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European Cardiovascular Drug Segment Tops $27 Billion
Posted on 2006-10-30 10:22:00
Cardiovascular drug companies are experiencing numerous challenges in a market characterized by patent expirations and increased generic competition. To maintain growth, new drug areas and classes will require exploration. While key unmet needs offer growth opportunities, strategies centered on combination therapies, adding value through drug delivery technologies and clinical differentiation will help overcome competition from generic drug manufacturers.
Frost & Sullivan finds that the European Cardiovascular Drugs Market earned revenues of $27.5 billion in 2005 and estimates this to reach $36.3 billion in 2012.
“New emerging therapeutic classes of drugs provide future growth prospects for the European cardiovascular drugs market,” says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Paljit Mudhar. “Many new cardiovascular drugs will certainly come from major pharmaceutical companies even as several small biotechnology or biopharmaceutical companies engaged in cardiovascular drugs development demonstrate promising pipelines with novel drugs.”
The market has witnessed new classes of drugs for hypertension and the development of anti-platelet and anti-clotting agents. All these have had a major impact in treating heart attacks. New drug classes such as endopeptidase/endothelin antagonists, vasopressin-2 inhibitors, brain natriuretic peptide-targeted molecules and free radical scavengers have emerged.
Patent expiry on best selling products is a key challenge faced by pharmaceutical companies. The main issue is the negative profit impact companies face if patents expire on one or more of their best selling products. Loss of patents for a company, which focused on blockbuster drugs, reduces exclusivity and adversely affects its revenue growth.
“Cardiovascular drug sales can account for nearly half of a company's annual revenues in some cases, implying patent expiries are detrimental to the future growth of the company,” explains Ms. Mudhar. “While moderate impact in terms of the value of revenue lost to generics was felt in 2005, this factor will impact the market more significantly in the medium term, meaning that revenue growth for several of the leading pharmaceutical companies will come under considerable pressure.”
Many pharmaceutical companies use drug delivery technologies to give formulators a value-added opportunity to develop innovative, therapeutically enhanced alternatives to compete against generics and branded products. This enables companies to extend the exclusivity of patented drugs by developing an enhanced version with therapeutic benefits such as improved efficacy, dosing frequency or new therapeutic indications.
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