Big Pharma Struggles to Benefit from Increased CVD Drug Usage

Pharmaceutical (Pharma) companies will struggle to profit from the Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) market over the next decade despite growing drug usage, according to Datamonitor. It is predicted that the CVD pharma market will grow from US$99 billion in 2008 to US$107 billion in 2018.

The strong growth in CVD drug usage in the developed world will be driven by the increase in patient populations, early diagnosis and early initiation of drug therapy as healthcare providers target the CVD complications that are associated with an increasingly obese population.

Big Pharma will struggle to capitalize from this surge in CVD drug usage as the increase in usage will be concentrated in the generic sector as budget control becomes the key driver in healthcare policy.

It is expected that the CVD market will have a compound annual growth rate of just 0.8 percent from 2008-2018.

“The CVD market is one of the most mature pharma markets and the traditional drivers - hypertension and dyslipidemia - will be heavily impacted by patent expiries and generic competition” said Dr Anthony Nealon, report author and senior healthcare analyst.

The two largest drugs in the entire pharma market - Lipitor (atorvastatin; Pfizer) and Plavix (clopidogrel; Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi-Aventis) – are both due to lose patent protection in 2011.

Generic competition is also expected to impact other blockbuster drugs in the CVD market such as Cozaar (losartan; Merck & Co), Diovan (valsartan; Novartis) and Actos (pioglitazone; Takeda). Weak development pipelines in hypertension and dyslipidemia will not be able to replace revenues lost following the introduction of generic competition.

“This is due to current marketed drugs offering a wide range of therapy options for treatment, plus, there are no remaining significant clinical unmet needs to spur on development candidates” said Dr Nealon.

Decline in the traditional therapy areas will be offset by growth in diabetes and thrombosis as new drugs that are able to meet significant unmet clinical needs for patients reach the market. The pipelines for the two therapy areas are forecast to add more than US$20 billion to sales in the seven major markets by 2018.

“This market growth will see diabetes become the largest therapy market in the seven major markets with sales of $37bn in 2018”, said Dr Nealon.