Is Bicizumab a domestic drug or an imported drug?

Bimekizumab (Bimekizumab) is an innovative biological agent developed by the Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB. It is an imported original drug. It has not yet achieved domestic generic production in mainland China. Therefore, patients still need to rely on the imported version of the drug when using it in China. The research and clinical development of this drug began in Europe and has been approved for marketing in many countries, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. It is mainly used to treat chronic autoimmune diseases such as moderate to severe plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

As an original imported drug, bichizumab is structurally fully humanIgG1 type monoclonal antibody, which is highly selective and targeted and specifically inhibits two key inflammatory factors, IL-17A and IL-17F. Its research and development breaks through the previous treatment framework that only targets IL-17A, and provides a more comprehensive inflammation regulation pathway for the control of diseases such as psoriasis. This innovative mechanism enabled it to quickly gain clinical recognition after being launched in Europe and the United States, and it has become one of the priority drugs recommended in international psoriasis treatment guidelines.

In the domestic drug market, bicizumab is still in the registration review stage, has not yet been included in the Chinese National Medical Insurance List, and has not been copied by local companies. The research and development of generic drugs usually faces multiple obstacles such as high technical threshold, patent protection and biosimilarity verification. Therefore, even if companies try to imitate in the future, it will be difficult to achieve commercial launch in a short time. For patients, the only current ways to use drugs are to purchase drugs overseas, import them at their own expense, or obtain drug use opportunities by participating in clinical trials.

Because it is an imported drug, its price is relatively high. The current cost of each injection may be more than 15,000 yuan, and the annual treatment cost is heavy. However, due to its superior efficacy and good tolerability, it still attracts the attention of a large number of patients with moderate to severe psoriasis, especially for patients whose traditional treatment methods are ineffective.Bimekizumab provides a new treatment possibility.

Reference materials:https://www.drugs.com/bimekizumab.html