title: Biosimilars in allergic diseases.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This article realizes an overview on the world of biological and biosimilar drugs in allergic and immunologic diseases' treatment strategies. We started talking about the history of asthma treatment's progresses, continuing to daily biological therapies, concluding with the economic point of view.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nowadays, the only pharmacological-biological approach approved for allergic diseases is omalizumab. Several other monoclonal antibodies are currently running premarketing studies but the costs of these therapies are difficult to be sustained by healthcare systems.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Several biological treatments have gone or are going off-patent, opening the drug market to biosimilars. In this way, in future, it will be possible to reduce health costs and increase accessibility to therapies that currently are not affordable to all patients.
authors.affiliation: aDIMI Department of Internal Medicine, Allergy and Respiratory Diseases, University of Genoa, IRCCS AOU San Martino-IST, Genoa bDepartment of Translational Medical Sciences, Division of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, University of Naples Federico II, Napels, Italy.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ferrando
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bagnasco
authors.forename: Fulvio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Braido
authors.forename: Gilda
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Varricchi
authors.forename: Giorgio W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Canonica
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D059451:Biosimilar Pharmaceuticals / Q000191:economics / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D006967:Hypersensitivity / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000191:economics / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D059451:Biosimilar Pharmaceuticals