Dr Sonia Oskouei on Managed Care’s Impact After Rollout of Adalimumab Biosimilars

While 2023 is a big year with at least 7 adalimumab biosimilars expected to come to market, 2024 will be even more important because all the products will be on the market and formulary decisions can be made, said Sonia T. Oskouei, PharmD, BCMAS, DPLA, vice president of biosimilars at Cardinal Health.

Transcript

There is a lot of excitement about the adalimumab biosimilars coming to market in 2023, but are there scenarios in which the impact is much less than expected?

The excitement around the adalimumab event happening in 2023 is rightfully so, as we look at adalimumab being the number one selling drug in the world, and of all time, this is going to be one of the most significant events to occur in US pharmaceutical history.

So, there's already 7 FDA-approved biosimilars for adalimumab waiting to come to market in 2023 and kicking that off is Amgen's biosimilar candidate, and then 6 months after you have another group in the July timeframe with several adalimumab biosimilars anticipated to come to market. So, there's a lot of eyes and preparedness going into this big event happening.

Now certain aspects that can influence the significance of this event is primarily the managed care landscape. So, depending on how PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] and these health plans adopt or support or use medication management strategies to manage these products could influence the scale of impact with this event happening.

Now I always say there's 2023—but then there's 2024. So as these products come out over time…we're going to see different reactions from, particularly, the managed care landscape on what formulary decisions will be made, which I believe will be an even bigger impact going into 2024, when you have all these players on the market competing.