Bioanalytical Method Development and Validation of Biosimilars: Lessons Learned

Biosimilars are expected to be a significant growth driver for the pharmaceutical industry over the next decade, mainly because of the current market penetration of biologics and the need to provide payers cost savings over the originator therapeutics.Legislative support and regulatory guidance have facilitated their entry into pharmacy formularies of the future.Unlike small molecule generic drugs, biosimilars are heterogeneous proteins manufactured using cell-based systems of either microbial or mammalian origin.The use of living systems to manufacture drugs raises challenges in terms of product characterization and therapeutic equivalence to the innovator protein therapeutic.In this article, we share some lessons learned from developing and validating pharmacokinetic and immunogenicity assays that support preclinical and clinical comparative studies for the development of biosimilars.