Bio­gen dou­bles down on biosim­i­lars pact with Sam­sung Bioepis, bag­ging oph­thal­mol­o­gy, an­ti-TNF drugs

A year af­ter ty­ing a tighter knot with Sam­sung Bioepis on a biosim­i­lars joint ven­ture, Bio­gen is hand­ing over an­oth­er $100 mil­lion to fun­nel sev­er­al more pro­grams to its own pipeline.

In ex­change, the US biotech is bag­ging two new oph­thal­mol­o­gy biosim­i­lars — knock­offs of No­var­tis’ Lu­cen­tis and Re­gen­eron’s Eylea, re­spec­tive­ly. Those are ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights for glob­al mar­kets; it can al­so com­mer­cial­ize a slate of an­ti-TNF drugs in Chi­na, in­clud­ing Benepali (etan­er­cept), Fli­cabi (in­flix­imab) and Im­ral­di (adal­i­mum­ab). The part­ners are leav­ing open an op­tion for Bio­gen to pro­long their cur­rent agree­ment in Eu­rope for five years.

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