News

The European Commission approved ravulizumab (Ultomiris) for adults with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

Under the approach used by Kaiser Permanente, say the authors, in which oncologists have salaried incomes and are not reimbursed on a relationship to drug price, far higher generic uptake has been observed.

The Center for Biosimilars® recaps the 5 most-read stories of 2019 to date.

Two economists from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shot back at the idea that biosimilars are natural monopolies and should have their prices regulated by the government, as was proposed a little more than 2 months ago by critics who say that trying to wring lower drug prices through competition born from biosimilars is an experiment doomed to fail.

As more centers begin to switch patients from reference infliximab to biosimilar options, patients who have benefitted from rapid infusions of the reference product may want to continue to receive time-saving infusions that reduce the burden of lengthy visits to infusion centers.

Given the head-to-head data from the SPIRIT trial, Humira maker AbbVie may face even further challenges in trying to maintain its sales as newer products like ixekizumab advance in such therapeutic areas as psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

Amgen says it is withdrawing its European application for ABP 710, its biosimilar infliximab (referencing Remicade).

In a study conducted from 2017 to 2018 among all of the infliximab-treated patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in a single center, patients who were in clinical remission were invited to complete a questionnaire to assess their biosimilar knowledge and acceptance of a switch.

Mundipharma, a network of independent companies that operates in 120 countries worldwide and distributes a number of biosimilars in the European Union, has inked a deal with Budapest-based Egis Pharmaceuticals to distribute its biosimilar pegfilgrastim, Pelmeg, in 4 Eastern European markets: Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Starting in 2017, the Henry Ford Cancer Institute started using follow-on filgrastim (tbo-filgrastim, a product approved prior to the establishment of the biosimilar approval pathway in the United States) and biosimilar filgrastim (Zarxio) in stem cell mobilization prior to transplant.

The European Specialist Nurses Organisation has launched 7 new translations of its guide to the management of switches between reference biologics and biosimilars.

June 2019 was a busy month for oncology biosimilars, in both the supportive care and anticancer contexts, with regulatory activity and the presentation of reassuring new data.

The FDA has approved Pfizer’s bevacizumab biosimilar, bevacizumab-bvzr, referencing Avastin.

The Center for Biosimilars® recaps the top stories for the week of June 24, 2019.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals’ brand-name eculizumab (Soliris) gained its fourth approval, this time for the treatment of neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD).

The FDA today announced a proposed rule that would amend regulations concerning the use of master files for biologics. According to the FDA, this rule is necessary to avoid any disruption to products that will transition from regulation as drugs to regulation as biologics in 2020.

Eli Lilly and Company, together with partner Innovent Biologics, announced today that China’s National Medical Products Administration will review its application for IBI301, a proposed rituximab biosimilar referencing MabThera and Rituxan.

The Biosimilars Council, a part of the Association for Accessible Medicines, has issued a new white paper in which it condemns abuses of the patent system that delay biosimilar competition. It also argues that legislative proposals to regulate settlements would “merely benefit companies investing in the creation of patent thickets.”

The US biosimilars market is really taking off, with 4 biosimilar products launched in the past year and 7 biosimilar products (Zarxio, Inflectra, Renflexis, Fulphila, Nivestym, Retacrit, and Udenyca) in total on the market, competing with 4 originator medicines. The projected annual savings to the US healthcare system could climb to $60 billion in 2023 for a 5-year total of $153 billion. Those projections come from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, which also projects a near doubling of biosimilar product competition in the US biologics marketplace by 2023.

Data from switching studies will bolster another important facet of the biosimilars marketplace: patient and prescriber confidence. In a marketplace in which patients move from one formulary to another, from one year to the next in their journey with chronic illnesses, it will be helpful to know that interchangeable biosimilars offer equal safety and efficacy after multiple switches.

Amgen, Eli Lilly, and Merck, together with the Association of National Advertisers, have filed a lawsuit against HHS and CMS over the Trump administration’s rule requiring disclosure of list prices for drugs in direct-to-consumer television advertisements.

In this case, Pfizer hoped to launch its biosimilar bevacizumab in the UK market after the basic patent on the reference product, Genentech and Roche’s Avastin, expires in June 2020. However, the biosimilar maker has been hindered by what it has termed a patent thicket related to secondary patents.

Drug maker AbbVie today announced that it has reached a $63 billion transaction agreement under which it will acquire Allergan.

Recently, researchers reported 72-week results from a phase 3 trial of biosimilar rituximab, CT-P10 (Truxima), in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), in which they concluded that the product was well tolerated in long-term use and that switching from the reference did not yield differences in safety, efficacy, pharmacodynamics, or immunogenicity.

No statistically significant risk in terms of lack of effectiveness or safety was found for patients who switched therapies versus those who remained on their first therapy in either the reference group or the biosimilar group.

China-based drug maker Henlius has announced that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has accepted for review the company’s marketing authorization application for a trastuzumab biosimilar, HLX02, referencing Herceptin.

Drug maker Alexion, developer of the rare disease drug eculizumab (Soliris), announced Friday that the FDA has accepted for priority review its long-acting C5 complement inhibitor, ravulizumab (Ultomiris), which offers less frequent administration than eculizumab.

Slow uptake of biosimilars, among other factors, will help propel drug spending over the next 7 years, according to a report released this week by PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI).

The attributes for the N-glycan profile, FcγRIIIa binding activity, and relative antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity for the reference trastuzumab resulted in reduced ADCC and FcγRIIIa binding activities.

The Center for Biosimilars® recaps the top stories for the week of June 17, 2019.