European cardiovascular drugs market set to rocket to new heights
is expected to reach $36.3bn (€28.9bn) in 2012, buoyed on by new
drug areas, classes and combination products.
The European cardiovascular drugs market earned revenues of $27.5bn in 2005 and is expected to witness new classes of drugs for hypertension and the development of anti-platelet and anti-clotting agents.
New drug classes such as endopeptidase/endothelin antagonists, vasopressin-2 inhibitors, brain natriuretic peptide-targeted molecules and free radical scavengers have emerged.
Cardiovascular (CV) disease remains the number one killer in the world killing 17m people each year with no signs of this figure decreasing. Scientists have pointed to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and bad diet as the primary factors for this.
In response to this, pharmaceutical companies have released a host of new drug classes designed for hypertension as well as an emphasis on 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.
"New emerging therapeutic classes of drugs provide future growth prospects for the European cardiovascular drugs market," said 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."
Frost and Sullivan's latest study also focuses on the challenge of patent expiry on best selling products facing 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," said 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.
