Samsung Bioepis – the joint venture between Samsung and Biogen Idec – has started a phase III clinical trial for a biosimilar version of Roche’s cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab). Bevacizumab slows the growth of new blood vessels in tumors and is used to treat various cancers.
The clinical trial is global, and is being carried out in 678 patients from Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan and Ukraine. It is designed to compare the efficacy, safety, pharmacokinetics and immunogenicity between the proposed bevacizumab biosimilar and Avastin in subjects with metastatic or recurrent non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.
Stay tuned to the Big Molecule Watch for further developments.