Pfizer’s Biosimilar Strategy Might Be Working

Pfizer Inc.'s biosimilar business is well on its way to becoming a blockbuster business, even as the launch of three new oncology biosimilars has just gotten underway. Pfizer announced biosimilar revenues of $911m in 2019, with strong 19% growth driven by the US market – which had 70% growth itself.

The substantial growth of Pfizer's biosimilar business is notable, given that Pfizer only launched its first biosimilar in the US in late 2016, Inflectra (infliximab-dyyb), and that product got off to a noticeably lackluster start versus Johnson & Johnson's branded Remicade (infliximab). The launch of Pfizer's second and third US biosimilars in late 2018 – Retacrit (epoetin alfa-epbx), a biosimilar version of Amgen Inc.'s Epogen and Johnson & Johnson's Procrit, and Nivestym (filgrastim-aafi), a biosimilar of Amgen's Neupogen – have built out the portfolio