To the Editor:

Your editorial (Nat. Biotechnol. 31, 267, 2013) on the recent Blood journal piece decrying the pricing of brand cancer drugs rightly echoed concerns about the sustainability of high-priced medicines for the patients who need them most. Your assessments of resolutions, however, had a glaring omission—you failed to identify biosimilar medicines as a key part of the solution.

Biosimilars have been available in Europe for more than seven years and have proved to be as safe and effective as their reference products. Assuming biosimilars become available in the United States, the savings will be substantial. An Express Scripts study issued the same week as the publication of the hematologists' protest showed biosimilars could save the United States >$250 billion between 2014 and 2024. The same study showed that in Europe and Asia, biosimilar versions of medicines are saving the health system up to 40%, depending on the therapy.

The US health system is complex, but within that system generics companies have a track record of saving patients and the health system substantial money. In fact, IMS data from 2012 shows savings due to generics in the United States top a trillion dollars over the past ten years. In contrast, the high-priced medicines you mention face no biosimilar competition. To offer choices and lower prices of these life-saving and life-changing therapies, every effort must be made to speed access for Americans to biosimilars.