Missouri Governor Signs Biosimilar Substitution Law

Last month, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon signed into law Senate Bill 875, allowing pharmacists filling prescriptions for brand name biological products to substitute a less expensive biosimilar product if the biosimilar has been approved by the FDA to be an interchangeable biological product. Missouri is now the twenty second state to have enacted a biosimilar substitution law.

Under the Missouri law, a prescribing physician must decide whether the pharmacist may substitute an interchangeable biologic when filling the prescription, and the purchaser may override the pharmacists decision to substitute.  A pharmacist making a substitution must notify the patient and communicate the substitution to the prescribing physician.  Out of state prescriptions must be filled according to the substitution laws of the state in which the prescribing physician is located. The new law has a number of similarities to biosimilar substitution laws that have been enacted in other states over the last few years.

As state laws concerning biosimilar drug substitution continue to evolve, stay tuned to Big Molecule Watch for further coverage.