Photo by Rhoda Baer
Cancer patient receiving chemotherapy
The European Commission (EC) has approved Mundipharma’s pegfilgrastim product Pelmeg, a biosimilar of Amgen’s Neulasta.
Pelmeg is approved for use in reducing the duration of neutropenia and the incidence of febrile neutropenia in adults who receive cytotoxic chemotherapy for malignancies, with the exceptions of chronic myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes.
The approval is valid in all countries of the European Union as well as Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
The EC’s approval of Pelmeg was supported by research showing pharmacokinetic comparability between Pelmeg and Neulasta at a dose of 6 mg, pharmacodynamic comparability at doses of 6 mg and 3 mg, and no clinically meaningful differences in the safety and immunogenicity profiles of Pelmeg and Neulasta.1,2,3
1. Roth K. et al. Demonstration of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic comparability in healthy volunteers for B12019, a proposed pegfilgrastim biosimilar. ECCO 2017, abstract 241.
2. Roth K. et al. Comparability of pharmacodynamics and immunogenicity of B12019, a proposed pegfilgrastim biosimilar to Neulasta®. ASH 2017, abstract 1002.
3. Roth K. et al. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic comparability of B12019, a proposed pegfilgrastim biosimilar. ESMO 2017, poster 1573.