April 26, 2024

• 

[THE INVESTOR] Celltrion Healthcare said on April 3 that it has launched a cheaper monitoring kit for its sister firm Celltrion's biosimilar Remsima that calculates the correct does of the drug for best effects. 

With the new testing kit hitting the European market in April, the company said, Remsima will be further gobbling up the market share of the original Remicade, Johnson & Johnson’s top-selling rheumatoid arthritis drug. 

Related:
Celltrion Healthcare delays IPO amid accounting woes


Currently, Remsima’s market share stands at about 40 percent in Europe, the highest among several cheaper copycats in the market.

Patients suffering from auto-immune disorders are required to pay more than US$200 for diagnostic tests before their regular injections. Due to the high costs, many of the patients skip the tests and get the injections every eight weeks on average.

The company said the new testing kit that works not just for Remsima but also for other injection drugs will drastically reduce the cost to some US$50 while allowing the maximum therapeutic effect with minimal risk of toxicity.

"The kit will enable more tailored diagnosis for individual patients,” a Celltrion Healthcare official said. “We plan to sell the kit bundled with Remsima as part of our marketing strategy to increase market share.”

Remsima is a pioneer among the new wave of complex copycats that are increasingly replacing Remicade with price benefits. The Celltrion drug also hit US pharmacy shelves in December last year, becoming the second biosimilar approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)