A generic drug is one that is distributed without a trade name and that has the same concentration and dosage as its patented brand equivalent and produces the same effects as it. A commercial drug is one that bears a brand patent, so no pharmaceutical company can synthesize and market that drug unless it includes other excipients in its formulation.
Generic
Generics are drugs or products that are not distributed under a trade name. In the case of medicines, these are marketed at the same concentration and dose as the brand equivalent, including different excipients.
For the WHO, a generic is a medicine that is marketed under the name of the active ingredient it contains and that is bioequivalent to the original brand, that is, it has the same composition and pharmaceutical form and its bioavailability is similar. They can be identified because a commercial name does not appear on the medication container, but rather the name of the active ingredient followed by the manufacturing laboratory.
Generics are marketed once the patent of the brand-name drug has expired and provided that the conditions of quality and original bioequivalence are met. They are less expensive drugs, since they do not require investment in research. They also comply with the same health records and have the same efficacy.
Commercial
They are drugs or products that, when discovered for the first time, are given a chemical name or an ideal code name to reference it. In the case of medicines, if it is approved by official health agencies, it can be prescribed and two names will be assigned, a generic name and a trade name or registered trademark, which will identify it as the property of a company.
They are much more expensive than a generic drug because the laboratory thus recovers the investment made in its research.
Differences between generic and commercial
- A generic drug is one that contains the same active ingredients as a brand-name drug, but is marketed under the name of the active ingredient. They are just as effective as they must pass bioavailability and efficacy tests.
- Generic drugs are cheaper.
- Brand-name drugs are synthesized by laboratories that have been responsible for their research. When they are developed, they receive a patent that prevents them from being synthesized by another laboratory for 20 years.
