Author Archives: Kumar Dhanasekharan, Claudia Berdugo-Davis, Xiaoming Liu, Carl Richey, Zaneer Segu, and Victor Vinci

Rapid Development and Scale-Up of Biosimilar Trastuzumab: A Case Study of Integrated Cell Line and Process Development

Compared with that for new drugs, biosimilar development faces significantly condensed timelines from cell line to first-in-human (FIH) trials. A biosimilar development program needs to accelerate quickly toward preclinical and phase 1 studies; phase 2 studies typically are not required because dose response and other patient-treatment concepts are already established by the original, comparator medicine. Phase 3 studies typically are limited to fewer patients, which ultimately shortens overall timelines and costs. The key challenge remains: demonstrating comparability and high similarity…