Generics and biosimilar manufacturers are challenging the status quo when it comes to innovation.
Paul Tredwell, vice president for specialty brands at Accord Healthcare, says innovation is vital for success in today’s generics and biosimilars market.
Over the last 150 years we have witnessed a transformation that has changed the health of our nation. Advances in the medicines available to patients has led to life expectancies doubling, creating a population boom and allowing many more people to live longer, fuller lives.
Today, the revolution continues as new pioneering approaches are introduced to treat conditions that were once considered out of reach, such as metastatic cancer, diabetes and HIV.
You may be thinking what role can the generics industry play in these innovative paradigm changing times?
Firstly, generic and biosimilar medicines can save healthcare systems considerable sums of money that free up resources to pay for other, more expensive treatments and services that patients need, including funding the research into new treatments and medicines.
Secondly, generic competition drives innovation across pharma. Originators know that their products will eventually face generic competition leading to a significant fall in sales and income and therefore they need to continually research new medicines.
Traditionally branded medicines had the monopoly on innovation, but manufacturers such as Accord Healthcare are challenging the status quo with a new generation of biosimilars and generics.
At present we supply one in five generic medicines NHS prescriptions in the UK and our mission has always been to increase access to effective affordable medicines across the world. However, it is important for sustainability that we take the conversation away from just price and demonstrate the value of generics and biosimilars. We can do this in many ways, but at the moment we are focused on creating added value products (AVPs) i.e., products that deliver improvements over the standard medicines, either through; new therapeutic uses, efficacy and tolerability profile, way of administration or increased patient support. In addition to generic medicines, the space where we see much potential for this innovative approach is biosimilars.
Biosimilars hit the UK market nearly ten years ago and the UK is now one of the hottest markets for these cost-effective near copies of biological drugs. While the cost is not the primary focus, it cannot be overlooked that many biosimilars are priced 10–30% lower than the originator biologic.
The main reason for the surge in the UK, is that unlike some of our European counterparts, there is a good understanding about biosimilars and how they are approved among doctors in the UK. They are comfortable with the concept that the drugs have been shown to demonstrate a safety and efficacy profile that is similar to the originator, with subtle differences that are unavoidable due to the challenges of manufacturing drugs using living cells.
We are using our Research and Development capabilities to develop a portfolio of generic and biosimilar AVPs to bring affordable alternatives in some of the most complex areas of medicine such as oncology, critical care, auto-immune and central nervous system conditions. However, for us the most prominent remains oncology. We have invested heavily in our future pipeline in this area and have a number of phase III products working their way to market; medicines which we anticipate will bring tremendous advances to treatment in the coming years.
We are looking to make the patient journey better. We are pushing the boundaries around traditionally what a generics company can do.
However, bringing innovative affordable medicines to market is only a part of health transformation. We, like every other part of the health community, rely on healthcare professionals such as pharmacists, who are the real voice of industry and only through our partnerships with those working on the frontline can we truly deliver on our mandate to increase access to life-changing medicines.
