Coherus BioSciences is selling its Humira biosimilar for just $40 million, only three years after it won FDA approval, showing just how crowded the market has become for Humira and its nine biosimilar competitors.
The company spent at least six years running clinical trials, setting up its commercial manufacturing and filing its applications — all to push its Humira biosimilar Yusimry across the FDA finish line in 2021 as the seventh Humira biosimilar to win approval in the US.
Its work likely cost tens of millions of dollars or more. While Coherus didn’t disclose its specific R&D expenses for Yusimry, in 2016, when the large clinical trial was running for Yusimry’s approval package, the company was spending about $50 million per quarter on R&D expenses (but was also working on other drug candidates).
The drug’s new owner after the $40 million sale will be Hong Kong King-Friend Industrial Co. subsidiary Meitheal Pharmaceuticals, which will continue to sell Yusimry in the US.
Coherus told Endpoints News in an emailed statement that the sale “reflects a strategic decision based on a comprehensive assessment of our current and future business priorities and allows Coherus to focus more resources and efforts on advancing our pipeline of novel cancer therapies.”
Yusimry launched in the US in July 2023, but it has struggled to gain traction after almost a year on the market. While it sells at a market-low 86% price discount to AbbVie’s brand-name Humira, Yusimry mustered just 1% of the multibillion-dollar Humira market, according to Samsung Bioepis’ latest biosimilar market report.
A Jefferies investor report from May 17 said that Humira biosimilars now control only about 18% of the total market, and most launched more than a year ago. AbbVie, meanwhile, continues to protect its crown jewel, and in April it reported $1.77 billion in US-based Humira revenue in the first quarter of 2024.
“What this shows is just how hard it is to get even a small slice,” Marta Wosińska, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, told Endpoints. One of the few exceptions is Sandoz, which has made inroads through a CVS partnership.