OWING TO THE GENERIC EROSION OF BLOCKBUSTER AGENTS, THE UNIPOLAR DEPRESSION DRUG MARKET WILL DECREASE FROM $11.6 BILLION IN 2010 TO $9.8 BILLION IN 2020
Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka's Abilify and AstraZeneca's Seroquel Continue To Gain Patient Share as Adjunctive Major Depressive Disorder Treatments, According to Findings from Decision Resources
September 22, 2011-Burlington, Mass.-Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, owing to the generic erosion of blockbuster agents, the unipolar depression drug market-which includes sales of products attributed to major depressive disorder, minor depression and dysthymia-will decrease from $11.6 billion in 2010 to $9.8 billion in 2020 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Japan.
The findings from the Pharmacor topic entitled Unipolar Depression reveal that negative market growth over the next decade will be largely due to two blockbuster antidepressants losing market exclusivity in the United States: escitalopram (Lundbeck's Cipralex/Seroplex, Forest Laboratories' Lexapro) in 2012, and duloxetine (Eli Lilly/Boehringer Ingelheim's Cymbalta/Xeristar) in 2013. In addition, the market is still reacting to the rapid generic erosion of venlafaxine XR (Pfizer's Effexor), which lost market exclusivity in the United States in 2010.
The findings also reveal that Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka's Abilify and AstraZeneca's Seroquel continue to gain patient share as adjunctive major depressive disorder treatments, which will contribute to the stability of the unipolar depression market in the near term. Additionally, only one emerging therapy, AstraZeneca/Targacept's TC-5214 has the potential to demonstrate an advantage in tolerability over other agents approved for adjunctive treatment of major depressive disorder.
The bulk of emerging antidepressants expected to reach the market will offer only subtle clinical differences compared with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin and norepinephrine inhibitors (SNRIs) and will therefore not penetrate first-line therapy.
"The unipolar depression market continues to be lucrative for drug developers owing to both the high prevalence of depressive disorders and the low patient response rate as more than one-third of depression patients do not respond to first-line antidepressants," said Decision Resources Analyst Natalie Taylor, Ph.D. "However, the growing number of generic products will make it increasingly difficult for marketers to gain blockbuster status for branded emerging therapies."
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