GlobalData has named heart failure as the next disease to feel the sales-boosting power of GLP-1 drugs. The analysts expect launches of medicines including Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to help add $20 billion to the value of the market in a decade.
After a fallow period, drug developers have chalked up a series of wins in heart failure in recent years to help establish mechanisms such as SGLT2 inhibition as part of the treatment toolkit. Boehringer Ingelheim won approval for its SGLT2 inhibitor Jardiance in heart failure in 2021 and secured an expanded label in a hard-to-treat population the next year.
GlobalData’s analysis starts in the year the FDA expanded the Jardiance label. Back then, in 2022, sales of heart failure drugs across the U.S., the five main European markets and Japan totaled $13.5 billion, according to the analysts. By 2032, they predict the market will be worth $33.7 billion.
The near-10% compound annual growth rate predicted by the analysts reflects the late-phase pipeline. In the coming years, the GlobalData team expects Lilly and Novo to bring their GLP-1 juggernauts to the heart failure market. The analysts named Mesoblast’s stem cell therapy Revascor and Bayer’s Kerendia as other promising prospects.
All four companies have late-phase data in heart failure. Novo was closing in on approval in the setting last year, only to withdraw a submission to allow it to refile with data that could ensure the label includes hard endpoints. The drugmaker linked Wegovy to a 69% decrease in the risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalization for heart failure across two studies.
Novo was targeting an early 2025 resubmission when it pulled the original filing in August. The timeline puts Novo on another collision course with Lilly, which told investors in October that it would file for FDA approval of tirzepatide in heart failure by the end of 2024.
Bayer, meanwhile, shared phase 3 data on its nonsteroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist Kerendia in September and began prepping for approval filings.
Kajal Jaddoo, senior pharma analyst at GlobalData, said in a statement that “it will be easier for new drug entrants to capture HF market share if they offer a novel mechanism of action, enhanced clinical profiles or help to improve compliance.”