Inventions made in a particular country are generally first-filed in that country before entering the United States via a direct Paris Convention filing or, more commonly, a PCT national stage entry. Convenience, national pride, and foreign filing license laws encourage such home country first-filings. It is well known that the…
On February 23, 2025, Celltrion announced that the European Commission (“EC”) approved its tocilizumab biosimilar, AVTOZMA® (CT-P47), referencing Roche’s ROACTEMRA®. Tocilizumab is a monoclonal antibody that acts as an interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibitor to reduce inflammation in the body. The EC approved AVTOZMA® for all indications of the reference product, including moderate…
The Committee for Medicine Products for Human Use (“CHMP”) recommended 14 medicines for European Medicines Agency Approval (“EMA”) approval (“marketing authorization”), during its monthly meeting on July 22-25, 2024. Notably, the committee adopted positive opinions for the following 6 biosimilar products: Samsung Bioepis’s EKSUNBI (ustekinumab), Formycon AG’s FYMSKINA (ustekinumab), and Fresenius…
This week, Biogen announced that the European Commission has approved TOFIDENCE, a tocilizumab biosimilar referencing Roche’s ROACTEMRA. TOFIDENCE was approved by the FDA in September 2023. TOFIDENCE is an intravenous formulation of an interleukin-6 receptor antagonist, and is approved for the treatment of moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis, polyarticular…
On October 26, 2023, Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, announced that the FDA approved VABYSMO (faricimab-svoa) for the treatment of macular edema following retinal vein occlusion (RVO). RVO is the third indication approved for VABYSMO, in addition to wet, or neovascular, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular…
On May 26, 2023, the European Commission granted the marketing authorization to Samsung Bioepis for EPYSQLI, a biosimilar referencing SOLIRIS (eculizumab) developed by Alexion for the treatment of the paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) that had global sales of approximately $5 trillion last year. As the first hematology biosimilar developed by…
On August 31, 2022, Biocon Biologics released a statement regarding three recent on-site FDA inspections of seven manufacturing facilities spanning two sites in Bengaluru, India and one site in Johor, Malaysia. The inspections took place between August 11 and August 30, 2022. The inspections were triggered by three preapproval inspections…
On August 31, 2022, the PTAB instituted two inter partes reviews of Chugai and Roche’s tocilizumab patents challenged by Celltrion, adding to the growing list of IPRs instituted against the tocilizumab patent estate. We have been tracking the IPRs instituted against tocilizumab-related patents (see our last post, PTAB Institutes Sixth…
On April 13, 2022, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that the FDA approved its BLA for bevacizumab-maly, a biosimilar of Roche’s AVASTIN. The product will be marketed under the proprietary name ALYMSYS and represents the third bevacizumab biosimilar approved in the U.S, following Pfizer’s ZIRABEV (bevacizumab-bvzr) in 2019 and Amgen’s MVASI…
On January 28, 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Genentech’s VABYSMO (faricimab-svoa) for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME). According to the Genentech press release, VABYSMO targets and neutralizes angiopoietin-2 (ang-2) and vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A). The press release also…