Impact of generic Copaxone launches
Launched in early October, Mylan's generic glatiramer acetate (GA) 20mg and first-to-market generic GA 40mg have already captured 15% of the GA class share (which includes Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’ (NYSE: TEVA) Copaxone and Sandoz's Glatopa 20mg). In fact, just one month post-launch, neurologists perceive Mylan's generics to be preferentially covered by payers - slightly more so than Glatopa 20mg or the Copaxone formulations - with payer or pharmacy pressure driving the preponderance of generic GA 40mg initiations.
Due to generic GA 40mg prescribers' slightly greater willingness to use generic GA 40mg as a switch from a GA 20mg agent (versus GA 40mg or other DMTs), Glatopa 20mg has felt the greatest immediate impact from Mylan's generic GA launches with significant decreases in both prescriber base and share compared to three months ago. Conversely, with 71% of recent Copaxone 40mg prescriptions marked dispensed-as-written (DAW) and neurologists successfully challenging almost half of payer/pharmacy contacts suggesting generic switches, Copaxone prescriber base and share have remained stable.
Looking forward, neurologists anticipate that significant increases in both generic GA 40mg prescriber base and share will begin to erode Copaxone share over the next six months. Early generic GA 40mg adopters will be leading the brand-to-generic conversion - attributable to their reported comfort using the generic in place of Copaxone 40mg and agreement that generics/biosimilars are a good thing for their multiple sclerosis patients.
