During 2012–2018 over US$290 billion of sales are at risk from patent expirations.  In fact, in 2013 alone patents will expire on drugs with yearly sales of US$29 billion. Generics are expected to grab 70% of those sales.

The drugs at the top of the 2013 patent expiry list are shown in Table 1. The most lucrative targets for generics manufacturers are expected to be Eli Lilly’s anxiety and depression drug Cymbalta (duloxetine) and Biogen Idec’s multiple sclerosis biological Avonex (interferon beta-1a).

Table 1: Top patent losses during 2013

Two major biologicals Neupogen (filgrastim) and Procrit (epoetin alpha) will both lose their patent protection in the US in 2013, but the lack of practical guidance from FDA may slow the entry of biosimilars to the US market. These two biologicals have already lost patent protection in Europe, where biosimilars for epoetin alpha and filgrastim were already introduced in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

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Source: www.gabionline.net