Samsung Bioepis partner brings biosimilars to China

16-Jan-2019 - Last updated on 16-Jan-2019 at 13:22 GMT

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Samsung Bioepis will expand into the Chinese market after agreeing to a deal with 3SBio to commercialise its biosimilar portfolio.

3SBio, headquartered in Shenyang, China, will provide an unspecified upfront and milestone payments to work with Samsung Bioepis’ portfolio.

The companies announced that 3SBio will work on the clinical development, regulatory registration and commercialisation of Samsung Bioepis’ biosimilar candidates. This will include working on SB8, a biosimilar candidate to Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab).

“We are very excited to expand our biosimilar business into China, where we hope to see our biosimilars play an important role in widening patient access to high-quality healthcare,” said Christopher Hansung Ko, CEO of Samsung Bioepis, in a statement.

He continued, “We are confident we will achieve this goal through our partnership with 3SBio, which brings together Samsung Bioepis’ proven development platform with 3SBio’s strong commercialisation platform.”

Samsung Bioepis has seen approvals for its products: in the US, Renflexis (infliximab) became the second biosimilar to gain approval as an alternative to Johnson & Johnson’s Remicade; in Europe, Samsung Bioepis holds approvals for Benepali (etanercept), Flixabi (infliximab), Imraldi (adalimumab) and Ontruzant (trastuzumab).

Samsung Bioepis did not reveal whether the deal with 3SBio would include commercialising any existing products.