On April 4rd, in Geneva, Switzerland, ASBM participated in the World Health Organization’s 64rd Stakeholder Consultation on International Nonproprietary Names. ASBM has been a regular participant at the INN Consultations since 2013. ASBM’s Chairman Harry L. Gewanter, Advisory Board Chair Philip Schneider, MS, FASHP and Advisory Board Member Jeff Jones, PhD represented ASBM at this meeting.

The subject of the INN meeting is the continued development and implementation of the INN Programme’s Biologic Qualifier (BQ) proposal. The is a modification to the INN system designed to ensure clear product identification between biosimilars and their reference product by means of a four-letter distinguishing suffix appended to a common root name.

The Executive Summary from the 64nd INN Consultation may be viewed here.