Pharmaceutical Business review

FDA accepts Samsung Bioepis’ BLA for Humira biosimilar

Image: FDA Building 51 in Silver Spring, Maryland which houses the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Photo: courtesy of The U.S. Food and Drug Administration/Wikipedia.org.

The BLA for SB5 was submitted by Samsung Bioepis in July 2018.

The BLA for SB5 was based on data derived from a randomized, double-blind 52-week Phase 3 study, in which 544 patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate (MTX) therapy were randomized to receive either SB5 or the adalimumab reference product (ADL).

At Week 24, the ACR20 response rate was 72.4% in the SB5 group versus 72.2% in the ADL group. The safety profile of SB5 was comparable to ADL up to Week 24. At Week 24, 254 patients receiving ADL were re-randomized in a 1:1 ratio to continue on ADL or transitioned to SB5, and 254 patients receiving SB5 continued to receive SB5.

Up to Week 52, the efficacy, safety and immunogenicity profiles remained comparable between all three treatment groups. There were no treatment emergent issues or clinically relevant immunogenicity precipitated by alternating subjects between treatments.

Outside of the United States, SB5 has so far received regulatory approval from the European Commission, Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration and Health Canada.

Source: Company Press Release.