2021 Outlook: With 20 Biosimilars Available, U.S. Market Is Heating Up
As of the beginning of February, the FDA had approved 29 biosimilars. For various reasons, mostly patent litigation by reference drug companies, only 20 of those products actually have launched onto the U.S. market. But as the biosimilars market has yet to demonstrate its full potential, it certainly seems to be picking up steam. In a report released in October, the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science projected that over the next five years, biosimilars could hit $80 billion in aggregate sales and provide savings in excess of $100 billion in aggregate. AIS Health spoke with a variety of industry experts on what we’ve seen over the past year and what we might expect looking forward.
The available products span seven reference drugs consisting of three supportive care drugs — two biosimilars of Neupogen (filgrastim), one of Epogen/Procrit (epoetin-alfa) and four of Neulasta (pegfilgrastim) — three oncology brands — three biosimilars of Rituxan (rituximab), two of Avastin (bevacizumab) and five of Herceptin (trastuzumab) — and one tumor necrosis factor inhibitor, Remicade (infliximab), which has three biosimilar versions on the market.
