As we reported here, Pfizer filed an antitrust lawsuit last year against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleging that J&J has engaged in an anticompetitive scheme to protect its Remicade® (infliximab) product since Pfizer introduced its competing biosimilar Inflectra (infliximab-dyyb) in 2016. As…
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recently published highlights from the meeting of the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) on July 23-26, 2018, reporting that CHMP had adopted positive opinions, recommending the granting of marketing authorisation, for three biosimilar medicines: (1) Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics (FKB) and Mylan’s…
Amgen filed a complaint against Apotex today in the Middle District of Florida, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 9,856,287 based on Apotex’s aBLAs for filgrastim and pegfilgrastim biosimilars. The ’287 patent issued on January 2, 2018 and is directed to methods of protein refolding in non-mammalian expression systems. According to…
In a letter to FDA last month, the International Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association (IGBA), which represents member pharmaceutical companies from the USA, Canada, South Africa, India, Jordan, Japan, Europe and Taiwan, requested that FDA “revisit their position and waive the requirement of bridging studies.” Typically, biosimilar sponsors are required…
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) recently announced that in its last fiscal year, it had saved $419 million in switching to biosimilar and generic versions of ten expensive drugs. These savings exceeded the $324 million in savings the NHS had forecasted. According to the announcement, most of the…
Last week, FDA announced the Biosimilar User Fee Act (BsUFA) rates for the 2019 fiscal year, which runs from October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2019. The FDA determined these rates pursuant to the Food and Drug Administration Reauthorization Act (FDARA), signed into law on August 18, 2017. Among other…
Last week the European Commission granted marketing authorization for two biosimilars. First, Sandoz, a division of Novartis, announced on July 27 that it had received marketing authorization for Hyrimoz, its adalimumab biosimilar to AbbVie’s Humira. Authorization was granted for all indications of the reference biologic, including rheumatoid arthritis, plaque psoriasis,…
AbbVie raised its 2018 earnings guidance last week, based in part on increased sales of Humira (adalimumab). In its report on its second-quarter 2018 financial results, AbbVie noted a 10% increase in U.S. sales of Humira in the quarter, and stated during the earnings call that it expected U.S. sales…
Below is an update on recent developments in several litigations involving biosimilar products. Amgen v. Sandoz (filgrastim, pegfilgrastim): As we previously reported, the district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement in favor of Sandoz in the Amgen v. Sandoz litigation, which relates to Sandoz’s filgrastim and pegfilgrastim biosimilars. Amgen filed…
Today, Judge Wolf found in favor of Celltrion, granting its motion for summary judgment of non-infringement of the sole remaining patent-in-suit based on an application of the ensnarement doctrine to Janssen’s infringement theory under the doctrine of equivalents. The Court determined that Celltrion’s infliximab biosimilar does not infringe Janssen’s ’083…