- Biosimilar developer ranked first in the “Chemicals and Pharma” category
- Ranked second among the top 500 companies in Germany by growth
Munich – The biosimilar company Formycon has been named “growth champion 2017” in the category “Chemistry and Pharma” by the news magazine Focus. Due to its significant growth in sales over recent years, Formycon was ranked first in this segment in a rating of the 500 companies in Germany with the largest growth in sales in the period from 2012 to 2015. In the overall ranking, Formycon took second place.
“We are very pleased with our excellent rankings in the Focus list,” said Dr. Carsten Brockmeyer, executive board member and CEO of Formycon. “They illustrate the rapid and successful achievements of our young company over the last few years with our biotechnological follow-on drugs and company growth. We owe this result to the great commitment of the entire Formycon team and the excellent support of our partners.”
Since the start of development activity in 2012, Formycon has continuously expanded its range of biosimilar projects, with four projects currently in the pipeline. In the current year, the company anticipates sales of EUR 20 million. In particular, Formycon expects a further substantial increase in revenues from the year 2020. From this point and given a successful development, it is planned to launch FYB201 – the first biosimilar developed by the company – on the market.
Biosimilars are follow-on products of biopharmaceutical drugs and are increasingly taking over the role of classical generics. In contrast to the latter, biosimilars are complex medical preparations whose development requires extensive know-how and considerable financial resources. Compared to original pharmaceutical products, which are usually expensive, biosimilars offer significant savings potential for healthcare systems and thus make a central contribution to the improvement of patient care in the form of highly effective, biopharmaceutical drugs.
Formycon’s most advanced development project (in partnership with Bioeq IP AG) is FYB201, a biosimilar candidate of the ophthalmic drug Lucentis®* (ranibizumab), for which patients have been enrolled in a global clinical phase III since the start of 2016. FYB201 is therefore the world’s only Lucentis® biosimilar to be in a phase III licensing study, the final stage of clinical development to gain marketing approval.
FYB203, which has been licensed out to Santo Holding Deutschland (GmbH), is a biosimilar candidate to Eylea®** (aflibercept) which, like Lucentis®, is used to treat neovascular, age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and other serious eye conditions. Details of the FYB202 and FYB205 projects, which have not yet been partnered and the rights to which are still fully owned by Formycon, have so far not been published.
The Focus special “Growth Champions 2017” includes a list of the 500 German companies with the highest average percentage growth per year. Focus also subdivided the list into different industry sectors. The ranking was developed in cooperation with the statistical company Statista and takes into account both privately owned and listed companies. The prerequisites for inclusion were that the companies operate independently, are not subsidiaries, have their head office in Germany and generated at least EUR 100,000 in sales in 2012 and EUR 1.8 million or more in 2015.
* Lucentis is a registered trademark of Genentech Inc.
** Eylea is a registered trademark of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.