Company: ABBV
Filing Date: 2025-02-14
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001551152-25-000020
Chunk: 9

Company: AbbVie Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-14
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 9
---
 products compete with BTK inhibitors and other competitive products intended to treat certain cancers. In addition, in the past few years, a number of other companies have started to develop, have successfully developed and/or are currently marketing products that are being positioned as competitors to Botox. The search for technological innovations in pharmaceutical products is a significant aspect of competition. The introduction of new products by competitors and changes in medical practices and procedures can result in product obsolescence. Price is also a competitive factor. In addition, the substitution of generic and biosimilar pharmaceutical products for branded pharmaceutical products creates competitive pressures on AbbVie's products that do not have patent protection. New products or treatments brought to market by AbbVie’s competitors could cause revenues for AbbVie’s products to decrease due to price reductions and sales volume decreases.

Biosimilars.    Competition for AbbVie’s biologic products is affected by the approval of follow-on biologics, also known as “biosimilars.” Biologics have added major therapeutic options for the treatment of many diseases, including some for which therapies were unavailable or inadequate. The cost of developing and producing biologic therapies is typically dramatically higher than for small molecule medications, and many biologic medications are used for ongoing treatment of chronic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease, or for the treatment of previously untreatable cancer. Significant investments in biologics infrastructure and manufacturing are necessary to produce biologic products.

Humira faces direct biosimilar competition globally, and AbbVie will continue to face competitive pressure from these biologics and from orally administered products.

In the United States, the FDA regulates biologics under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the FFDCA), the Public Health Service Act (PHSA) and the regulations implementing these statutes. The enactment of federal health care reform legislation in March 2010 provided a pathway for approval of biosimilars under the PHSA, but the approval process for, and science behind, biosimilars is complex. Approval by the FDA is dependent upon many factors, including a showing that the biosimilar is "highly similar" to the original product and has no clinically meaningful differences from the original product in 

5     |  2024 Form 10-K

terms of safety, purity and potency. The types of data that could ordinarily be required in an application to show similarity may include analytical data, bioequivalence studies and studies to demonstrate chemical similarity, animal studies (including