The FDA just approved the first direct competitor to a billion-dollar cancer drug (ROG.VX, AMGN)

Biosimilars are a bit more complicated than your average competing medicine: Unlike generics for chemical-based drugs like antibiotics that can be interchangeable with branded versions, the copycats of biologic medications, produced using living cells, have a few more caveats. The FDA has approved a number of these drugs.

As it stands right now, biosimilars can't be used interchangeably with branded versions, meaning if you were to get a prescription for a branded biologic, you wouldn't be able to opt for the "generic" one at the pharmacy as easily as you could if the drug was, say, a statin.

Having more biosimilars in the US would be a big deal: It might be the best way to drive down the cost of biologic medications that have been around for a while.

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The savings of putting people on far less costly biosimilars — even just new patients who have never taken the original — are estimated to be billions of dollars. Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager,estimated in 2013that the US could be saving $250 billion over the next 10 years because of biosimilars. Some argue that the response to biosimilars entering the market has been disappointing so far, though.

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