18 January 2017 - Europe's leading association of oncologists has thrown its weight behind cheaper copycat versions of biotech cancer drugs that have lost patent protection, saying they are effective and affordable.

Off-patent chemical medicines have for decades been copied with precision and sold as cheap generic versions, but drug regulators have only over recent years embraced copycat versions of complex biological drugs, known as biosimilars.

Even though biotech drugs, which are proteins made from genetically-modified cells, cannot be exactly replicated, biosimilars have been shown to be equivalent in terms of effectiveness and side effects.

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