Posted by Michael Wonder on 21 Nov 2017
Roche sues Pfizer to block biosimilar of cancer drug Herceptin
21 November 2017 - Company seeks to protect drug that earned $2.5 billion.
Roche, facing pressure in Europe as cheaper biosimilars of its three biggest cancer medicines chew away at its revenue, sued to block Pfizer Inc. from selling a copy of its breast-cancer drug Herceptin in the U.S.
Pfizer’s proposed biosimilar, as copycat versions of complex biologic drugs are known, would infringe 40 patents, Roche’s Genentech unit said in a complaint filed Friday in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. Roche also wants compensation for lost sales if Pfizer launches its product before patents related to Herceptin expire, as some will begin to do in 2019.
The suit is Roche’s first in the U.S. involving a biosimilar version of Herceptin. Genentech, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, is trying to protect a drug that earned 2.5 billion Swiss francs ($2.5 billion) in U.S. sales in 2016. That was 5% of Roche’s annual revenue, according to Bloomberg data.
