biosimilar

The pharmaceutical industry is ready to fall off a cliff -- a "patent cliff." Over the next few years, some of the world's most popular and lucrative medicines will go off patent, and generic competition will siphon an estimated quarter of a trillion dollars from drugmakers' bottom lines.

Unlike generics, which are the exact chemical copies of a brand-name drug, biosimilars have large and often complex proteins that are made in living cells, and tiny differences can play havoc with the product. It may take years for the FDA to create an approval process.

Pfizer may be hatching plans to sell "biosimilars," cheaper versions of biotech medicines, of drugs developed by the world's largest independent biotech Amgen. That's causing concern not just at Amgen, but at other biotechs that fear such competition.