Posted by Michael Wonder on 16 Aug 2017
What’s harder than making copycat biotech drugs? Selling them
15 August 2017 - Payer pacts, wary patients vex the market for biosimilar drugs.
Big-name drugmakers want to profit from selling lower-priced copies of rivals’ expensive biotechnology drugs. Patients and doctors want to pay less for medicine.
Getting those two sides together is harder than it looks. Part of the problem: a web of relationships between drug companies and insurers that shields incumbent drugs and often sidelines upstarts until the market becomes crowded.
Pfizer said this month that Inflectra, its version of the blockbuster Johnson & Johnson rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade brought in $94 million in the second quarter. Remicade, a biologic medicine made from living cells, booked $1.53 billion in sales in the period and had 2016 sales of $7 billion.
