PMR report: Impressive growth of biological medicines

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According to the forecasts presented in PMR’s latest report “Biological and biosimilar medicines market in Poland 2019. Market analysis and development forecasts for 2019-2024”, sales of biological drugs (reference and biosimilar) will exceed PLN 4.8bn in 2019.

Penetration of biosimilars is increasing

In 2018, the development of the biological drugs market was hampered by the dynamic growth of sales of cheaper biosimilar products. This resulted in a reduction in the value of several important (reference) active substances. It is worth noting that the biological drugs market in Poland is dominated by original (reference) products in terms of value, mainly due to significantly higher costs of such therapies. A relatively large number of available reference drugs, compared to biosimilars, is also important.

Recently, however, an increase in the share of biosimilar drugs has been observed. This is due to the emergence of equivalents of several leading reference products due to the loss of patent protection, e.g. by Herceptin (trastuzumab), Clexane (enoxaparin), Humalog (insulin lispro) and Humira (adalimumab).

Overall, according to PMR data, the share of biosimilars in the total market for biological drugs in Poland increased by 5 percentage points between 2017 and the first half of 2019.

2019 with record growth in biological medicines

According to PMR forecasts, as a result of adding a relatively large number of reference drugs to the reimbursement, 2019 will result in an impressive growth in the market of biological drugs (reference and biosimilar drugs). We estimate that this will be an increase of over 20%.

The number of companies present on the market of biological drugs in Poland in 2017-2018 remained at a similar level. This is due to the fact that the barriers to market entry are very high due to the cost and length of development of a new drug. Only the first half of 2019 brought a slight increase in the number of players present on the market, which was largely due to the fact that further biosimilar drugs were allowed to be reimbursed. It is worth noting, however, that at present the market share of Polish manufacturers is low. In fact, only a few of them generate any sales in the segment of biological and biosimilar drugs.

The analysis covers Rx pharmacy sales as well as reimbursement within the framework of drug programmes and chemotherapy.

More on biological and biosimilar drugs in the PMR report: Biological and biosimilar medicines market in Poland 2019. Market analysis and development forecasts for 2019-2024.