Oncobiologics, a New Jersey maker of monoclonal antibody biosimilars for top-sellers like Humira, just closed out a $31 million round of financing. The privately held New Jersey company is ramping up its developing of biosimilars as a slew of biologics hit their patent expiration dates in the next few years.
CEO Pankaj Mohan told MedCity News that this is the first tranche of a hoped-for D-round that’ll net another $100 million. Before this, Oncobiologics raised money largely from angels and one semi-institutional investor – about $80 million in total to this point.
“This tranche is more for us to bring in more key investors,” Mohan said. “This indicates a major transition in our company – it’s the first time we’ve gone out and shared our story with the market.”
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Humira is the first drug for which Oncobiologics is developing a biosimilar; it’s entering phase 3 trials at the moment and will be ready to hit the market right as Humira’s patent expires in 2017. Its second will be a biosimilar that mirrors Avastin; it’s got 11 assets in total under development, Mohan said.
Biosimilar pricing won’t ever be as low as a small molecule generic, Mohan said, because the effort to reverse engineer a biologic is so much more involved. Mohan projects that Oncobiologics’ biosimilars could undercut the branded drugs by 30 percent – though it’ll all depend on market dynamics. This is worthy of note, given that big biopharma players are Amgen are entering the biosimilar game.
“The way I look at it: We have intentionally designed the biosimilar engine to give us pricing leverage so that we could give as high a discount as the market demands, and still have a high market penetration,” Mohan said. “Because we have lowered development costs, and manufacturing costs are low, we have pricing leverage to compete with any party – either large pharma or a niche, small biosimilar company like us.”
The funding was led by new investor Perceptive Advisors, with other participants including Proximare Life Sciences Fund, OSSB Pharma Fund and MIH Fund.
