News
A biosimilar of etanercept received clearance for marketing from the Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 30 for all of the inflammatory disease indications held by the reference originator etanercept product, Enbrel, according to an announcement from the agency.
Approval for all of Enbrel’s indications – rheumatoid arthritis, plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis – was initially met with skepticism by members of the agency’s Arthritis Advisory Committee at a meeting in July because the biosimilar was compared against Enbrel in patients with plaque psoriasis only, but eventually all panel members voted to recommend approval.
The approval allows the biosimilar etanercept, called etanercept-szzs, to be marketed as a biosimilar only, not as an interchangeable product. The FDA has not yet developed guidance for manufacturers to follow to get approval for interchangeability, which means that a biosimilar “may be substituted for the reference product by a pharmacist without the intervention of the health care provider who prescribed the reference product,” according to the agency.
“We carefully evaluate the structural and functional characteristics of these complex molecules. Patients and providers can have confidence that there are no clinically meaningful differences in safety and efficacy from the reference product,” Janet Woodcock, MD, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the agency’s announcement.
Etanercept-szzs will be marketed by Sandoz as Erelzi. Erelzi’s prescribing information can be found here. The biosimilar is currently undergoing review with the European Medicines Agency.