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Developing world expected to drive cancer drug growth
Washington—The global market for cancer drugs will
grow twice as fast as that for all other pharmaceuticals as the
developing world spends more on health care, a new report says.
China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging countries are becoming
bigger customers for pharmaceuticals as they invest more in treating
and diagnosing cancer, according to a report issued Thursday by IMS
Health.
The health care research firm expects pharmaceutical spending in
countries such as India, Mexico and Turkey to grow by 12 to 13
percent over the next 15 years, compared with single-digit growth
for more developed nations.
Cancer drug spending is expected to grow between 12 and 15 percent
annually through 2012 to $75 to 80 billion, according the report.
The overall drug market is expected to grow at 6.4 percent.
Feeding that demand are the multibillion-dollar research and
development budgets of firms like Genentech Inc., Amgen Inc. and
Novartis AG.
“Oncology is the top of the bill when it comes to new products in
development,” said Titus Pattel, a vice president with IMS.
“Oncology R&D dwarfs all other research efforts within these
organizations.”
Cancer drug sales are expected to reach $48 billion this year, led
by Genentech’s breast cancer drug Herceptin, Novartis’ leukemia drug
Gleevec and other blockbusters.
But the market is not immune to a slowdown. Expiring patents on
older cancer drugs and efforts to tighten health care spending could
limit future growth, according to IMS.
Some European countries have begun paying drug companies based on
how successfully their drugs treat patients. The Italian government,
for example, only began reimbursing Johnson & Johnson for the cancer
treatment Velcade after the drug demonstrated positive results in
patients. IMS said that the adoption of similar policies in the U.S.
it could slow spending on cancer medications.
Pharmaceutical firms also face a tougher regulatory environment in
the U.S., where the Food and Drug Administration has delayed several
highly anticipated cancer therapies.
Last year, the agency denied approval of Dendreon’s prostate cancer
vaccine Provenge, despite an overwhelmingly positive review by the
agency’s outside advisers.
“There’s a tendency from the FDA to be more conservative than they
have over the last 10 years,” Pattel said.
An aggressive review environment could dampen the market for between
25 and 30 new anticancer drugs currently in development, the IMS
report says. At the same time, some of the biggest blockbuster
cancer drugs of the last decade will lose their patent protection,
including Sanofi-Aventis’ Taxotere and AstraZeneca PLC’s Arimidex.
Expiring drug patents and an increasingly crowded market for cancer
therapies will lower spending in the U.S. and Europe. These markets
are expected to account for 65 percent of the global cancer drugs
market by 2012, down from 71 percent last year, according to IMS.
The company’s forecast comes ahead of the American Society of
Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, which begins May 30. Abstracts
for company studies will be released online Thursday night, giving
researchers and investors a preview of clinical results for
experimental drugs.—AP
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