On January 10, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its long-awaited draft guidance on the interchangeability standard for biosimilar manufacturing.
It’s been quite a while since we have been able to discuss progress on interchangeability, so as a reminder, the practical differentiator between a product designated as biosimilar versus interchangeable is that the latter “may be substituted for the reference product without the intervention of the health care provider who prescribed the reference product.”
Not surprisingly, the critical mandated addition in clinical studies of an interchangeable biosimilar is the conduct of a sufficient number of switching studies; that is, studies where patients are alternatively given the originator product, switched to the biosimilar, and possibly back to the originator, without any measurable risk to patient safety or efficacy. Or as the FDA puts it “the risk in terms of safety or diminished efficacy of alternating or switching between use of the biological product and the reference product is not greater than the risk of using the reference product without such alternation or switch.”
Interestingly, the FDA does restrict switching studies to between the biosimilar and the US-licensed reference product only (i.e., no EU versions with bridging studies). The reason is related to slight, nonclinically meaningful differences that may be introduced in the EU version that is not present in the US originator product.
The draft guidance is subject to a 60-day public comment period. For those interested in commenting on the guidance, they can visit https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-01042.pdf for instructions.
