AAM Biosimilars Council Conference

Biosimilar manufacturers may encounter roadblocks in the months and years ahead, and generics manufacturers will find they've hit a ceiling, according to Adam Fein, PhD, CEO of the Drug Channels Institute.

During the Association for Accessible Medicines’ Access! 2019 meeting, Doug Long, vice president of industry relations at IQVIA, gave an update about what trends are being identified in the generic and biosimilars markets across the globe.

Addressing the rising cost of drugs in the United States has become a problem that many entities and stakeholders are hoping to solve. From the federal government down to the state level, everyone seems to be taking the problem into their own hands.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar offered a view of hope and optimism for the future of the American healthcare market in his remarks delivered as the closing keynote address at the Association for Accessible Medicine’s Access! 2019 meeting.

“Today’s healthcare system is unsustainable. [US] national health spending is expected to grow at 5.5% each year,” said Carol Lynch, president of Sandoz US and head of North America, setting the stage for a session at the Association for Accessible Medicine’s Access! 2019 meeting. “If all approved biosimilars had been marketed in a timely manner, Americans could have saved $4.5 billion.”

The Association for Accessible Medicine’s (AAM's) Access! 2019 Annual Meeting, held February 4-6, 2019 in New Orleans, Louisiana, drew stakeholders from all over the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the political arena. The first panel discussed drug pricing, drug shortages, and consolidation in the marketplace.

At the AAM Biosimilar Council Conference 2017, Hillel Cohen, executive director of scientific affairs at Sandoz, disambiguated key terms in biosimilars.

Providing an overview on where the healthcare reform debate is headed, Andrew Slavitt, former head of CMS, refined the discussion to highlight the potential for biosimilars to influence the rising costs of drug products.

During a panel on the second day of the 2017 AAM Biosimilars Council Conference, held in Washington DC, regulatory leaders from Pfizer and Sandoz shared their experiences with the development of their biosimilar products: epoetin alfa (Epogen) and etanercept (Erelzi), respectively.

At the 2017 AAM Biosimilars Council Conference, Adrian van den Hoven, director general of Medicines for Europe, contradicted the conventional thinking about biosimilars, saying that biosimilars do not simply reduce costs of treatment. Instead, he said, they deliver “huge additional health benefits to patients.”

At the 2017 AAM Biosimilars Council Conference, policy experts addressed the question of how biosimilar developers can navigate the complex and challenging biologics marketplace in the United States.

On Tuesday, leaders of patient advocacy groups presenting at the 2017 AAM Biosimilars Council Conference had a clear message for industry: biosimilar uptake will only happen in earnest when patients begin to see savings on their out-of-pocket treatment costs.

Christine Simmon, senior vice president of policy and strategic alliances for the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) and executive director of The Biosimilars Council, told The Center for Biosimilars® at the 2017 AAM Biosimilars Council Conference that upcoming product approvals in the biosimilar space are exciting prospects not only for the industry, but, most importantly, for patients.