Abstract
Development of biosimilar proteins is the fastest growing sector in the biopharmaceutical industry, as patents for the top 10 best-selling biologics will expire within one decade. The world’s first biosimilar of infliximab, Remsima® (CT-P13) made by Celltrion, was approved by the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of European Medicine Agency (EMA) in June 2013. This has ignited competition between related companies for prior occupation of the global market on blockbuster biologics. However, to achieve approval for biosimilars, developing companies face many hurdles in process development, manufacturing, analysis, clinical trials, and CMC (chemical, manufacturing and controls) documentation. Recent evolutionary progress in science, engineering, and process technology throughout the biopharmaceutical industry supports to show similarity between originator and biosimilar products. The totality of evidence has been able to demonstrate the quality, efficacy, and safety of biosimilars whereas a lack of interchangeability and international standards has to be addressed. Further understanding of the timing importance by regulatory agencies will be key to maximizing the value of biosimilars.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Knezevic, I. and E. Griffiths (2011) Biosimilars: Global issues, national solutions. Biologic. 39: 252–255.
Generics and Biosimilars initiative (2013) Biosimilars approved in Europe. Mol. Belgium. http://www.gabionline.net/Biosimilars/General/Biosimilars-approved-in-Europe.
Crommelin, D., T. Bermejo, M. Bissig, J. Damiaans, I. Krämer, P. Rambourg, G. Scroccaro, B. Strukelj, R. Tredree, and C. Ronco (2005) Biosimilars, generic versions of the first generation of therapeutic proteins: do they exist? Contrib. Nephrol. 149: 287–294.
La, Merie (2013) Blockbuster biologics 2012: Sales are double that of 2006 driven by strong growth of recombinant antibodies. Germany. http://www.pipelinereview.com/index.php/2013050950921/Press-Room/Blockbuster-Biologics-2012-sales-are-double-thatof-2006-driven-by-strong-growth-of-recombinant-antibodies.html.
Bain, B. (2011) Pharmaceutical key trend 2011 — biosimilar market overview (datamonitor, February). London, UK. http:// www.datamonitor.com/store/Product/?productid=HC00062-006.
Ahmed, I., B. Kaspar, and U. Sharma (2012) Biosimilars: Impact of biologic product Life cycle and European experience on the regulatory trajectory in the United States. Clin. Ther. 34: 400–419.
Hou, J. J. C., J. Codamo, W. Pilbrough, B. Hughes, P. P. Gray, and T. P. Munro (2011) New frontiers in cell line development: Challenges for biosimilars. J. Chem. Technol. Biotechnol. 86: 895–904.
Beck, A. and J. M. Reichert (2013) Approval of the first biosimilar antibodies in Europe: A major landmark for the biopharmaceutical industry. mAbs 5: 621–623.
Rathore, A. S. (2009) Follow-on protein products: scientific issues, developments and challenges. Trends Biotechnol. 27: 698–705.
Harris, R. J., S. J. Shire, and C. Winter (2004) Commercial manufacturing scale formulation and analytical characterization of therapeutic recombinant antibodies. Drug Develop. Res. 61: 137–154.
Schellekens, H. (2004) How similar do ‘biosimilars’ need to be? Nat. Biotechnol. 22: 1357–1359.
Schellekens, H. (2004) Biosimilar therapeutic agents: Issues with bioequivalence and immunogenicity. Eur. J. Clin. Invest. 34: 797–799.
Locatelli, F. and S. Roger (2006) Comparative testing and pharmacovigilance of biosimilars. Nephrol. Dial. Transplant. 21: 13–16.
Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) (2012) Scientific considerations in demonstrating biosimilarity to a reference product. Washington (DC), USA. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ Guidances/UCM291128.pdf.
Kresse, G. B. (2009) Biosimilars-science, status, and strategic perspective. Eur. J. Pharm. Biopharm. 72: 479–486.
Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) (2012) Quality considerations in demonstrating biosimilarity to a reference protein product. Washington (DC), USA. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/Guidance-ComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM291134.pdf.
Ryu, J. K., H. S. Kim, and D. H. Nam (2012) Current status and perspectives of biopharmaceutical drugs. Biotechnol. Bioproc. Eng. 17: 900–911.
McCamish, M. and G. Woollett (2012) The state of the art in the development of biosimilars. Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. 91: 405–417.
McCamish, M. and G. Woollett (2013) The continuum of comparability extends to biosimilarity: How much is enough and what clinical data are necessary? Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. 93: 315–317.
Lee, S. Y., Y. B. Kwon, J. M. Cho, K. H. Park, S. J. Chang, and D. I. Kim (2012) Effect of process change from perfusion to fedbatch on product comparability for biosimilar monoclonal antibody. Proc. Biochem. 47: 1411–1418.
Hossler, P., S. F. Khattak, and Z. J. Li (2009) Optimal and consistent protein glycosylation in mammalian cell culture. Glycobiol. 19: 936–949.
Schiestl, M., T. Stangler, C. Torella, T. èepeljnik, H. Toll, and R. Grau (2011) Acceptable changes in quality attributes of glycosylated biopharmaceuticals. Nat. Biotechnol. 29: 310–312.
Tep, S., M. Hincapie, and W. S. Hancock (2012) The characterization and quantitation of glycomic changes in CHO cells during a bioreactor campaign. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 109: 3007–3017.
Bourgoin, A. F. and B. Nuskey (2013) White paper: An outlook on U.S. biosimilar competition. Drug Today 49: 399–410.
Oliver, K. and W. Heribert (2012) Pharmaceutical biotechnology: Drug discovery and clinical applications. 2nd ed., p. 324. Wiley-Blackwell, Boschstr. Weinheim, Germany.
Pani, L., S. Pimpinella, G. Montilla, and R. Bertini Malgarini (2013) Biosimilars: The paradox of sharing the same pharmacological action without full chemical identity. Expert. Opin. Biol. Ther. 13: 1343–1346.
Yang, J. D., C. Lu, B. Stasny, J. Henly, W. Guinto, C. Gonzalez, J. Gleason, M. Fung, B. Collopy, M. Benjamino, J. Gangi, M. Hanson, and E. Ille (2007) Fed-batch bioreactor process scale-up from 3-L to 2,500-L scale for monoclonal antibody production from cell culture. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 98: 141–154.
Nienow, A. W. (2006) Reactor engineering in large scale animal cell culture. Cytotechnol. 50: 9–33.
Stickel, J. J. and A. Fotopoulos (2001) Pressure-flow relationships for packed beds of compressible chromatography media at laboratory and production scale. Biotechnol. Prog. 17: 744–751.
Aldington, S. and J. Bonnerjea (2007) Scale-up of monoclonal antibody purification processes. J. Chromatogr. B. 848: 64–78.
Calvo, B. and L. Zuñiga (2012) The US approach to biosimilars: The long-awaited FDA approval pathway. Biodrugs 26: 357–361.
Food and Drug Administration (2013) Biosimilars: Questions & answers regarding implementation of the biologics price competition and innovation act of 2009. Washington (DC), USA. http:// www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/Guidances/UCM273001.pdf.
Sharma, B. (2007) Immunogenicity of therapeutic proteins. Part 2: Impact of container closures. Biotechnol. Adv. 25: 318–324.
Schneider, C. K., C. Vleminckx, I. Gravanis, F. Ehmann, J. H. Trouvin, M. Weise, and S. Thirstrup (2012) Setting the stage for biosimilar monoclonal antibodies. Nat. Biotechnol. 30: 1179–1185.
Weise, M., M.-C. Bielsky, K. De Smet, F. Ehmann, N. Ekman, T. J. Giezen, I. Gravanis, H.-K. Heim, E. Heinonen, K. Ho, A. Moreau, G. Narayanan, N. A. Kruse, G. Reichmann, R. Thorpe, L. Van Aerts, C. Vleminckx, M. Wadhwa, and C. K. Schneider (2012) Biosimilars: What clinicians should know. Blood 120: 5111–5117.
Berkowitz, S. A., J. R. Engen, J. R. Mazzeo, and G. B. Jones (2012) Analytical tools for characterizing biopharmaceuticals and the implications for biosimilars. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 11: 527–540.
European Medicines Agency, Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) (2008) Guideline on development, production, characterization and specifications for monoclonal antibodies and related products. London, EMA. http://www.ema. europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Scientific_guideline/2009/ 09/WC500003074.pdf.
Beck, A., E. Wagner-Rousset, D. Ayoub, A. Van Dorsselaer, and S. Sanglier-Cianférani (2013) Characterization of therapeutic antibodies and related products. Anal. Chem. 85: 715–736.
Jiang, X.-R. A. Song, S. Bergelson, T. Arroll, B. Parekh, K. May, S. Chung, R. Strouse, A. Mire-Sluis, and M. Schenerman (2011) Advances in the assessment and control of the effector functions of therapeutic antibodies. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 10: 101–111.
Ramos-Casals, M., P. Brito-Zerón, S. Muñoz, N. Soria, D. Galiana, L. Bertolaccini, M.-J. Cuadrado, and M. A. Khamashta (2007) Autoimmune diseases induced by TNF-targeted therapies: analysis of 233 cases. Medicine 86: 242–251.
Atzeni, F., R. Talotta, F. Salaffi, A. Cassinotti, V. Varisco, M. Battellino, S. Ardizzone, F. Pace, and P. Sarzi-Puttini (2012) Immunogenicity and autoimmunity during anti-TNF therapy. Autoimmun. Rev. 12: 703–708.
Barbosa, M. D. F. S. (2011) Immunogenicity of biotherapeutics in the context of developing biosimilars and biobetters. Drug Discov. Today 16: 345–353.
Du, Y., A. R. Ehrick, W. Xu, K. May, and H. Liu (2012) Chromatographic analysis of the acidic and basic species of recombinant monoclonal antibodies. mAbs 4: 578–585.
Falconer, R. J., D. Jackson-Matthews, and S. M. Mahler (2011) Analytical strategies for assessing comparability of biosimilars. J. Chem. Technol. Biotechnol. 86: 915–922.
Endrenyi, L. (2013) Current issues in biowaivers and biosimilars. Expert Rev. Clin. Pharmacol. 6: 139–142.
Gahoual, R., A. Burr, J. M. Busnel, L. Kuhn, P. Hammann, A. Beck, Y.-N. François, and E. Leize-Wagner (2013) Rapid and multi-level characterization of trastuzumab using sheathless capillary electrophoresis-tandem mass spectrometry. mAbs 5: 479–490.
Chen, S. L., S. L. Wu, L. J. Huang, J. B. Huang, and S. H. Chen (2013) A global comparability approach for biosimilar monoclonal antibodies using LC-tandem MS based proteomics. J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 80: 126–135.
Khawli, L. A., S. Goswami, R. Hutchinson, Z. W. Kwong, J. Yang, X. Wang, Z. Yao, A. Sreedhara, T. Cano, D. Tesar, I. Nijem, D. E. Allison, P. Y. Wong, Y.-H. Kao, C. Quan, A. Joshi, R. J. Harris, and P. Motchnik (2010) Charge variants in IgG1: Isolation, characterization, in vitro binding properties and pharmacokinetics in rats. mAbs 2: 613–624.
McCamish, M. and G. Woollett (2011) Worldwide experience with biosimilar development. mAbs 3: 209–217.
Schneider, C. K. (2013) Biosimilars in rheumatology: The wind of change. Ann. Rheum. Dis. 72: 315–318.
Visser, J., I. Feuerstein, T. Stangler, T. Schmiederer, C. Fritsch, and M. Schiestl (2013) Physicochemical and functional comparability between the proposed biosimilar rituximab GP2013 and originator rituximab. BioDrugs 27: 495–507.
Engelsman, D. J., P. Garidel, R. Smulders, H. Koll, B. Smith, S. Bassarab, A. Seidl, O. Hainzl, and W. Jiskoot (2011) Strategies for the assessment of protein aggregates in pharmaceutical biotech product development. Pharm. Res. 28: 920–933.
Hinderer, W. (2012) Biosimilar Drugs. pp. 285–335. In: O. Kayser and H. Warzecha (eds.). Pharmaceutical biotechnology: Drug discovery and clinical applications. Wiley-Backwell, Boschstr, Weinheim, Germany.
Ebbers, H. C., S. A. Crow, A. G. Vulto, and H. Schellekens (2012) Interchangeability, immunogenicity and biosimilars. Nat. Biotechnol. 30: 1186–1190.
Nellore, R. (2010) Regulatory considerations for biosimilars. Perspect. Clin. Res. 1: 11–14.
European Medicines Agency, Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) (2012) Guideline on similar biological medicinal products containing monoclonal antibodies-non-clinical and clinical issues. London, London, EMA. http://www. ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Scientific_guideline/ 2012/06/WC500128686.pdf.
Kay, J. (2011) Biosimilars: A regulatory perspective from America. Arthritis Res. Ther. 13: 1–2.
Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) (2013) Guidance for industry, scientific considerations in demonstrating biosimilarity to a reference product. Washington (DC), USA. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/ GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM291128.pdf.
Nature Biotechnology: Editorial (2013) Building a wall against biosimilars. Nat. Biotechnol. 31: 2–4.
Gecse, K. B., R. Khanna, G. R. Brink, C. Y. Ponsioen, M. Löwenberg, V. Jairath, S. P. L. Travis, W. J. Sandborn, B. G. Feagan, and G. R. A. M. D’Haens (2013) Biosimilars in IBD: Hope or expectation? Gut 63:1–5.
Mellstedt, H., D. Niederwieser, and H. Ludwig (2008) The challenge of biosimilars. Ann. Oncol. 19: 411–419.
Hollis, M. (2011) Biosimilars: Regulatory update (Datamonitor, August). London, UK. https://service.datamonitorhealthcare.com/ strategy/market-access/regulation/article61086.ece.
Usdin, S. (2012) Biosimilars: FDA plan points to slow iterative path; high analytical hurdles. BioCentury Publications, Inc. Redwood City, Calif, USA http://www.biocentury.com/biotechpharma-news/regulation/2012-02-13/biosimilars-fda-plan-pointsto-slow-iterative-path-high-analytical-hurdles-a1.
Wang, J. and S. C. Chow (2012) On the regulatory approval pathway of biosimilar products. Pharmaceuticals 5: 353–368.
Kang, H.-N. (2011) Summary of the diverse situation of similar biotherapeutic products in the selected countries (August 2010). Biologic. 39: 304–307.
Senior, M. (2013) Biosimilars battle rages on, Amgen fights both sides. Nat. Biotechnol. 31: 269–270.
Monika, M. (2012) Biosimilars: Current perspectives and future implications. Indian J. Pharmacol. 44: 12–14.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
These eight authors contributed equally to this work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, Y.S., Choi, B.W., Yang, S.W. et al. Biosimilars: Challenges and path forward. Biotechnol Bioproc E 19, 755–765 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-013-0756-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-013-0756-8