Since 2012, patent stakeholders in the U.S. have faced remarkable uncertainty in the evaluation of patent subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101, particularly in the application of the Supreme Court’s Alice/Mayo1 test by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
I found myself puzzled, to say the least, by a recent editorial intriguingly entitled “Biosimilars Are A Distraction.” What I ended up reading were several questionable economic and clinical claims I feel are worth dissecting.
After roughly four years of writing about biosimilars, I can finally say I attended the Annual Biosimilar Medicines Conference. This conference was valuable to get a closer look at Europe as well, not only to see where things are working, but also where they're not.
About 12 years ago, while working at a group purchasing organization (GPO), I had my first conversations with pharma/biotech companies about the possibility of developing and launching biosimilar drugs. Part of my role at the GPO was related to tracking and commenting on policies CMS and the FDA were developing.
The U.S. FDA issued an updated draft guidance on March 7 on the nonproprietary naming of biologics, titled Nonproprietary Naming of Biological Products: Update (“guidance”). This update is the FDA’s second attempt at a policy for nonproprietary name suffixes for biologic products. It also highlights the perceived tension between the FDA’s pharmacovigilance role and its goal of increasing the availability of biosimilars. At least for this round, the FDA’s interest in tracking pharmacovigilance data seems to have received priority.
Last week, I had the pleasure of chairing the first day of the BioTech Pharma Summit: Biologics and Biosimilars conference in the gorgeous Porto, Portugal. (Don’t ask me how much I spent I spent on port wine in the days before the conference.) The conference was — shockingly — the first European biosimilar conference I have attended in my tenure as a biosimilars editor. (Even though Europe is leaps and bounds — and then more bounds — ahead of the U.S. with biosimilars.)
A few months ago, I read a fabulous Q&A in Managed Care Magazine featuring oncologist Gary Lyman and co-director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In this day and age, we regularly come across surveys or discussions emphasizing how much more work we have to do in the education realm to ensure physicians’ comfort with biosimilars. But after reading Lyman’s interview on one cold, dreary January day, I felt buoyed. That’s not to say there isn’t more work to be done, of course. But it was reassuring to see a prominent member of the oncology community express such comfort and confidence in biosimilars.
While the biosimilar market in the U.S. has gotten off to a relatively slow start compared to Europe, where biosimilars have been available since 2006, it has recently gained momentum and will continue to grow in the coming years as more “blockbuster” biologics lose regulatory exclusivity and patent protection. Here we review our observations in the biosimilar space since the enactment of the 2009 Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) and our view of the future of biosimilars and related patent disputes.
Two employer experts lay out the challenges rebates pose, both for employers and biosimilar uptake, as well as the increasing importance of greater integration amongst employers and health systems from both a biosimilar utilization and an overall cost savings standpoint.
The biosimilars pipeline is progressing rapidly and continues to grow, with more products and more organizations involved. This article reviews the current biosimilars development pipeline and progress.
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