Tag: patent litigation

Pfizer’s At-Risk Launch of Inflectra Pays Off (at Least a Bit)

The US Court of Appeals handed Pfizer a big victory in its gamble to bring its biosimilar version of Remicade® to the market before the completion of patent litigation. On January 23, the Appeals Court ruled that Johnson & Johnson’s ‘471 patent in the case was declared invalid, clearing the way for sales of Inflectra® (infliximab-dyyb). Had Pfizer lost the suit, J&J could have sought Inflectra’s (and Samsung/Merck’s Renflexis®’s) revenues in addition to other damage claims.

Remicade’s ‘471 patent expiration was September 2018, but the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier ruling contended that the antibodies at the center of this patent were already included in patents that had previously expired.

Remicade is manufactured and sold by J&J’s subsidiary, Janssen Biotech.

In a widely publicized case, Pfizer sued J&J in September 2017 for anticompetitive practices, which it believes held down the sales of Inflectra to a spare $74 million for the first three quarters of last year. Although J&J is seeking to appeal the decision, with the patent expiration date looming, as well as limited sales of Inflectra, this would seem to be of relatively little benefit.

In any case, J&J is wary of losing marketshare and revenues on Remicade. According to Bloomberg News, Janssen Biotech saw fourth-quarter revenues from the biologic drop almost 10%, to $1.47 billion. Increasing competition from other biologics for similar indications and other biosimilar versions of infliximab worldwide have contributed to reduced sales.

Fuzzy Patent Logic

Over the past week, month, year (you name it!), we’ve read too much about the trials and tribulations of patent litigation. The latest, involving Pfizer and Roche, has the latter suing Pfizer for infringing on upwards of 40 Roche patents in Pfizer’s development of a trastuzumab biosimilar. This is pretty common these days, and even the number of patents involved fails to surprise. Yet, other competitors may reach the market before Pfizer; it has not yet filed for a 351(k) approval with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the European Medicines Agency.

BR&R Logo Transparent1.5-21-2017

This does not apply to other potential players. Celltrion cleared the Roche patent lawsuits in April 2017, enabling it to sell its trastuzumab biosimilar in its home country of Korea. This does not necessarily apply to sales in other countries, however.

Positive results were announced for a pivotal phase 3 study of Pfizer’s trastuzumab biosimilar PF-05280014 in Europe in September. These results will likely form the clinical backbone of its 351(k) application.

First launched in 1998, principal patent expiration of Herceptin in the US should be 2018 or 2019 and was 2014 in Europe. It may be assumed that Amgen/Allergan will wait for patent expiration before marketing their product in the US and subsist on sales in Europe in the meantime.

A similar but more protracted situation exists with Abbvie’s Humira®, for which competition will be fierce once the patents expire fully in 2023 (if they are not found to be invalid earlier). Amgen settled with Abbvie to obtain a global license from the originator’s manufacturer, applying to sales after this time. However, Amgen’s biosimilar will still have to compete with severals once the patents expire or are ruled invalid.

I’d like to post others’ opinions as to how the marketshare wars will play out when some patent agreements are made and others are not. What do you think will happen on the Herceptin front?

News in the Courts on Biosimilars

According to a Reuters report, Janssen Biotech withdrew its patent lawsuit against Samsung Bioepis on November 10. The suit alleged infringement in the manufacture of Samsung’s infliximab biosimilar.

Related imageThe action, which was filed in U.S. District Court of New Jersey, means that Merck and Samsung, which launched Renflexis™ in July, is no longer at risk for revenues earned in the sale of its biosimilar. If Janssen had maintained the lawsuit and later earned a victory in the courts, it could have been awarded a large percentage of Samsung’s Renflexis revenues.

In a separate case, an appeals court found that the Southern District of Florida was correct in its decision clearing Apotex Inc of any patent infringement in its development of biosimilars of Amgen’s Neulasta® and Neupogen®. The initial ruling, in September 2016, helped cleared the path for the biosimilars to reach the market. However, the organization’s filgrastim biosimilar was first filed in February 2015, without an approval. Its pegfilgrastim biosimilar was filed earlier, in December 2014, but has not advanced through the Food and Drug Administration’s 351(k) approval process. Apobiologix is the Apotex subsidiary that would manufacturer and market the biosimilars in the US, should they gain approval.

Amgen/Allergan Score Positive EMA Evaluation, but Launch Will Be Delayed

A couple of noteworthy pieces of news have emerged from across the pond on the biosimilar front. The first involves progress for Amgen’s application for its bevacizumab biosimilar at the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Its drug evaluation arm, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, recommended approval of the biosimilar on November 9.

Assuming EMA final approval is received, however, Amgen and Allergan’s cancer treatment agent will not be marketed any time soon. The principal European patent is not set to expire until 2022.

Image result for avastin biosimilarIn the US, Mvasi™ was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in September, but its launch is similarly delayed by patent litigation. The main US patents should expire in 2019 (Roche claims to hold 27 enforceable patents). Amgen had filed suit October 6 challenging the validity of the patents in question, but this case may not be heard until late 2018. Amgen has the option of launching “at-risk,” but it has not indicated that it will go this route. Otherwise, the earliest launch may be sometime in 2019.

Several other potential bevacizumab makers have already challenged the patents, according to other reports. These include Boehringer Ingelheim, Celltrion, Pfizer, and Samsung Bioepis.

In other related news…An announcement will be made on November 20 regarding where the EMA will relocate its headquarters as a result of the Brexit. The Agency will need to complete its move by March 31, 2019, when Britain’s divorce from the European Union is finalized.

Can Biosimilars Be Protected By Patent?

In going through my files, I came across an article from last year that asks a very basic but critical intellectual property (IP) question: “Are biosimilars patentable?” Sounds like a simple question, right? Well, the answer may not be straightforward, and relate to another question: “Exactly how different are they?”

In developing generic drugs, drug makers don’t seek to change the manufacturing process—they are attempting to provide an exact duplicate of the branded agent. This helps ensure that their product receives bioequivalency to the branded drug and an AB rating. Biosimilar agents are known to be inexact copies of the innovator product, and this can be the result of using a different cell line to produce the compound, or different processes to create a similar batch of biologic proteins or fragments. It would then make sense that biosimilar manufacturers would want to patent their proprietary process for manufacturing the drug, if it is in fact different than that used to create the originator biologic.

The authors, from a Toronto, Canada law firm, the University of Toronto, and an investment organization that promotes health innovation, point out that “the possibility that a biosimilar product could have meaningful patent protection arises from specific requirements for biosimilarity under the BPCIA, which account for the fact that manufacturing processes of biologics are inherently imprecise.”

They state, “The requirements for biosimilar approval may provide sufficient leeway to a biosimilar applicant to patent structural or formulation differences that provide non-clinical but business-relevant advantages over the reference molecule, such as improved shelf-life or ease of manufacture, without compromising clinical biosimilarity.”

Based on this analysis, it seems logical that a biosimilar manufacturing process should be patentable in its own right. This could pose a defense against other biosimilar developers. However, with so much patent litigation between originator and biosimilar manufacturers, could this add even more to lawsuits in defense of IP?