Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Medicine - Pharmacology, grade: 1 st CLASS HONS, Dublin Institute of Technology (Chemistry), course: Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance / Regulatory Affairs, language: English, abstract: During the course of this thesis evidence was presented and discussed related to the research questions. The fundamental question related to the heterogeneity and variation through the life cycle of the biosimilar and the reference biologic remains neglected, based on the results collected during this thesis, by the stakeholders, mainly because those issues...

Biopharmaceutical medicinal products (biologics) represent a huge financial market. Thus upon patent protection expiry of the innovator (reference) biologic there is interest from industry to gain a portion of this market by launching a 'similar' biologic at a reduced development cost, thus boosting potential gains. The EMA responded to this desire and lead the guidance process with industry on the topic of biosimilars. Based on the experience gained with biosimilars in the past, the EMA started to introduce a second generation series of guidance documents, which take into account the past,...