Does the government plan to breathe new life into biosimilars? In a hurry to find remedies for the Social Security deficit, the State could opportunely push the fires on these cheaper drugs, the use of which is still under-exploited in France. Thursday, June 8, a meeting at the Ministry of Health must bring together all the players in the sector (pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and patient representatives) to take stock.
Arrived about fifteen years ago on the French market, biosimilars, these “almost” generics, almost identical copies of biological drugs (that is to say made from living organisms) whose patent has fallen in the public domain, have established themselves in hospitals and pharmacies thanks to sales prices around 30% lower than those of reference drugs.
Without completely reaching their cruising speed. In 2021, their penetration rate in France reached only 37%. Far from the target of 80% by 2022 which had been set in its roadmap by the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, at the beginning of 2018. “There is certainly a progression, but it remains very slow compared to what we observe on generics, where, after five to six months of marketing, the penetration rates peak between 60 and 80%”, emphasizes Jérôme Wirotius, Managing Director of Biogaran.
“Right of Substitution”
However, the laboratories that market biosimilars have not spared their efforts to accelerate the pace. For nearly a decade, they have been calling on the government to put in place incentive measures for health professionals, like those adopted in the early 2000s to generalize the use of generic chemical drugs. But they come up against manufacturers of biomedicines who, anxious to preserve the market share of their products, slow down any government measure likely to jeopardize them.
At the heart of the battle is the “substitution right”, which would give pharmacists the possibility of replacing a biological drug with its cheaper copy, as is currently the case for generics. The government has kicked in touch for several years, listening to the laboratories manufacturing the reference biological drugs, which highlight the complexity of their products and the possible concerns of patients at the idea of changing their habits.
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