Mylan and Momenta Pharmaceuticals to develop six biosimilar products

Mylan has announced a new biosimilar research and development partnership with Momenta Pharmaceuticals.

The global collaboration agreement will involve the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of six of Momenta's current biosimilar candidates, including its biosimilar version of Orencia, also known as abatacept.

Mylan will pay Momenta up to $245 million (172.86 million pounds), with each company sharing equally in the resulting costs and profits and assuming joint responsibility for product development. Mylan will lead the worldwide commercialisation efforts.

Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of Mylan, said: "Mylan is further expanding what is already one of the industry's most robust and diverse biosimilar portfolios and helping to ensure we can deliver enhanced access to these critical products to patients around the world."

This builds on Mylan's existing biologics and insulin analogue partnership with Biocon, which includes six biosimilar programmes and three insulin analogues. Five of these programmes have completed phase I clinical trials, and four are in active phase III testing.