If you want to go far, generic drugs have to go through doctors first

Source: Biovalley 2015-08-18, August 18, 2015, in the past two years, the word "patent cliff" has been widely mentioned by people in the biomedical industry As a result, the generic drug market is also expected by relevant analysts According to the data, the top 10 biological drugs in sales volume are impacted by generic drugs In 2014, the sales volume has dropped to 62 billion US dollars, and in 2020, the sales volume will drop to 49 billion US dollars (related reading: in 2020, bio generics will take half of the original research drug market.) however, at present, many investigations on generics are conducted from the perspective of pharmaceutical companies and patients, and many people have ignored the most important part of the two - the attitude of doctors Recently, a doctor platform called quantiamd conducted a survey of 300 physicians and specialists on information related to bio generic drugs, which was a little surprising In the survey, 78% of the doctors interviewed said they were very familiar with the concept of bio generic drugs, but only 38% of the doctors were able to name a generic drug product related to their field of expertise and being reviewed by the FDA Even more surprising, only 17% of the doctors surveyed said they were very likely to prescribe generic drugs for their patients (strictly speaking, in the future) And this result will probably bring a lot of trouble to the generic drug market In fact, Bio Valley editor thinks this result is unexpected and reasonable On the one hand, the original research drug has laid a very good user base after years of operation Although the imitated drug carries the advantage of price into the market, it may still be difficult to be accepted by the public without the exact evidence of efficacy On the other hand, although the industry has been shouting "wolf has come" for several years, there is still no generic drug really entering the market As a result, many doctors don't know about the generic products in their own professional fields, so naturally they don't dare to report great hopes to them Of course, if we take into account the "industry potential rules" widely spread in the pharmaceutical industry, the situation of the generic drug market will be more complicated It also poses a severe challenge for many generic pharmaceutical enterprises Previously, because FDA did not establish a regulatory framework for the review and approval of biosimilars, the United States fell behind in the biosimilar field In many other countries around the world, people can relatively easily obtain cheap versions of expensive biological products - biosimilar However, under the guidance of the 2010 patent protection and affordable care act, FDA now has the right to approve biosimilars As a result, many generic companies have begun to work hard, hoping to get a piece of cake from the many best-selling drug markets At present, the FDA has approved Novartis' generic zarxio, the original research version of which is the best-selling drug neupogen of Amgen However, due to the patent dispute between the two sides, zarxio can only be launched in the U.S market after September this year, at which time, it will also test the acceptance of biological generic drugs in the U.S market.