Generic Erosion Will Constrain Prostate Cancer Drug Market, Resulting in Annual Growth of Less Than 2 Percent Through 2012

WALTHAM, Mass., June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that generic erosion will significantly constrain the prostate cancer drug market, resulting in annual market growth of less than 2 percent through 2012. However, market growth will increase to 4.5 percent annually from 2012 to 2017 as premium-priced emerging therapies will account for nearly half of all prostate cancer sales by 2017.

The new Pharmacor report entitled Prostate Cancer finds that the generic erosion of two drugs from AstraZeneca -- Casodex and Zoladex -- will account for a decrease of nearly $500 million in the total prostate cancer drug market by 2017 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Japan. Additionally, aggressive generic erosion of Sanofi-Aventis's Taxotere will ensure that the drug's anticipated increase in patient share will not translate into an increase in market share in 2017.

According to the report, market growth over the next decade will be due almost entirely to the introduction of premium-priced emerging therapies for prostate cancer treatment, most notably Roche/Genentech/Chugai's Avastin, Cell Genesys/Takeda's GVAX, Dendreon's Provenge and AstraZeneca's zibotentan. Emerging agents that will launch in the next 10 years will account for 45 percent of total sales of prostate cancer therapies in 2017.

The report also finds that the recent failures in Phase III trials of Novacea/Schering-Plough's DN-101 and GPC Biotech/Celgene/Yakult Honsha's satraplatin have left an urgent unmet need for therapies that extend overall survival in the metastatic setting.

"Because the survival benefits of prostate-specific antigen testing in prostate cancer have yet to be proven, physicians are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer and the National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Project studies that will address this issue," said Marcus Hoyle, analyst at Decision Resources.

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SOURCE Decision Resources