Pivotal clinical trials for bevacizumab biosimilars

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Pivotal clinical trials for bevacizumab biosimilars

Home/Reports | Posted 18/09/2015 0 Post your comment

Biosimilars of Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab), a humanized monoclonal antibody, are currently under development.

Bevacizumab inhibits angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels) by blocking the action of vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). Bevacizumab can therefore slow the growth of new blood vessels in tumours and is used to treat various cancers, including colorectal, lung, breast, glioblastoma, kidney and ovarian.

Pivotal trials for candidate bevacizumab biosimilars being carried out typically include just one study of the response rate with some progression-free survival data. The trials take 24–48 months and are tougher trials to recruit and execute than anti-TNF trials [1], see Table 1.

Table 1: Pivotal clinical trials for candidate bevacizumab biosimilars

Study ID	Product name	Company name, country	Phase	Trial design	Status	No. of subjects	Start/end dates	Primary outcome(s)
Lung cancer
NCT01966003	ABP 215	Amgen, USA	III	2-arm, parallel	Ongoing	642	Oct 2013/ Sep 2015	ORR
NCT01763645	BCD-021	Biocad, Russia	III	2-arm, parallel	Ongoing	214	Oct 2012/Nov 2015	ORR, AUC
NCT02272413	BI 695502	Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany	III	2-arm, parallel	Recruiting	660	Jul 2015/Mar 2019	ORR
2014-003878-16	PF-06439535	Pfizer, USA	III	2-arm, parallel	Ongoing	798	Feb 2015/-	ORR
AUC: area under the curve; ORR: overall response rate.

The originator product, Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab), was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in February 2004 and by the European Medicines Agency in January 2005. The patents on Avastin are set to expire in Europe in January 2022 and in the US in July 2019 [2]. Avastin had worldwide sales of US$7.4 billion in 2014, making it a lucrative target for biosimilars manufacturers.

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References
1. Gal R. Biosimilars: at the inflection point. 13th EGA-European Biosimilars Group Conference; 23–24 April 2015; London, UK.
2. GaBI Online - Generics and Biosimilars Initiative. US$67 billion worth of biosimilar patents expiring before 2020 [www.gabionline.net]. Mol, Belgium: Pro Pharma Communications International; [cited 2015 Sep 18]. Available from: www.gabionline.net/Biosimilars/General/US-67-billion-worth-of-biosimilar-patents-expiring-before-2020

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