Boehringer ax­es biosim­i­lar de­vel­op­ment out­side US; Macro­Gen­ics, Chi­na's Zai Labs join forces to de­vel­op I/O treat­ments

→ Ger­many’s Boehringer has elect­ed to wash its hands off biosim­i­lar de­vel­op­ment out­side the Unit­ed States. The de­ci­sion like­ly comes in re­ac­tion to the painful patent bat­tle with Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV — the mak­er of the world’s best sell­ing drug Hu­mi­ra, which last year raked in about $18.4 bil­lion. Last year, Boehringer’s Hu­mi­ra copy­cat Cyl­te­zo was the first to win EU ap­proval and nabbed the run­ner-up ap­proval in the Unit­ed States. Ab­b­Vie’s tac­tics to pro­long the life of its block­buster in the Unit­ed States suc­ceed­ed to a de­gree, with a slate of biosim­i­lar mak­ers agree­ing to de­lay their launch­es to 2023, but Boehringer con­tin­ues to wres­tle with Ab­b­Vie to launch Cyl­te­zo soon­er. Mean­while, Hu­mi­ra biosim­i­lars in Eu­rope by firms such as No­var­tis $NVS, My­lan $MYL and Am­gen $AMGN have been launched. Boehringer wants to fo­cus its ef­forts en­tire­ly in the Unit­ed States, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to Bio­process In­sid­er on Wednes­day. “While Boehringer In­gel­heim had planned to bring Cyl­te­zo to pa­tients in the EU, due to the patent lit­i­ga­tion with Ab­b­Vie in the US, we will not com­mer­cial­ize our biosim­i­lar in the EU,” a spokesper­son said, adding that the com­pa­ny is al­so stop­ping biosim­i­lar de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties for the rest of the world.

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