Amid the impact of numerous generic drugs, AbbVie’s (ABBV.US) “former drug king” Humira still leads by a large margin

Zhitong Finance APP learned that biosimilar manufacturer Samsung Bioepis said in a new report released on Thursday that the market share of Humira, the best-selling arthritis treatment under US pharmaceutical giant AbbVie (ABBV.US), remains above 70%. This blockbuster drug has been threatened by biosimilars in the United States for two years, but the market share of AbbVie’s exclusive brand is still very high.

The anti-inflammatory injection, also known as adalimumab, has brought AbbVie hundreds of billions of dollars in sales since it was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2002. Humira was once a blockbuster arthritis drug that drove the company’s strong growth for more than 15 years. However, in early 2023, the drug lost its exclusive sales rights in the U.S. market.

Humira’s market share declines, but it still dominates

Humira is a biologic developed by AbbVie. Since its launch, Humira has topped the global drug sales list for many years, with annual sales exceeding US$18 billion. It was once hailed as the “king of medicine” by the biologics industry. Its active ingredient is adalimumab, a fully humanized monoclonal antibody that can specifically bind to and inhibit tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), thereby reducing the inflammatory response mediated by TNF-α. Humira is widely used to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

After accounting for more than one-third of AbbVie’s overall revenue in 2022, as biosimilars from Amgen (AMGN.US), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA.US) and Pfizer (PFE.US) entered the global biopharmaceutical market, Humira’s contribution to AbbVie’s total revenue dropped sharply to about 27% in 2023.

Although Humira still maintains its dominant position with a 96% market share as of February 2024, its market leadership is threatened in May 2024 as large drug and pharmacy benefit managers such as CVS Health (CVS.US) completely remove the branded drug from major drug formularies, and its market share drops to 77%, but it still has an absolute dominant position in the adalimumab market.

According to the latest statistics from Samsung Bioepis, as of November, although the market share of biosimilars related to Humira has increased from 2% a year ago to 23%, AbbVie’s adalimumab drugs still account for 72% of the US market, and AbbVie still holds the title of “the only dominant player”.

The South Korean biopharmaceutical giant added that biosimilars of Humira, Hyrimoz and Hadlima (by CVS Health/Sandoz, respectively) and Organon/Samsung Bioepis, contributed the majority of the Humira generic market share.

At the same time, Samsung Bioepis said that other well-known adalimumab manufacturers, or Humira generic brands, such as Amgen, Teva/Alvotech and Pfizer, all have market shares of 3% or less.

AbbVie begins looking for “new momentum”

AbbVie has long been seeking new growth momentum to fill the gap left after Humira loses patent protection in 2023. AbbVie executives are worried that cheaper biosimilars on the market will begin to erode its adalimumab sales.

The company’s recent launch of new biologic drugs, such as Skyrizi and Rinvoq, have been helping to offset the company’s declining sales trend and push the company’s sales growth rate into a growth trajectory, and some recent blockbuster deals in the fields of cancer and neuroscience are expected to further supplement its pipeline of novel therapeutic products.

Both new drugs, Skyrizi and Rinvoq, are considered important successors to AbbVie’s flagship Humira after its patent expires. Skyrizi is a new biologic developed by AbbVie for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, active psoriatic arthritis, and moderate to severe Crohn’s disease in adults. Skyrizi selectively blocks a subunit (p19) of interleukin-23 (IL-23), thereby fully inhibiting the related inflammatory process.

Rinvoq is a new oral drug that is a JAK inhibitor used to treat a variety of inflammatory diseases, including moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis, active psoriatic arthritis, moderate to severe active ulcerative colitis, and moderate to severe Crohn’s disease. Rinvoq mainly reduces inflammation by inhibiting the activity of Janus kinase (JAK).

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