Earlier this month, Pfizer notified the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that it was withdrawing one of its two applications for approval of its biosimilar adalimumab. 

According to Pfizer’s Director of Global Media Relations, Thomas Biegi, the company had submitted two applications for this biosimilar, one for a limited set of indications, and the other for the full array of autoimmune indications of the reference product Humira^®. Pfizer has decided to focus on gaining approval for the full slate of indications and withdrew the other application. Under the “skinny label,” the product would have been marketed as Fyzoclad™ in Europe. The potential brand name of the biosimilar if  approved with all of the reference product’s indications was not disclosed. In the US, the biosimilar is still known as PF-06410293 .

Although Pfizer would not confirm its plans for the US filing, phase 3 trial results for PF-06410293 have been published, establishing the biosimilar’s equivalency to Humira in terms of efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity.

Pfizer noted in its December 5th letter to EMA that their decision was not related to safety or efficacy. No doubt, Pfizer is surveying the heavy competition for adalimumab in Europe today. Pfizer did not elaborate on why the decision was made to submit applications for both the skinny label and the full set of indications.  

Pfizer signed a licensing deal with Abbvie on November 30 to market this adalimumab biosimilar in the US. It will be the sixth biosimilar to enter the market in 2023, based on this deal. Therefore, Pfizer must believe that a sixth biosimilar entrant to the US market at that time may still yield relevant revenues and marketshare. 

According to EvaluatePharma, Humira US sales estimates (published in 2018) for 2020 will be about $21 billion. By 2024, this company believes Abbvie’s share of the revenue will be a bit more than $12 billion (which is not much different than today’s figures). If this guess is accurate, that leaves $9 billion for seven or so biosimilar makers. If the guess is very inaccurate, and Abbvie is left with far less revenue because of the competition and falling prices, then any number of adalimumab biosimilar manufacturers could attain more than $1 billion in sales. 

In other biosimilar news…Amgen has announced the filing of a new biosimilar version of infliximab. ABP 710 was the subject of a phase 3 trial in patients with moderate-to-severe rheumatoid arthritis; researchers concluded that the drug was equivalent to Remicade^® in terms of efficacy, safety and immunogenicity. Today’s filing would put this biosimilar on a path to a late Q3 or early Q4 2019 decision by the FDA. If approved, ABP 710 would be the fourth infliximab biosimilar approved in the United States (Pfizer’s Inflixi® is also approved but will only be sold overseas).

 

This post was updated and corrected on December 18, 2018.