Another look at news in the Week to March 11

By Barbara Obstoj-Cardwell, Editor

Commenting on the news last week of the $595 million upfront deal between AbbVie and Boehringer Ingelheim, giving rights to AbbVie to develop a psoriasis drug candidate, Bloomberg points out the treatment is aimed at entering a crowded field that includes Humira, AbbVie’s top product with $14 billion in fiscal 2015 sales.

While AbbVie seems to be confident that it can fend off biosimilars of Humira on the basis that “copy” drug developers being unable to prove “similarity,” it will still come up for competition from biosimilars of other coming off-patent biologicals, such a Enbrel, aimed at the same therapy sector, which means, at the very least, that AbbVie will need to reduce the price of Humira.