Formycon Brand Guidelines: A Boehringer Mannheim Offshoot Behind FYB201, FYB202 & FYB203

A Boehringer Mannheim offshoot.

Formycon is a developer of biosimilars based in Martinsried, in the municipality of Planegg near Munich. The company traces its roots to Scil Technology GmbH, founded in 1999 by former managers of the drug maker Boehringer Mannheim, according to German Wikipedia and the company’s own history page, which describes the Scil Group as “an offshoot of Boehringer Mannheim.”

Scil Technology ran its own research and, from 2003, also took on service contracts, including its first biosimilar projects for clients, the company says. It licensed a project portfolio to Medtronic in 2008 and its main project to Sanofi in 2011. In 2010 it set up a research and services unit under the name “Formycon,” and in 2012 the business was renamed Formycon AG; development of its first two products began in 2013, according to German Wikipedia.

Formycon describes its work as covering the whole development path — technical and pharmaceutical development, clinical trials, and the preparation and submission of approval dossiers — aimed at the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. Its focus, it says, is ophthalmology and immunology. It does not sell under its own name: German Wikipedia lists Fresenius Kabi, Sandoz and Teva among the drug makers it has signed to market its biosimilars, and Formycon’s own pages name further regional partners.

Three FYB molecules.

Its products carry project codes. The first, FYB201, is a biosimilar of ranibizumab, the eye drug sold as Lucentis. It was developed by Bioeq, a joint venture of Formycon and Polpharma Biologics; Polpharma joined the project as a joint-venture partner in 2014, Formycon says. In the European Union it was authorised as Ranivisio on 25 August 2022, with the German firm Midas Pharma as marketing-authorisation holder, according to the European Medicines Agency. In the United States the FDA approved it as Cimerli, Formycon announced on 3 August 2022, describing it as interchangeable with Lucentis; it had been licensed there to Coherus at the end of 2019. Formycon now lists several brand names for the same molecule in different regions, among them Ongavia in the UK and Nufymco, approved by the FDA in December 2025 with Zydus as partner.

In May 2022 Formycon closed a deal with ATHOS KG that brought it all of FYB202, ATHOS’s half-share in FYB201 and the development unit Bioeq GmbH; ATHOS became Formycon’s largest indirect shareholder, the company announced on 10 May 2022.

FYB202 is an ustekinumab biosimilar, a version of Stelara for chronic inflammatory diseases. The European Medicines Agency records its EU authorisation as Otulfi on 25 September 2024, held by Fresenius Kabi. Formycon says it was approved in the United States the same month and launched in the US and the EU in March 2025, following a settlement with Johnson & Johnson in March 2024 covering Europe and Canada.

FYB203, an aflibercept biosimilar referencing Eylea, was authorised in the EU as Ahzantive on 13 January 2025, with Formycon itself as holder, the European Medicines Agency records. Formycon says a settlement with Regeneron and Bayer in March 2026 set its EU launch date, and that it has been on sale in Europe since May 2026 as Ahzantive and Baiama in prefilled syringes; it plans a US launch in the fourth quarter of 2026. Its pipeline includes candidates for pembrolizumab, sold as Keytruda, and dupilumab.

The category.

Biosimilar makers sell medicines that most people only ever meet as a pack in a pharmacy or a hospital ward, so their public image is built from the places where those medicines are made. Their websites and reports favour gleaming steel bioreactors, vials moving along blue-lit filling lines, scientists in gowns and hoods, and close-ups of prefilled syringes and autoinjector pens. The pictures signal scale and control rather than any single product.

The category is young. The European Medicines Agency’s record shows that the marketing authorisation for Celltrion’s Remsima, a biosimilar of the antibody infliximab, was issued on 10 September 2013, and English Wikipedia describes it as the first biosimilar monoclonal antibody approved by the EMA. Since then a group of companies in Asia, Europe and North America has built ranges of biosimilars, each sold under a brand name of its own, alongside the corporate names covered in this guide.

Their messaging leans on access. Celltrion states a mission of “a healthier tomorrow where no patients are left untreated”; Samsung Bioepis says it makes “quality-assured biologic medicines more accessible, more quickly.” Celltrion’s brand page ties its green to trust. Trade meetings such as the GRx+Biosims conference and the BIO International Convention are where the sector’s companies present their pipelines and meet partners.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it, and which approvals and deals dated sources record — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A developer behind other names.

On the stock market Formycon has its own public profile. The company says it had been listed in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Scale segment for smaller companies before moving to the Prime Standard in November 2024; German Wikipedia records that it joined the SDAX index on 23 December 2024 and left it in 2025. Its chief executive is Stefan Glombitza, whose appointment to the post appears in the company’s history among its 2022 entries.

Formycon calls itself “a world-leading, independent developer of high-quality biosimilars,” and says members of its team brought some of the world’s first biosimilars to market in earlier careers. Its history page frames the company as “a scientific legacy spanning two decades,” built on the Scil Group. Those are its claims. What is independently documented is narrower and concrete: three European marketing authorisations recorded by the European Medicines Agency between 2022 and 2025 for molecules Formycon developed, under three different holders — Midas Pharma, Fresenius Kabi and Formycon itself.

That pattern shapes the brand. Its medicines reach the market under partners’ names — Ranivisio, Cimerli, Otulfi and Ahzantive among them — rather than under its own, and its project codes, FYB followed by three digits, run through its reports and press releases. Its own messaging speaks of improving access to “high-quality and more cost-effective treatment options.”

For a design guide, Formycon shows how a developer can build a reputation through other companies’ brand names. Compare Polpharma Biologics, its partner in Bioeq, and Coherus, which took FYB201 to the US market. For this guide we use a deep indigo and a lilac with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Formycon’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.