Celltrion’s Vegzelma gobbles up 12% market share in Japan

Celltrion's Vegzelma, a bevacizumab biosimilar referencing Roche's anticancer drug Avastin (Celltrion)

South Korea’s leading biosimilar company Celltrion said Wednesday that its Vegzelma, a bevacizumab biosimilar referencing Roche's anticancer drug Avastin, has secured 12 percent share in the Japanese market.

Since its launch in January last year, Vegzelma has seen fast growth despite the biosimilar being the latest launched among four bevacizumab biosimilar products in Japan.

Celltrion said it was able to ramp up sales of Vegzelma by cooperating with Japanese distribution partners. “Celltrion’s regional office and its Japanese partners leveraged their own distribution channels to speed up building a sales network,” an official from Celltrion said.

Celltrion added that Vegzelma’s sales increased quickly as anticancer drugs are included in the Japanese medical service reimbursement system, or Diagnosis Procedure Combination. “It is more profitable for hospitals to prescribe biosimilars to their patients than prescribing more expensive original drugs. This also helped Vegzelma to increase its share in the market,” the official added.

Several Celltrion biosimilar products are listed in the Japanese medical service reimbursement system. They include Vegzelma, Herzuma, a trastuzumab biosimilar referencing Roche’s breast cancer treatment Herceptin, and Remsima, an infliximab biosimilar to Johnson & Johnson’s immunology blockbuster Remicade.

Supported by the Japanese medical service reimbursement system, Herzuma had a 69 percent market share in the Japanese trastuzumab market as of April this year, Remsima also secured a 34 percent share in the infliximab market in Japan, becoming the top-selling such biosimilar in the country.

The previous success of Herzuma and Remsima in Japan helped Celltrion’s marketing of Vegzelma there, the company added.

“Celltrion will continue to increase its sales capacity for smooth market entries of its other biosimilar products in Japan, including Yuflyma, an adalimumab biosimilar referencing AbbVie’s Humira, used to treat multiple chronic inflammatory diseases.