Navitus to Offer Unbranded Stelara Biosimilar, Remove Stelara from Formulary

Navitus Health Solutions’ specialty pharmacy will offer an unbranded biosimilar of Stelara (ustekinumab) that the PBM estimates will save between $112,000 and $336,000 per patient per year compared with the annual per-patient cost of the reference product.

Lumicera Health Services has made a purchase agreement with Anda, a subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical, for a lower-priced biosimilar version of Stelara (ustekinumab). Under this agreement, Lumicera’s discounted net acquisition cost for the unbranded biosimilar (ustekinumab-aekn) is estimated to generate $120 million in annualized savings for clients. Lumicera uses a pass-through, acquisition cost-plus model.

Navitus will remove Stelara from its formulary on July 1, 2025.

Stelara and its biosimilars treat patients with psoriatic arthritis, plaque psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, pediatric plaque psoriasis and pediatric psoriatic arthritis. Ustekinumab is a human monoclonal antibody (mAb) that selectively targets the p40 protein, a component common to both interleukin (IL)-12 and IL-23 cytokines, which play crucial roles in treating immune-mediated diseases like psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, and inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Sharon Faust, Pharm.D.

“Medications such as Stelara have revolutionized treatment for complex inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease and plaque psoriasis. However, they've also contributed significantly to drug spend for employers and patients,” Sharon Faust, Pharm.D., chief pharmacy officer of Navitus Health Solutions, said in a news release.

Stelara, developed by Johnson & Johnson, was originally approved by the FDA in 2009 for the treatment of adults with moderate to severe psoriasis. Stelara has a list price of $25,497.12 every 8 weeks for the 90 mg dose. In 2023, it generated $10.86 billion in global revenue, compared with $6.4 billion in 2022. In 2024, sales of Stelara declined 13.6% because of anticipated biosimilar competition, J&J executives said in a recent investor call. Eligible patients can get Stelara for $5 a dose through the savings program Stelara with Me.

In February 2025, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Alvotech launched their branded biosimilar, Selarsdi (ustekinumab-aekn), at a discount of 85% off Stelara.

Other Stelara biosimilars to have launched include: Fresenius Kabi’s Otulfi (ustekinumab-aauz), Pyzchiva (ustekinumab-ttwe), which was developed by Samsung Bioepis and commercialized by Sandoz, and Biocon Biologics’s Yesintek (ustekinumab-kfce).

Pyzchiva will be available at a list price that is 80% below Stelara. Yesintek will have a wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) of approximately $3,000, reflecting about a 90% discount compared with Stelara’s WAC.

In January, Amgen’s Wezlana (ustekinumab-auub) launched. Wezlana is available only through Optum, a division of UnitedHealth Group. A high- and low-list price version of Wezlana has been available on Optum Rx’s commercial formularies since Jan. 1, 2025.

Related: The Biosimilars Report Card

Industry leaders are watching how payers and especially PBMs provide coverage for the Stelara biosimilars. “The uptake of Stelara biosimilars will largely depend on how quickly brand-name Stelara is removed from formularies — not when biosimilars are added — and that may not happen until 2026,” Jeff Casberg, M.S., vice president of clinical pharmacy at IPD Analytics, told Managed Healthcare Executive recently.

With Humira (adalimumab), biosimilar sales were disappointing in 2023 but picked up in 2024 as the large pharmacy benefit managers started taking Humira off some of their formularies. In the first year on the market, the uptake of the Humira biosimilars was low; there was lower net spending and prices on adalimumab, which was likely because of rebates from AbbVie, Humira’s manufacturer, according to an analysis published in December 2024 in JAMA Health Forum.

“The fact that AbbVie offered higher rebates for Humira to maintain formulary position likely led to lower healthcare spending, and these rebates often offset premiums for patients,” Benjamin N. Rome, M.D., M.P.H., one of the researchers involved in the study, told Formulary Watch at the time.