A robust and complex process ensuring structural and clinical comparability is used to demonstrate a biosimilar’s clinical comparability to the reference product.
Data on pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity, safety profile and efficacy are collected.
Developing biosimilars has been made possible due to modern analytical advances in characterization and development of biologics:
Accurate analytics allow assessment of critical quality attributes in the molecule that may impact clinical activity. These methods contribute to building a fingerprint of quality attributes for the reference drug.
Biosimilars are assessed for similarity to the reference medicine based upon:7
Indications already studied in a reference product can also be approved for the biosimilar of that product through a process called “extrapolation”1,8
A biosimilar must show no clinically meaningful differences from its reference biologic in terms of safety profile, purity, and potency9