The opportunity in biosimilars is here, one has to grab it: Debayan Ghosh, Epygen Biotech
Edited excerpts :
The world took notice of biosimilars when BioconBSE 1.45 % got that approval. The first question is what is a biosimilar and why is it so important?
But biological drugs are much larger, about 100-1000 daltons and these are all produced biologically by microorganisms. The fundamental difference is chemical drugs are not smart enough, they are like the chemicals if you combine A and B, it will produce C. But when you are talking biological, A and B can make C, can make C1, C2, C3 depending on what is needed.
How large is the entire biosimilar opportunity in the world?
By 2020, the biopharmaceutical industry will be about $250 billion.
This is not large if I look at the generic and if I look at the entire chemistry…
$250 billion is a lot. Right now, we are talking about a trillion dollar of pharmaceuticals and we are talking $250 billion of biopharmaceuticals. The best part is right now, only 10% of that is coming from biosimilars but by 2020 that is going to be $30 billion or $50 billion and the assumption ithat by 2030 the numbers can catapult to $100 billion.
If you look at the last few years, in the United States, from 2010 to 2015 there is a huge jump in new biological molecules that are being launched. The biologicals are going to take over the entire pharmaceutical field. As I said, 75% of the pharmaceuticals are going to be biological drugs but in the process many of these novel biological molecules are going to go off patent. That has been happening already. In Europe, for for example, which is 25% of the biopharmaceutical market, already 40% biosimilars have entered and in Japan also. However, United States have been very cautious and they have not been allowing the biosimilars to come in because they were like 50% of the biopharmaceutical market of the $250 billion.
