Lundbeck CEO Deborah Dunsire is stepping down on a high note in the neuroscience company’s history.
Dunsire has decided to retire from Lundbeck, the Danish company said Monday. Charl van Zyl, head of neurology solutions at UCB, has been hired to succeed Dunsire no later than Oct. 1.
Dunsire is departing after a near-five-year stint at Lundbeck. Thanks to her leadership, the company has just hit a record-high quarterly revenue in its 100-plus history after a 19% growth year over year during the first three months of 2023.
“Lundbeck is therefore well positioned for the future, with a strong executive team in place, so this is the right timing to make this change,” Dunsire said in a statement Monday.
Lundbeck is expected to see further revenue increases moving forward. Rexulti, which is on track to become Lundbeck’s top brand, recently earned FDA approval for agitation in Alzheimer’s disease. By SVB Securities’ estimates, the indication could add more than $500 million to Rexulti’s sales to be achieved in the next five years or so.
Even without the new nod, Rexulti is already Lundbeck’s main growth driver on track to become the company’s top brand. The atypical antipsychotic delivered a 28% year-over-year growth in the first quarter to DKK 1.06 billion sales, just behind Trintellix/Brintellix’s DKK 1.08 billion haul, which represented a 9% increase.
Rexulti is undergoing two phase 3 trials as an add-on to sertraline for post-traumatic disorder. Top-line data from the studies are expected by the end of the year.
As for the Otsuka-partnered Abilify franchise for schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions, Lundbeck in April won FDA approval for a two-month long-acting version, called Abilify Asimtufii.
Migraine infusion therapy Vyepti doubled sales in the first quarter to DKK351 million despite the launch of oral CGRP inhibitors.
Lundbeck has a healthy growth outlook in the short- to mid-term, but key products are facing patent cliffs starting in the second half of the decade, analysts at SVB wrote in an April note. Trintellix/Brintellix, currently Lundbeck’s largest product, is slated to lose patent protection at the end of 2026.
The firm’s late-stage pipeline is a bit thin with few major readouts that could meaningfully move its stock, the SVB team noted. Investors however reacted negatively on the CEO transition news Monday, with Lundbeck's shares trading down nearly 4% in late afternoon European time.
Lundbeck hasn’t been very active on the dealmaking front in recent years. In 2019, a year after Dunsire became CEO, the Danish company shelled out nearly $2 billion and bought Alder BioPharmaceuticals, which brought it Vyepti and other migraine candidates.
Now, it’s up to van Zyl to deepen Lundbeck’s pipeline and devise a longer-term plan. Van Zyl joined UCB in 2017 to head up corporate operations and later transitioned to lead the neurology business.
In a separate release Monday, UCB credited van Zyl for executing the integration of two acquisitions—Ra Pharma and Zogenix. He oversaw the growth of UCB’s epilepsy business and built up the company’s new rare disease assets.
Dunsire is one of the few women CEOs at large biopharma companies. In addition to GSK’s Emma Walmsley, Kate Haviland has been serving as Blueprint Medicines’ CEO since April 2022, and Yvonne Greenstreet became Alnylam’s CEO in January 2022. Reshma Kewalramani has been Vertex’s chief executive since 2020.