Oncology

Although the pandemic continues to affect health care companies worldwide, biosimilar manufacturers continue to move forward with new product developments and business plans.

Vizient predicts that drug price inflation, partly due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), will be 3.29% in 2021 and is banking on biosimilars to help contain the rising cost of medication, it said in a comprehensive review for its member health companies.

On the heels of its earlier announcement of a bevacizumab biosimilar launch, India-based Cadila Pharmaceuticals said it also has a rituximab biosimilar entering the marketplace.

The Center for Biosimilars® spoke with Kashyap B. Patel, MD, about his work in promoting biosimilar uptake and his upcoming book on the importance of living life and not fearing death.

Shanghai Henlius Biotech has been given the green light to market its trastuzumab biosimilar (Zercepac, HLX02) in the European Union. Accord Healthcare will handle the distribution.

If you can’t beat biosimilars, join them, is the mantra; but at Amgen there’s still gold in originator products, according to its latest earnings report.

Biologics are not cheap, and if you can get biosimilars into the hands of patients, you’ve got something going. A strategist describes the step-by-step process that made this possible at Kaiser Permanente.

Although more advanced than in the United States, biosimilars markets in Europe may discourage competition over the long term, said officials from Medicines for Europe.

While Amgen fends off etanercept biosimilar competition in the United States, Pfizer said it is facing a mounting battle against biosimilar competition in European and other markets.

A joint venture between Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics and AstraZeneca has received a positive biosimilar opinion from the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP).

The Center for Biosimilars® (CfB) spoke with Adrian van den Hoven, director general of Medicines for Europe, and Diogo Piedade, market access manager for Medicines for Europe, about their scorecard report for biosimilar access in European markets.

For Biocon, overall revenues were up during the fiscal quarter that just ended, driven by strong revenues in its biosimilars and generics operations.

As capacity at its 3 existing plants begins to run out, Samsung Biologics will add a fourth plant to its Incheon, Republic of Korea, site.

China-based Bio-Thera Solutions is breaking into the growing Russian biosimilar market by licensing the marketing rights for its unapproved golimumab biosimilar to Russian biopharmaceutical company Pharmapark.

Biosimilar misinformation takes many forms, some of it institutionalized in the form of word usage and some of it deliberately disparaging, 2 executives of Sandoz and Boehringer Ingelheim contend.

In a webinar this week, experts discussed the business dynamics that prevent providers from being able to choose the lowest-cost biosimilars.

A recent article lays out some of the hurdles the biosimilars industry faces, from the perspectives of oncology providers.

As part of a project to build the first biosimilar factory in Malaysia, one of the initial products would be halal certified.

Celltrion Healthcare said an antiviral drug candidate is moving along in trials as a potential treatment for coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19).

Investigators found that process complexities have created numerous difficulties for biosimilar developers in regulatory filings, but they anticipate that the success rate will improve with experience and improved guidance.

An upcoming webinar from MJH Life Sciences™ will address the payer rebate deals that limit provider choice of biosimilars and complicate clinical pharmacy operations.

The rise of biologics as a class of prescription spending is fueling a trend toward longer exclusivity periods, which ultimately makes access more remote, authors of a new study said.

Byoungseo Choi, head of marketing for Celltrion Healthcare, discusses how Celltrion's infliximab biosimilar can aid in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)–related inflammation, as well as the company’s launch plans for biosimilars through 2030.

Now is the time for the FDA to lead again in revising the biosimilar development guidance by eliminating all animal toxicology studies, and replacing them with larger-species pharmacokinetic (PK) studies, allowing the conduct of human PK studies using novel clinical protocols to combine the PK/pharmacodynamic/immunogenicity testing in a single study, and, where possible, avoid these studies if an in-silico approach can provide the confidence of pharmacologic similarity.

Wui-Jin Koh, senior vice president and chief medical officer of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) laid out the current initiatives that organization has taken to promote the use of biosimilars in oncology settings.

A phase 1b/2 trial evaluating a trastuzumab biosimilar as part of a first-line triplet regimen demonstrated significant tumor shrinkage in HER2-positive advanced gastric cancer.

In court filings this week, Genentech and Amgen laid to rest their long-running dispute over the marketing of bevacizumab and trastuzumab biosimilars that challenged Genentech's dominance of the market for those products.

The FDA has approved Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics's Hulio adalimumab biosimilar, making it the sixth adalimumab biosimilar approved in the United States. However, none will be launched before 2023 because of the strength of AbbVie's exclusivity rights for Humira, the reference product. Hulio launched in Europe in 2018.

Biocon is planning to list its biosimilar entity, Biocon Biologics, on the capital markets in the next few years. Although this move will allow the entity to expand on current projects, it also raises questions about whether it will be successful.

Genentech seeks to block the marketing of Samsung Bioepis’ proposed bevacizumab biosimilar, saying the company infringed multiple patents when submitting an FDA approval application.