Dr Stephen Hanauer Gives Insight Into Growing US Adalimumab Market

Stephen Hanauer, MD, professor of medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, comments on concerning data from Cardinal Health and Spherix Global Insights regarding the potential growth of the US adalimumab market, including providers’ views on interchangeability and payers’ influence on utilization.

Transcript

In March, a Cardinal Health report found that over 60% of providers intend to only prescribe adalimumab biosimilars that have an interchangeability designation, indicating that providers consider interchangeability to be a significant safety identifier, despite this not being what the label means. Why do you think providers feels this way, and what more is needed to clarify the meaning of interchangeability?

Well, providers have been swayed over a number of years from a variety of different directions. Initially, the originators swayed providers by putting doubt into their mind regarding how similar a biosimilar really is. And in particular, as you mentioned earlier, in the absence of trials within inflammatory bowel disease, so there's been a sense of doubt that has been placed for many years.

But the reality is that it's not going to be up to the provider. Because if a third-party payer decides to provide a biosimilar at a substantially lower cost to the patient, they're not likely going to pay the difference for what the biosimilar would cost them, which is usually nothing. Remember, patients are usually paying about $5 a month for adalimumab nowadays. If the patients actually have to pay for the drug, there's going to be a substantial cost difference.

Research from Spherix Global Insights found that despite high awareness of adalimumab biosimilars options, uptake has been low so far. What more needs to be done to improve provider willingness to prescribe these agents?

It's not the willingness to prescribe, it's that the originator has negotiated pricing that is still favorable to third-party payers. Hence, the need to accept a biosimilar has been less than anticipated. But as we've seen, this will change over time as there is greater and greater acceptance and the multiple biosimilars will ultimately bring the cost of adalimumab down.