Expert Opinion: What Factors Will Have the Greatest Impact on US Adoption of Humira Biosimilars?

During the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) annual meeting, Jeffrey Casberg, vice president of pharmacy at IPD Analytics, weighed in on the factors he thinks will most impact market share among adalimumab biosimilars when they enter the US market in 2023

Transcript

With there being 7 FDA-approved adalimumab biosimilars and potentially more coming in the next year and a half, what factor do you think is going to be the most impactful on market share?

There's 7 that could be launched because they're approved currently, but there's actually 8, so we could get 8 original formulations in 2023. In 2023, we could get a couple 100-mg/mL approvals. So, I would say in 2023, the highest potential number we could get is around 10 launches.

And then the most impactful factors on their adoption: No. 1 is that about 2 or 3 weeks ago, there was a settlement agreement between Alvotech and AbbVie. And this had to do with the new formulation [100 mg/mL, high concentration]. It was very unclear, very cloudy on the future of biosimilars to the new formulation of Humira [reference adalimumab] coming to market and when that would take place. The settlement agreement kind of cleared that up; the skies got nice and blue. And we think that now we're going to get that 100-mg/mL launch in mid 2023. So, that's by far the most impactful thing because 80% of the utilization or more for Humira is in that new formulation.

So, that changes the view from a payer standpoint on how to add those products to the formulary. Citrate free is a is another issue that we'll mention that's impactful. One thing maybe people aren't thinking about is AbbVie's willingness to contract Humira cost down. So that will impact the adoption of biosimilar. How low are they willing to go? Interchangeability, the ever-elusive interchangeability, will also impact that.