Biologics versus Synthetic Drugs

Over the past 20 years innovative biotech therapies, or "Biologics", have delivered breakthrough medical treatments for serious and life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS, as well as many serious rare diseases.  

• A biologic is manufactured in a living system such as a microorganism, or plant or animal cells. Most biologics are very large, complex molecules or mixtures of molecules. Many biologics are produced using recombinant DNA technology.
• A drug is typically manufactured through chemical synthesis, which means that it is made by combining specific chemical ingredients in an ordered process.
• Drugs generally have well-defined chemical structures, and a finished drug can usually be analyzed to determine all its various components. By contrast it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to characterize a complex biologic by testing methods available in the laboratory, and some of the components of a finished biologic may be unknown.
• Therefore, for biologics, "the product is the process." Because the finished product cannot be fully characterized in the laboratory, manufacturers must ensure product consistency, quality, and purity by ensuring that the manufacturing process remains substantially the same over time. By contrast, a drug manufacturer can change the manufacturing process extensively and analyze the finished product to establish that it is the same as before the manufacturing change.
• The living systems used to produce biologics can be sensitive to very minor changes in the manufacturing process. Small process differences can significantly affect the nature of the finished biologic and, most importantly, the way it functions in the body. To ensure that a manufacturing process remains the same over time, biologics manufacturers must tightly control the source and nature of starting materials, and consistently employ hundreds of process controls that assure predictable manufacturing outcomes.
• Process controls for biologics are established separately for each unique manufacturing process/product, and are not applicable to a manufacturing process/product created by another manufacturer. These process controls may also be confidential to the original manufacturer. Therefore, it would be difficult or impossible for a second manufacturer to make the "same" biologic without intimate knowledge of and experience with the innovator's process.

Generics Drugs versus Subsequent-Entry Biologics

• To be approved as a generic, a drug must have the same active ingredient, strength, dosage form, and route of administration as the reference drug, and it must also be "bioequivalent." This means that generic drugs are the same chemically as their innovator counterparts and that they act the same way in the body. The bioequivalence of the generic drug is demonstrated through relatively simple analyses such as blood level testing, without the need for human clinical trials. In approving a generic drug under The Food and Drug Regulations Health Canada determines that the generic is "bioequivalent" to the innovator drug, and is interchangeable with it.  Health Canada has indicated that it will not declare SEBs bioequivalent with the innovator reference product.

U. S. Food and Drug Administration Perspective on Immunogenicity and Interchangeability