Seth Ginsberg: What Biosimilar Developers Should Know About the Rheumatic Disease Community

Transcript:

What do you want biosimilar developers to know about patients with inflammatory diseases?

There remains an unmet need for safe and effective treatments for inflammatory diseases. We support the research, development, and marketing of biosimilars to our community and related patient communities.

There are no words that can accurately summarize what biologics have meant to our community of patients. They have changed our lives. I remember when we created CreakyJoints back in 1999, from my dorm room bunk bed in the first year of college. We began by holding community-based patient events in libraries and community centers all around the country. One thing that sticks out in my mind is the instruction we’d give the meeting planners for those events—they’d set up 100 chairs for the event, but right before it started, pull the front right quadrant of 25 chairs so we’d make room for people with mobility assistance devices like wheelchairs or walkers.

Today, when we hold a patient event, if there is 1 wheelchair, it’s the outlier. This is directly the result of the innovation that has occurred with biologics, and biosimilars represent the continuation and proliferation of that innovation for our community.

As the next wave of therapies—in the form of biosimilars—comes to market, we must all work together to ensure that the cost savings that are realized by these versions of the treatments make their way to the patients’ purses and wallets.