Dive Brief:
- A large French hospital group, Assistance Publique-Hôspitaux de Paris (AP-HP), has struck a deal to use a Remicade (infliximab) biosimilar from Hospira to treat its patients, Reuters reports.
- Inflectra is the biosimilar version of Remicade (infliximab) manufactured by Merck/Johnson & Johnson.
- AP-HP is buying Inflectra at a 45% discount to Remicade.
Dive Insight:
Remicade is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, and psoriasis, and had $2.2 billion in sales last year. According to Citigroup analysts, use of biosimilars will result in at least $110 billion of value being transferred globally between 2015 and 2025.
AP-HP will be spending roughly $6.6 million per year on Inflectra. Overall, the 45% is good, but according to Reuters, some buyers have procured even steeper discounts, including a buyer in Norway, which was given a 69% discount on the biosimilar versus the original biologic.
Now that hospitals and other payers are starting to strike deals with biosimilar manufacturers, it's increasingly clear that the era of biosimilars is here.