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 it was reported (here and here) that Merck launched Samsung Bioepis’ Ontruzant® in the United Kingdom, the first biosimilar trastuzumab launched in Europe. Ontruzant® is a biosimilar of Roche’s Herceptin® and is approved to treat early breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer and metastatic gastric cancer. This launch follows…
On September 24, 2015, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) released a biosimilars guidance document, available here. In it, the NHS bans automatic substitution of biosimilars, meaning that pharmacists may not switch between biosimilars and reference biologics, or between one biosimilar and another, without the consent of the prescribing…