A Biosimilar for Blood Cancer Treatment
Celltrion Healthcare announced on Oct. 15 that Truxima, a biosimilar it has developed for blood cancer treatment, accounted for more than 30 percent of the European market as of the end the second quarter of this year.
Truxima is a biosimilar to Rituxan, a drug developed by Biogen and marketed by Roche. It is used for the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), which is a type of blood cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), granulomatosis with polyangiitis(GPA), and microscopic polyangiitis (MPA).
Truxima was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in February last year and released in the U.K. in April of the same year.
Celltrion Healthcare said, quoting data from IQVIA, a medical market research institute, Truxima accounted for 32 percent of the market in 18 European countries where it was released in the second quarter of this year. It captured 64 percent of the market in the U.K. 39 percent in France and 32 percent in Italy. Its share in the five major European countries (the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain) averaged 34 percent.
The company plans to expand the market for Truxima from the current 22 European countries to all over Europe by the first half of next year.
Meanwhile, the company said Ramishima, a biosimilar for the treatment of self-immolation disease recorded a 54 percent market share in Europe in the second quarter of this year, while Herzuma, a breast cancer treatment biosimilar, had a 7 percent market share in just a month since its release in the Netherlands in June.