Boehringer Partners with Cigna to Help Promote Humira Biosimilar

By agreeing to supply Cigna’s private label wholesaler with biosimilar versions of the ageing product, Boehringer Ingelheim has garnered backing for its endeavour to pry AbbVie’s hands off the Humira gold mine. When Boehringer of Germany emerged as the first firm to receive FDA clearance for an interchangeable Humira copycat, it seemed well-positioned to take on AbbVie.

The business then introduced an 81% reduction on a generic biosimilar and a price reduction of 5% on a branded biosimilar, Cyltezo. However, the debut didn’t proceed as planned, so last month Boehringer decided to try an alternate marketing strategy.

The pharmaceutical company has now disclosed a contract with Quallent Pharmaceuticals, a fully owned subsidiary of Cigna. Boehringer will continue to market each Cyltezo and its generic Humira biosimilar clone, and will supply the private label distributor with citrate-free adalimumab-adbm.

Senior vice president of value and access at Boehringer, Stated that the agreement will “increase availability of our adalimumab biosimilar for patients living with certain chronic inflammatory diseases.”

Cigna CEO told investors “we have agreements in place with multiple manufacturers who will produce biosimilars … will be priced at about 85% lower than Humira.”