Australia praised after rejecting biologic suffix

Adecision by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to not use specific identifier suffixes as part of naming conventions for biologics has been welcomed by the global generics and biosimilars industry. Following a stakeholder consultation, the TGA said it had decided to “maintain the existing naming convention for biological and biosimilar medicines – that is continue using the Australian biological name, without a specific identifier suffix – and strengthen our adverse event reporting”.