CelltrionHealthcare

4. Role of biosimilars and the importance of at-home treatment

It depends clearly on the healthcare system and country, but still the good news is that we do more and more early disease control, early initiation of biologics. There is a wider use of biologics. If we want to treat more patients, we need to decrease the cost. With biosimilar, what is very interesting, is that you can treat more patients. More patients can be exposed to these drugs. So you can change the disease course in more and more and more patients. Which means less disability, people will have more work productivity, will have less hospitalization, will have less surgery. So for the healthcare system overall you will reduce a lot of economic burden related to IBD. So in that way biosimilars have changed a lot the treatment of IBD.

I think at-home treatment is a key for these patients. You should keep in mind that these patients will have and will suffer from this disease for decades. They will have it for instance at 18 years old until they will, I mean the end of their life which could be 80, 90 so they will have it for 50 years, sometimes 60 years. So if you put everything together this means that you have to go very often to the infusion clinic. So being treated at home it has huge impact because you will forget a little bit more of the disease, which is nice, because I mean when you have to go to the clinic you will think ‘ok next week I have to go to the clinic..’ so it reminds you of the disease, it reminds you that you have this disease so it’s always something adding to the disease burden. When you can be treated at home, it’s a way that will facilitate clearly, will allow you to forget sometimes the disease, and also you will be able to maintain normal, social and professional activities.