Sandoz’s Humira biosimilar nabs significant market share thanks to CVS partnership

The nine biosim­i­lars com­pet­ing with Ab­b­Vie’s megablock­buster Hu­mi­ra have tried every­thing from ex­act­ly im­i­tat­ing the lat­est ver­sion of brand-name Hu­mi­ra to tak­ing more than 80% off the list price. But where they failed be­fore, they may have found a new play­book in a part­ner­ship be­tween San­doz and CVS.

Last Au­gust, CVS cre­at­ed a sub­sidiary to work di­rect­ly with biosim­i­lar de­vel­op­ers, kick­ing off with a deal to sell San­doz’s Hu­mi­ra biosim­i­lar Hy­ri­moz. Ef­fec­tive­ly, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the for­mer gener­ics arm of No­var­tis and one of the top three phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers en­abled Hy­ri­moz to skip ahead of Hu­mi­ra on its for­mu­la­ry and make the first dent in the brand name’s mar­ket share.

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