In March 2023, major insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly (Lilly), Novo Nordisk and Sanofi announced price reductions of 70%, 75% and 78% respectively, for their most commonly prescribed insulins in the US, starting from first quarter of 2023 for Lilly and from 1 January 2024 for Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. The three companies control over 90% of the global insulin market.
In late 2022, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) issued a position statement on biosimilars [1] in which they emphasized their strong belief that safe and effective treatments should be available to patients at the lowest possible cost. This is an update of previous position statements [2].
Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has pointed out that the absence of appropriate regulatory frameworks for biosimilars may have led to the approval of follow-on biologicals that cannot be considered biosimilars according to current WHO biosimilar guidelines, which were coined ‘non-innovator biologicals’ by WHO. In order to investigate the existence of ‘non-innovator biologicals’ in global markets, more understanding of the structure of the market and the manufacturers that are active in this field is needed.