Replies to post #131857 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Your numbers on European sales of non-substitutable FoB’s are pretty accurate. To date, the only FoB classes that have material European sales are EPO, G-CSF, and hGH. FoB penetration is higher than 15% only for the EPO class and, even there, only if Aranesp is excluded from the calculation.

In some emerging markets, FoB penetration is much higher than in Europe due to weak patent protection and/or lax approval standards.

Germany is often referenced as the best EU country at driving uptake of biosimilar generics. They do it without substitution - but I cannot find a clear explanation of how they do it (the best description describes using the same 'reference prices' across all biologics in a class - but that is still very opaque. How is the person forcing the particular drug prescribed incentivized to choose the biosimilar (since physicians don't usually care about price per se)?)

About 25% of the German pharma market goes through government tenders, which are responsible in large part for the uptake of FoB’s.