candidates we and our partners are developing will not obtain the regulatory approvals necessary for us or our collaborators to begin selling them.
The time required to obtain FDA and other regulatory approvals is unpredictable but typically takes many years following the commencement of clinical trials, depending upon the type, complexity and novelty of the product candidate. The standards that the FDA and its foreign counterparts use when regulating us are not always applied predictably or uniformly and can change. Any analysis we perform of data from nonclinical and clinical activities is subject to confirmation and interpretation by regulatory authorities, which could delay, limit or prevent regulatory approval. We or our partners may also encounter unexpected delays or increased costs due to new government regulations, for example, from future legislation or administrative action, or from changes in FDA policy during the period of product development, clinical trials and FDA regulatory review. It is impossible to predict whether legislative changes will be enacted, or whether FDA or foreign regulations, guidance or interpretations will be changed, or what the impact of such changes, if any, may be.
Because the drugs we or our partners are developing represent a new class of drug, the FDA and its foreign counterparts have not yet established any definitive policies, practices or guidelines in relation to these drugs. The lack of policies, practices or guidelines may hinder or slow review by the FDA of any regulatory filings that we or our partners may submit. Moreover, the FDA may respond to these submissions by defining requirements we or our partners may not have anticipated. Such responses could lead to significant delays and increased costs in the development of our or our partnered product candidates. In addition, because there may be approved treatments for some of the diseases for which we or our partners may seek approval, or treatments in development which are approved by the time we or they apply for approval, in order to receive regulatory approval, we or they may need to demonstrate through clinical trials that the product candidates we develop to treat these diseases, if any, are not only safe and effective, but safer or more effective than existing products. Interruption or delays in the operations of the FDA, EMA and comparable foreign regulatory agencies due to the COVID-19 pandemic may impact the review, inspection and approval timelines for our or our partnered product candidates. During the COVID-19 public health emergency, the FDA has worked to ensure timely reviews of applications for medical products in line with its user fee performance goals and conduct mission critical domestic and foreign inspections to ensure compliance of manufacturing facilities with FDA quality standards. However, the FDA may not be able to continue its current pace and approval timelines could be extended, including where a pre-approval inspection or an inspection of clinical sites is required and due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions the FDA is unable to complete such required inspections during the review period. During the COVID-19 public health emergency, a number of companies announced receipt of complete response letters due to the FDA's inability to complete required inspections for their applications. In December 2020, the FDA issued a complete response letter regarding Novartis' NDA for inclisiran, stating that the agency could not approve the NDA by the PDUFA action date due to unresolved facility inspection-related conditions. In July 2021, Novartis announced that the resubmission to the FDA of the inclisiran NDA to address the complete response letter was filed, and the FDA approved Leqvio (which is the trade name under which inclisiran will be marketed in the U.S.) in December 2021. The delay in the approval of Leqvio resulted in delayed milestone and royalty revenue to us. Any similar interruption or delay by the FDA, EMA or comparable foreign regulatory agency in light of the COVID-19 pandemic could have a material adverse effect on our efforts to obtain regulatory approval for our product candidates, including vutrisiran, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial results.
Any delay or failure in obtaining required approvals for our product candidates or our partnered product candidates could have a material adverse effect on our ability to generate revenues from any product candidate for which we or our partners may seek approval in the future. Furthermore, any regulatory approval to market any product may be subject to limitations on the approved uses for which we or our partners may market the product or the labeling or other restrictions, which could limit each such product’s market opportunity and have a negative impact on our results of operations and our stock price. In addition, the FDA has the authority to require a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, plan as part of an NDA, or after approval, which may impose further requirements or restrictions on the distribution or use of an approved drug, such as limiting prescribing to certain physicians or medical centers that have undergone specialized training, limiting treatment to patients who meet certain safe-use criteria and requiring treated patients to enroll in a registry. In the EU, we or our partners could be required to adopt a similar plan, known as a risk management plan, and our products could be subject to specific risk minimization measures, such as restrictions on prescription and supply, the conduct of post-marketing safety or efficacy studies, or the distribution of patient and/or prescriber educational materials. In either instance, these limitations and restrictions may limit the size of the market for the product and affect reimbursement by third-party payors.
59
Table of Contents
We are also subject to numerous foreign regulatory requirements governing, among other things, the conduct of clinical trials, manufacturing and marketing authorization, pricing and third-party reimbursement. The foreign regulatory approval process varies among countries and includes all of the risks associated with FDA approval described above as well as risks attributable to the satisfaction of local regulations in foreign jurisdictions. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities outside the U.S. and vice versa.
Even if we or our partners obtain regulatory approvals, our marketed drugs will be subject to ongoing regulatory oversight. If we or our partners fail to comply with continuing U.S. and foreign requirements, our approvals could be limited or withdrawn, we could be subject to other penalties, and our business would be seriously harmed.
Following any initial regulatory approval of drugs we or our partners may develop, including our three approved drugs, we will also be subject to continuing regulatory oversight, including the review of adverse drug experiences and clinical results that are reported after our drug products are made commercially available. This would include results from any post-marketing tests or surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of our approved drugs or other drug products required as a condition of approval or agreed to by us. The regulatory approvals that we receive for ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO, as well as any regulatory approvals we receive for any other product candidates, including vutrisiran, may also be subject to limitations on the approved uses for which the product may be marketed. Other ongoing regulatory requirements include, among other things, submissions of safety and other post-marketing information and reports, registration and listing, as well as continued compliance with good practice quality guidelines and regulations, including cGMP requirements and GCP requirements for any clinical trials that we conduct post-approval. In addition, we are conducting, and intend to continue to conduct, clinical trials for our product candidates, and we intend to seek approval to market our product candidates, in jurisdictions outside of the U.S., and therefore will be subject to, and must comply with, regulatory requirements in those jurisdictions.
The FDA has significant post-market authority, including, for example, the authority to require labeling changes based on new safety information and to require post-market studies or clinical trials to evaluate serious safety risks related to the use of a drug and to require withdrawal of the product from the market. The FDA also has the authority to require a REMS plan after approval, which may impose further requirements or restrictions on the distribution or use of an approved drug. As our approved products are used commercially, we or others could identify previously unknown side effects or known side effects could be observed as being more frequent or severe than in clinical studies or earlier post-marketing periods, in which case:
•sales of our approved products may be more modest than originally anticipated;
•regulatory approvals for our approved products may be restricted or withdrawn;
•we may decide, or be required, to send product warning letters or field alerts to physicians, pharmacists and hospitals;
•additional nonclinical or clinical studies, changes in labeling, adoption of a REMS plan, or changes to manufacturing processes, specifications and/or facilities may be required; and
•government investigations or lawsuits, including class action suits, may be brought against us.
Any of the above occurrences could reduce or prevent sales of our approved products, increase our expenses and impair our ability to successfully commercialize one or more of these products.
The CMO and manufacturing facilities we use to make our approved products and certain of our current product candidates, including our Cambridge facility, our Norton facility, as well as facilities at Agilent and other CMOs, will also be subject to periodic review and inspection by the FDA and other regulatory agencies. For example, Agilent and our Cambridge-based facility were subject to regulatory inspection by the FDA and the EMA in connection with the review of our applications for regulatory approval for ONPATTRO and GIVLAARI, and may be subject to similar inspection in connection with any subsequent applications for regulatory approval of one or more of our products filed in other territories. The discovery of any new or previously unknown problems with our facilities or our CMOs, or our or their manufacturing processes or facilities, may result in restrictions on the drug or CMO or facility, including delay in approval or, in the future, withdrawal of the drug from the market. We have developed cGMP capabilities and processes for the manufacture of patisiran formulated bulk drug product for commercial use. In addition, in 2020, we completed construction of a cGMP manufacturing facility for drug substance for clinical and, eventually, commercial use. We may not have the ability or capacity to manufacture material at a broader commercial scale in the future. We may manufacture clinical trial materials, or we may contract a third party to manufacture this material for us. Reliance on CMOs entails risks to which we would not be subject if we manufactured products ourselves, including reliance on the CMO for regulatory compliance.
If we or our collaborators, CMOs or service providers fail to comply with applicable continuing regulatory requirements in the U.S. or foreign jurisdictions in which we may seek to market our products, we or they may be subject to, among other things, fines, warning letters, holds on clinical trials, refusal by the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities to approve pending applications or supplements to approved applications, suspension or withdrawal of regulatory approval, product recalls and seizures, refusal to permit the import or export of products, operating restrictions, injunction, civil penalties and criminal prosecution.
60
Table of Contents
We may incur significant liability if enforcement authorities allege or determine that we are engaging in commercial activities or promoting our commercially approved products in a way that violates applicable regulations.
Physicians have the discretion to prescribe approved drug products for uses that are not described in the product’s labeling and that differ from those approved by the FDA or other applicable regulatory agencies. Off-label uses are common across medical specialties. Although the FDA and other regulatory agencies that approve drug products do not regulate a physician’s practice of medicine or choice of treatments, the FDA and other regulatory agencies regulate a manufacturer’s communications regarding off-label use and prohibit off-label promotion, as well as the dissemination of false or misleading labeling or promotional materials, including by their agents. Manufacturers and their agents may not promote drugs for off-label uses or provide off-label information in the promotion of drug products that is not consistent with the approved labeling for those products. For example, we may not promote ONPATTRO in the U.S. for use in any indications other than the treatment of the polyneuropathy of hATTR amyloidosis in adults. The FDA and other regulatory and enforcement authorities actively enforce laws and regulations prohibiting promotion of off-label uses and the promotion of products for which marketing approval has not been obtained. In April 2021, we received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, requiring production of documents pertaining to our marketing and promotion of ONPATTRO (patisiran) in the U.S. We are cooperating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and producing documents in response to the subpoena. Current and former officers and employees also have received subpoenas in connection with the preservation and production of related materials. Given the ongoing nature of the investigation, it is possible that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts or other government entities may request other information from, or issue other subpoenas, findings or similar documents to, us, our related entities and their respective directors, officers and employees. If we are found to have improperly marketed or promoted ONPATTRO in connection with such subpoenas, we may be subject to a broad range of civil, administrative and criminal penalties, including injunctive relief related to ONPATTRO promotional activities, substantial fines or penalties, and other legal or equitable sanctions. Any adverse decision, finding, allegation, or exercise of enforcement or regulatory discretion could harm our business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition. Other internal or government investigations or legal or regulatory proceedings, including lawsuits brought by private litigants, may also follow as a consequence.
Notwithstanding regulations related to product promotion, the FDA and other regulatory authorities allow companies to engage in truthful, non-misleading and non-promotional scientific exchange concerning their products, and we intend to engage in medical education activities and communicate with healthcare providers in compliance with all applicable laws and regulatory guidance. Nonetheless, the FDA, other applicable regulatory authorities, competitors, and other third parties may take the position that we are not in compliance with such regulations, and if such non-compliance is proven, it could harm our reputation, financial condition or divert financial and management resources from our core business, and would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Moreover, any threatened or actual government enforcement actions or lawsuits by third parties could also generate adverse publicity, which could decrease demand for our products and require that we devote substantial resources that could be used productively on other aspects of our business.
In addition to our medical education efforts, we also offer patient support services to assist patients receiving treatment with our commercially approved products. Manufacturers have increasingly become the focus of government investigation of patient support programs based on allegations that through such services illegal inducements are provided to physicians and/or patients, leading to improper utilization of government resources through Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. Companies that are found to have violated laws such as the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and/or FCA face significant liability, including civil and administrative penalties, criminal sanctions, and potential exclusion from participation in government programs.
As described above we remain focused on our global compliance program, which is designed to support the execution of these programs and activities in compliance with applicable laws.
Even if we receive regulatory approval to market our product candidates, the market may not be receptive to our product candidates upon their commercial introduction, which could prevent us from becoming profitable.
The product candidates that we are developing are based upon new technologies or therapeutic approaches. Key participants in pharmaceutical marketplaces, such as physicians, third-party payors and consumers, may not accept a product intended to improve therapeutic results based on RNAi technology. As a result, it may be more difficult for us to convince the medical community and third-party payors to accept and use our product, or to provide favorable reimbursement.
Other factors that we believe will materially affect market acceptance of our product candidates include:
•the timing of our receipt of any marketing approvals, the terms of any approvals and the countries in which approvals are obtained;
•the safety and efficacy of our product candidates, as demonstrated in clinical trials and as compared with alternative treatments, if any;
•relative convenience and ease of administration of our product candidates;
61
Table of Contents
•the willingness of patients to accept potentially new routes of administration or new or different therapeutic approaches and mechanisms of action;
•the success of our physician education programs;
•the availability of adequate government and third-party payor reimbursement;
•the pricing of our products, particularly as compared to alternative treatments, and the market perception of such prices and any price increase that we may implement in the future; and
•availability of alternative effective treatments for the diseases that product candidates we develop are intended to treat and the relative risks, benefits and costs of those treatments.
For example, ONPATTRO utilizes an intravenous mode of administration with pre-medication that physicians and/or patients may not readily adopt, or which may not compete favorably with other available options, including inotersen, marketed by Ionis in several countries, which is administered subcutaneously, or tafamidis, marketed by Pfizer Inc., or Pfizer, in several countries, which is in pill form. In addition, fitusiran represents a new approach to treating hemophilia which may not be readily accepted by patients and their caregivers.
We are a multi-product commercial company and expect to continue to invest significant financial and management resources to continue to build our marketing, sales, market access and distribution capabilities and further establish our global infrastructure. Even if we successfully scale our commercial capabilities, the market may not be receptive to our commercial products.
Having received our first product approval only four years ago, we have established our capabilities for marketing, sales, market access and distribution over the last several years. We currently expect to rely on third parties to launch and market certain of our product candidates in certain geographies, if approved. However, we intend to commercialize ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO, as well as several of our late-stage product candidates if approved, including vutrisiran, on our own globally in major markets. Accordingly, we have developed internal marketing, sales, market access and distribution capabilities as part of our core product strategy initially in the U.S., Europe and Japan, with expansion ongoing globally, which has, and will continue to, require significant financial and management resources. For those products for which we will perform marketing, sales, market access and distribution functions ourselves, including ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO and, if approved, vutrisiran, and for future products we successfully develop where we may retain certain product development and commercialization rights, we could face a number of additional risks, including:
•scaling and retaining our global sales, marketing and administrative infrastructure and capabilities;
•hiring, training, managing and supervising our personnel worldwide;
•the cost of further developing, or leveraging an established, marketing or sales force, which may not be justifiable in light of the revenues generated by any particular product and/or in any specific geographic region; and
•our direct sales and marketing efforts may not be successful.
If we are unable to continue to develop and scale our own global marketing, sales, market access and distribution capabilities for ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO and any future products, including vutrisiran, we will not be able to successfully commercialize our products without reliance on third parties.
The patient populations suffering from hATTR amyloidosis, AHP and PH1 are small and have not been established with precision. If the actual number of patients is smaller than we estimate, or if we cannot raise awareness of these diseases and diagnosis is not improved, our revenue and ability to achieve profitability from these products may be adversely affected.
Our estimates regarding the potential market size for ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO or any future products, including vutrisiran, at the time we commence commercialization, may be materially different from the actual market size, including as a result of the indication approved by regulatory authorities, which could result in significant changes in our business plan and may have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition. For example, the indication approved by the FDA for ONPATTRO is for the treatment of the polyneuropathy of hATTR amyloidosis and not for the treatment of cardiomyopathy or other manifestations of the disease. In addition, the U.S. label does not include data from the exploratory cardiac endpoints included in our APOLLO Phase 3 study. This could have an adverse impact on the market opportunity for ONPATTRO in the U.S. In addition, our efforts to raise disease awareness and improve diagnosis of hATTR amyloidosis have been and may in the future be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Alnylam Act, our third-party genetic screening initiative in the U.S., Canada and Brazil, experienced a decrease in submitted samples in the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As is the case with most orphan diseases, if we cannot successfully raise awareness of these diseases and improve diagnosis, it will be more difficult or impossible to achieve profitability.
62
Table of Contents
Any drugs we develop may become subject to unfavorable pricing regulations, third-party reimbursement practices or healthcare reform initiatives, thereby harming our business.
The regulations that govern marketing approvals, pricing and reimbursement for new drugs vary widely from country to country. Some countries require approval of the sale price of a drug before it can be marketed. In many countries, the pricing review period begins after marketing or product licensing approval is granted. In some foreign markets, prescription pharmaceutical pricing remains subject to continuing governmental control even after initial approval is granted. We are actively monitoring these regulations as we market and sell ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO, and as several of our other programs move through late stages of development. However, a number of our programs are currently in the earlier stages of development, and we will not be able to assess the impact of price regulations for such programs for a number of years. We might obtain regulatory approval for a product, including one or more of our approved products, in a particular country, but then be subject to price regulations that delay our commercial launch of the product and negatively impact the revenues we are able to generate from the sale of the product in that country and potentially in other countries due to reference pricing.
Our ability to commercialize our approved products or any future products, including vutrisiran, successfully also will depend in part on the extent to which reimbursement for these products and related treatments will be available from government health administration authorities, private health insurers and other organizations. One or more of our approved products and other products for which we are able to obtain marketing approval, including vutrisiran, may not be considered cost-effective, and the amount reimbursed may be insufficient to allow us to sell such product(s) or any future products, including vutrisiran on a competitive basis. Increasingly, the third-party payors who reimburse patients or healthcare providers, such as government and private insurance plans, are requiring that drug companies provide them with predetermined discounts from list prices, and are seeking to reduce the prices charged or the amounts reimbursed for drug products. In the U.S., we have entered into at least 40 VBAs, and are negotiating additional VBAs with commercial health insurers. The goal of these agreements is to ensure that we are paid based on the ability of our commercially approved products to deliver results in the real world setting comparable to those demonstrated in clinical trials, and the agreements are structured to link the performance of our approved products in real-world use to financial terms. Partnering with payers on these agreements is also intended to provide more certainty to them for their investment and help accelerate coverage decisions for patients. If the payment we receive for our products, or the reimbursement provided for such products, is inadequate in light of our development and other costs, or if reimbursement is denied, our return on investment could be adversely affected. In addition, we have stated publicly that we intend to grow through continued scientific innovation rather than arbitrary price increases. Specifically, we have stated that we will not raise the price of any product for which we receive marketing approval over the rate of inflation, as determined by the consumer price index for urban consumers (approximately 7.0% currently) absent a significant value driver. Our patient access philosophy could also negatively impact the revenues we are able to generate from the sale of one or more of our products in the future.
Some of the drugs we market need to be administered under the supervision of a physician or other healthcare professional on an outpatient basis, including ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI and OXLUMO. Under currently applicable U.S. law, certain drugs that are not usually self-administered (including injectable drugs) may be eligible for coverage under the Medicare Part B program if:
•they are incident to a physician’s services;
•they are reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of the illness or injury for which they are administered according to accepted standards of medical practice; and
•they have been approved by the FDA and meet other requirements of the statute.
There may be significant delays in obtaining coverage for newly approved drugs, and coverage may be more limited than the purposes for which the drug is approved by the FDA or foreign regulatory authorities. Moreover, eligibility for coverage does not imply that any drug will be reimbursed in all cases or at a rate that covers our costs, including research, development, manufacture, sale and distribution or that covers a particular provider’s cost of acquiring the drug. Interim payments for new drugs, if applicable, may also not be sufficient to cover our costs and may not be made permanent. Reimbursement may be based on payments allowed for lower-cost drugs that are already reimbursed, may be incorporated into existing payments for other services and may reflect budgetary constraints or imperfections in Medicare data. Net prices for drugs may be reduced by mandatory discounts or rebates required by government healthcare programs or private payors and by any future relaxation of laws that presently restrict imports of drugs from countries where they may be sold at lower prices than in the U.S.
President Biden signed an Executive Order on July 9, 2021, affirming the administration’s policy to (i) support legislative reforms that would lower the prices of prescription drugs, including by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, by imposing inflation caps, and, by supporting the development and market entry of lower-cost generic drugs and biosimilars; and (ii) support the enactment of a public health insurance option. Among other things, the Executive Order also directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to provide a report on actions to combat excessive pricing of prescription drugs, continue to clarify and improve the approval framework for generic drugs and identify and address any efforts to impede generic drug competition, enhance the domestic drug supply chain, reduce the price that the Federal government pays for drugs, and address price gouging in the industry; and directs the FDA to work with states and Indian Tribes that propose to develop
63
Table of Contents
section 804 Importation Programs in accordance with the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, and the FDA’s implementing regulations. The FDA released such implementing regulations on September 24, 2020, which went into effect on November 30, 2020, providing guidance for states to build and submit importation plans for drugs from Canada. In response, authorities in Canada have passed rules designed to safeguard the Canadian drug supply from shortages. If implemented, importation of drugs from Canada and the Most Favored Nation, or MFN, Model may materially and adversely affect the price we receive for any of our commercially approved products. Further, on November 20, 2020, CMS issued an Interim Final Rule implementing the MFN Model under which Medicare Part B reimbursement rates will be calculated for certain drugs based on the lowest price drug manufacturers receive in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries with a similar gross domestic product per capita. The MFN Model regulations mandate participation by identified Part B providers and would have applied to all U.S. states and territories for a seven-year period beginning January 1, 2021, and ending December 31, 2027. However, on December 29, 2021, CMS rescinded the proposed MFN rule. Additionally, on December 2, 2020, HHS published a regulation removing safe harbor protection for price reductions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to plan sponsors under Part D, either directly or through pharmacy benefit managers, unless the price reduction is required by law. The rule also creates a new safe harbor for price reductions reflected at the point-of-sale, as well as a safe harbor for certain fixed fee arrangements between pharmacy benefit managers and manufacturers. Pursuant to court order, the removal and addition of the aforementioned safe harbors have been delayed until January 1, 2023, requiring manufacturers to ensure the full value of co-pay assistance is passed on to the patient or these dollars will count toward the Average Manufacturer Price and Best Price calculation of the drug. On May 21, 2021, PhRMA sued the HHS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to stop the implementation of the rule claiming that the rule contradicts federal law surrounding Medicaid rebates. It is unclear how the outcome of this litigation will affect the rule. We cannot predict how the implementation of and any further changes to this rule will affect our business. Although a number of these and other proposed measures may require authorization through additional legislation to become effective, and the current U.S. presidential administration may reverse or otherwise change these measures, both the current U.S. presidential administration and Congress have indicated that they will continue to seek new legislative measures to control drug costs.
We believe that the efforts of governments and third-party payors to contain or reduce the cost of healthcare and legislative and regulatory proposals to broaden the availability of healthcare will continue to affect the business and financial condition of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. Specifically, there have been several recent U.S. Congressional inquiries and proposed federal and state legislation designed to, among other things, bring more transparency to drug pricing, reduce the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare, review the relationship between pricing and manufacturer patient programs, and reform government program reimbursement methodologies for drugs.
A number of other legislative and regulatory changes in the healthcare system in the U.S. and other major healthcare markets have been proposed or enacted in recent months and years, and such efforts have expanded substantially in recent years. These developments could, directly or indirectly, affect our ability to sell ONPATTRO, GIVLAARI, OXLUMO or future products, if approved, including vutrisiran, at a favorable price.
In particular, in March 2010, the ACA was signed into law. This legislation changed the system of healthcare insurance and benefits intended to broaden coverage and control costs. The law also contains provisions that affect companies in the pharmaceutical industry and other healthcare related industries by imposing additional costs and changes to business practices. Among the provisions affecting pharmaceutical companies are the following:
•Mandatory rebates for drugs sold into the Medicaid program were increased, and the rebate requirement was extended to drugs used in risk-based Medicaid managed care plans.
•The 340B Drug Pricing Program under the Public Health Service Act was extended to require mandatory discounts for drug products sold to certain critical access hospitals, cancer hospitals and other covered entities.
•Pharmaceutical companies are required to offer discounts on brand-name drugs to patients who fall within the Medicare Part D coverage gap, commonly referred to as the “donut hole.”
•Pharmaceutical companies are required to pay an annual non-tax deductible fee to the federal government based on each company’s market share of prior year total sales of branded products to certain federal healthcare programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense. Since we expect our branded pharmaceutical sales to constitute a small portion of the total federal healthcare program pharmaceutical market, we do not expect this annual assessment to have a material impact on our financial condition.
•The law provides that approval of an application for a follow-on biologic product may not become effective until 12 years after the date on which the reference innovator biologic product was first licensed by the FDA, with a possible six-month extension for pediatric products. After this exclusivity ends, it will be easier for generic manufacturers to enter the market, which is likely to reduce the pricing for such products and could affect our profitability.
•The law creates a new methodology by which rebates owed by manufacturers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program are calculated for drugs that are inhaled, infused, instilled, implanted or injected.
64
Table of Contents
•The law expands eligibility criteria for Medicaid programs by, among other things, allowing states to offer Medicaid coverage to certain individuals with income at or below 133% of the federal poverty level, thereby potentially increasing a manufacturer’s Medicaid rebate liability.
•The law expands the entities eligible for discounts under the Public Health Service Act pharmaceutical pricing program.
•The law expands healthcare fraud and abuse laws, including the civil FCA and the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, new government investigative powers, and enhanced penalties for noncompliance.
•The law establishes new requirements to report financial arrangements with physicians and teaching hospitals and to annually report drug samples that manufacturers and distributors provide to physicians.
•The law establishes a new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to oversee, identify priorities in, and conduct comparative clinical effectiveness research, along with funding for such research.
•The law established the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within CMS to test innovative payment and service delivery methods.
In addition, other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted since the ACA was enacted. In August 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things, created measures for spending reductions by Congress. A Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with recommending a targeted deficit reduction of at least $1.2 trillion for the years 2013 through 2021, was unable to reach required goals, thereby triggering the legislation’s automatic reduction to several government programs. These changes included aggregate reductions to Medicare payments to providers of 2% per fiscal year, which went into effect in April 2013 and will remain in effect through 2030; however, pursuant to the CARES Act, and subsequent legislation, these Medicare sequester reductions have been suspended from May 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, among other things, reduced Medicare payments to several providers and increased the statute of limitations period for the government to recover overpayments to providers from three to five years. These new laws may result in additional reductions in Medicare and other healthcare funding and otherwise affect the prices we may obtain for our approved products or any of our product candidates for which we may obtain regulatory approval, including vutrisiran, or the frequency with which our products or any future product, including vutrisiran, is prescribed or used.
Further, there have been several changes to the 340B Drug Pricing Program, which imposes ceilings on prices that drug manufacturers can charge for medications sold to certain healthcare facilities. On December 27, 2018, the District Court for the District of Columbia invalidated a reimbursement formula change under the 340B Drug Pricing Program, and CMS subsequently altered the fiscal years 2019 and 2018 reimbursement formula on specified covered outpatient drugs. The court ruled this change was not an “adjustment” which was within the Secretary’s discretion to make but was instead a fundamental change in the reimbursement calculation. However, most recently, on July 31, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the district court’s decision and found that the changes were within the Secretary’s authority. On September 14, 2020, the plaintiffs-appellees filed a Petition for Rehearing En Banc (i.e., before the full court), and the court denied this petition on October 16, 2020. Plaintiffs-appellees filed a petition for a writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court on February 10, 2021. On Friday July 2, 2021, the Supreme Court granted the petition. It is unclear how these developments could affect covered hospitals who might purchase our future products and affect the rates we may charge such facilities for our approved products in the future, if any.
The full effects of the U.S. healthcare reform legislation cannot be known until the law is fully implemented through regulations or guidance issued by CMS and other federal and state healthcare agencies. The financial impact of the U.S. healthcare reform legislation over the next few years will depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited, to the policies reflected in implementing regulations and guidance, and changes in sales volumes for products affected by the new system of rebates, discounts and fees. This legislation may also have a positive impact on our future net sales, if any, by increasing the aggregate number of persons with healthcare coverage in the U.S.
Since its enactment, there have been numerous judicial, administrative, executive, and legislative challenges to certain aspects of the ACA, and we expect there will be additional challenges and amendments to the ACA in the future. On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the most recent judicial challenge to the ACA brought by several states without specifically ruling on the constitutionality of the ACA. Prior to the Supreme Court's decision, President Biden issued an executive order to initiate a special enrollment period from February 15, 2021 through August 15, 2021 for the purpose of obtaining health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace. The executive order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA. It is unclear how other healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration or other efforts, if any, to challenge, repeal or replace the ACA will impact our business.
65
Table of Contents
At the state level, legislatures have become increasingly aggressive in passing legislation and implementing regulations designed to control pharmaceutical product pricing. Some of these measures include price or patient reimbursement constraints, discounts, restrictions on certain product access, marketing cost disclosure and transparency measures, and, in some cases, measures designed to encourage importation from other countries and bulk purchasing. In addition, regional healthcare authorities and individual hospitals are increasingly using bidding procedures to determine what pharmaceutical products and which suppliers will be included in their prescription drug and other healthcare programs. These measures could reduce the ultimate demand for our products, once approved, or put pressure on our product pricing.
We cannot predict what healthcare reform initiatives may be adopted in the future. Further federal and state legislative and regulatory developments are likely, and we expect ongoing initiatives in the U.S. to increase pressure on drug pricing. Such reforms could have an adverse effect on anticipated revenues from one or more of our approved products or other product candidates that we may successfully develop and for which we may obtain regulatory approval and may affect our overall financial condition and ability to develop drug candidates.
We are subject to U.S. and certain foreign export and import controls, sanctions, embargoes, anti-corruption laws, and anti-money laundering laws and regulations. Failure to comply with these legal standards could impair our ability to compete in domestic and international markets. We can face criminal liability and other serious consequences for violations, which can harm our business.
We are subject to export control and import laws and regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, U.S. Customs regulations, various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the FCPA, the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the U.S. Travel Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and other state and national anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in the countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption laws are interpreted broadly and prohibit companies and their employees, agents, contractors, and other collaborators from authorizing, promising, offering, or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or anything else of value to recipients in the public or private sector. From time to time, we may engage third parties to conduct clinical trials outside of the U.S., to sell our products abroad, and/or to obtain necessary permits, licenses, patent registrations, and other regulatory approvals. We have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or government-affiliated hospitals, universities, and other organizations. We can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of our employees, agents, contractors, and other collaborators, even if we do not explicitly authorize or have actual knowledge of such activities. Any violations of the laws and regulations described above may result in substantial civil and criminal fines and penalties, imprisonment, the loss of export or import privileges, debarment, tax reassessments, breach of contract and fraud litigation, reputational harm, and other consequences.
We remain focused on these laws and the activities they regulate and, as detailed above, maintain a global compliance program designed to empower our business to operate in compliance with their requirements.
Governments outside the U.S. may impose strict price controls, which may adversely affect our revenues.
The pricing of prescription pharmaceuticals is also subject to governmental control outside the U.S. In these countries, pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after the receipt of regulatory approval for a product. To obtain reimbursement or pricing approval in some countries, we may be required to conduct a clinical trial that compares the cost-effectiveness of our product candidates to other available therapies. If reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, or if pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels, our ability to generate revenues and become profitable could be impaired.
In some countries, including Member States of the EU, or Japan, the pricing of prescription drugs is subject to governmental control. Additional countries may adopt similar approaches to the pricing of prescription drugs. In such countries, pricing negotiations with governmental authorities can take considerable time after receipt of regulatory approval for a product. In addition, there can be considerable pressure by governments and other stakeholders on prices and reimbursement levels, including as part of cost containment measures. Moreover, political, economic and regulatory developments may further complicate pricing negotiations, and pricing negotiations may continue after coverage and reimbursement have been obtained. Reference pricing used by various countries and parallel distribution, or arbitrage between low-priced and high-priced countries, can further reduce prices. In some countries, we may be required to conduct a clinical study or other studies that compare the cost-effectiveness of a product candidate to other available therapies in order to obtain or maintain reimbursement or pricing approval, which is time-consuming and costly. We cannot be sure that such prices and reimbursement will be acceptable to us or our strategic partners. Publication of discounts by third-party payors or authorities may lead to further pressure on the prices or reimbursement levels within the country of publication and other countries. If pricing is set at unsatisfactory levels or if reimbursement of our products is unavailable or limited in scope or amount, our revenues from sales by us or our strategic partners and the potential profitability of our approved products or any future products, including vutrisiran, in those countries would be negatively affected. Another impact from the tightening pricing control could be felt from greater competition from less expensive generic or biosimilar products once the exclusivity expires; the governments have adopted policies to switch prescribed products to generic versions in order to cut the medical cost.
66
Table of Contents
If we or our collaborators, CMOs or service providers fail to comply with healthcare laws and regulations, or legal obligations related to privacy, data protection and information security, we or they could be subject to enforcement actions, which could affect our ability to develop, market and sell our products and may harm our reputation.
As a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, we are subject to federal, state, and comparable foreign healthcare laws and regulations pertaining to fraud and abuse and patients’ rights, in addition to legal obligations related to privacy, data protection and information security. These laws and regulations include:
•The U.S. federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits, among other things, persons or entities from knowingly and willfully soliciting, receiving, offering or paying any remuneration (including any kickback, bribe or rebate), directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, to induce, or in return for, the purchase, lease, order, arrangement, or recommendation of any good, facility, item or service for which payment may be made, in whole or in part, under a federal healthcare program, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs. A person or entity does not need to have actual knowledge of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute or specific intent to violate it to have committed a violation. Violations are subject to civil and criminal fines and penalties for each violation, plus up to three times the remuneration involved, imprisonment, and exclusion from government healthcare programs. In addition, the government may assert that a claim including items or services resulting from a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the federal FCA or federal civil money penalties.
•The U.S. federal false claims laws, including the FCA, which prohibit, among other things, individuals or entities from knowingly presenting or causing to be presented, claims for payment by government-funded programs such as Medicare or Medicaid that are false or fraudulent, making, using or causing to be made or used a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim to the federal government, or making a false statement to avoid, decrease or conceal an obligation to pay money to the federal government. Manufacturers can be held liable under the FCA even when they do not submit claims directly to government payors if they are deemed to “cause” the submission of false or fraudulent claims. The FCA also permits a private individual acting as a “whistleblower” to bring actions on behalf of the federal government alleging violations of the FCA and to share in any monetary recovery.
•The federal civil monetary penalties laws, which impose civil fines for, among other things, the offering or transfer of remuneration to a Medicare or state healthcare program beneficiary if the person knows or should know it is likely to influence the beneficiary’s selection of a particular provider, practitioner, or supplier of services reimbursable by Medicare or a state healthcare program, unless an exception applies.
•The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, which created federal criminal statutes that prohibit knowingly and willfully executing, or attempting to execute, a scheme to defraud any healthcare benefit program or obtain, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, any of the money or property owned by, or under the custody or control of, any healthcare benefit program, regardless of the payor (e.g., public or private) and knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing or covering up by any trick or device a material fact or making any materially false statements in connection with the delivery of, or payment for, healthcare benefits, items or services relating to healthcare matters. Similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, a person or entity can be found guilty of violating HIPAA without actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it.
•HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which imposes requirements relating to the privacy, security, and transmission of individually identifiable health information; and requires notification to affected individuals and regulatory authorities of certain breaches of security of individually identifiable health information.
•Federal “sunshine” requirements imposed by the ACA on drug, device, biological and medical supply manufacturers when payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (with certain exceptions) to report annually to HHS under the Open Payments Program, information regarding any payment or other “transfer of value” made or distributed to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors) and teaching hospitals, as well as ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members. Failure to submit required information may result in civil monetary penalties for all payments, transfers of value or ownership or investment interests that are not timely, accurately, and completely reported in an annual submission. Effective January 1, 2022, these reporting obligations extend to include transfers of value made to certain non-physician providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
•Federal price reporting laws, which require manufacturers to calculate and report complex pricing metrics to government programs, where such reported prices may be used in the calculation of reimbursement and/or discounts on approved products.
•Federal statutory and regulatory requirements applicable to pricing and sales of product to Federal Government Agencies.
•Federal consumer protection and unfair competition laws, which broadly regulate marketplace activities and activities that potentially harm consumers.
67
Table of Contents
•State and foreign laws comparable to each of the above federal laws, including in the EU laws prohibiting giving healthcare professionals any gift or benefit in kind as an inducement to prescribe our products, national transparency laws requiring the public disclosure of payments made to healthcare professionals and institutions, and data privacy laws, in addition to anti-kickback and false claims laws applicable to commercial insurers and other non-federal payors, requirements for mandatory corporate regulatory compliance programs, and laws relating to government reimbursement programs, patient data privacy and security.