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Parkinson's Disease Presents Lucrative Market Opportunities
Decision Resources, Inc, Nov 2005, Pages: 13
Parkinson's disease (PD) is an attractive target for drug development because of the chronic, progressive nature of the disease and the fact that no currently available treatments slow or stop the disease's progression. Moreover, an ever-growing elderly population will lead to a steadily increasing number of PD sufferers over the next several decades; this fact makes the PD market a highly lucrative area of opportunity for drug developers with novel strategies that might address critical areas of unmet need.
In this report, we provide an overview of the disease, profile key players in the PD market, discuss new agents that we project will enter the market during the 2005-2009 period, and detail the market outlook for PD through 2009.
Business Implications
- Parkinson's disease (PD) is an attractive drug development target because it is a chronic, progressive disease and because no treatments are currently available that can slow or stop its progression.
- Few key players compete in the PD market because levodopa, which has been marketed for more than 40 years, remains the gold standard for treating PD and because developing successful PD drugs requires considerable expertise and significant investment in lengthy clinical trials. Major players include Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis.
- Dopamine agonists, the leading drug class on the PD market, are used as adjunct therapy for patients taking levodopa and as early therapy to delay the need for levodopa, which is associated with serious complications. We project that dopamine agonists will continue to drive the PD market through 2009.
- Despite considerable R&D activity in the PD arena, few new drugs have reached this market in recent years. One main reason is the high failure rate in advanced clinical trials. Five high-profile drugs have been discontinued in the past several years. We expect 'novel' therapies such as sarizotan and safinamide will make little impact by 2009 because of their lack of true novelty compared with existing PD therapies, their projected slow uptake, and their likely relegation to use primarily as adjunctive therapy.
- Key drivers of growth in the PD market will include increasing use of polytherapy with expensive PD drugs in place of levodopa and a steadily growing PD population as general populations in the United States, Europe, and Japan age.
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