FDA and FTC talk tough on ensuring competition for biologics

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have released a joint statement on how they work together to promote competitive markets for biological products.

Biosimilars offer huge potential savings to healthcare systems, but their adoption in the USA has lagged way behind other developed markets, especially Europe.

Factors that have led to this include the longer and extended patents held for the originator drugs in the USA, and a lack of physician and patient confidence in biosimilars, sometimes caused by unfounded claims being spread that question the efficacy of these more affordable copies.