The Launch of Three New Parkinson's Disease Therapies Through 2015 Will Help Offset Market Losses Resulting from the Growing Impact of Generics

BURLINGTON, Mass., July 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the uptake of key current brands and the launch of three new therapies will help sustain the Parkinson's disease (PD) market throughout the 2012-2022 forecast period, despite growing competition from generics. As a result of these competing forces, total sales of therapies used to treat PD will remain relatively flat over the next decade, beginning at $2.3 billion in 2012 and ending at $2.4 billion in 2022 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan.

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The Pharmacor advisory service entitled Parkinson's Disease finds that dopamine agonists will maintain the largest class-level market share through 2022 at approximately 30 percent. For the drug-class leaders pramipexole (Boehringer Ingelheim's Mirapex, other brands, generics; Mirapex ER, other brands) and ropinirole (GlaxoSmithKline's Requip, generics; GlaxoSmithKline/SkyePharma's Requip XL, other brands, generics), growing reliance on convenient once-daily formulations is expected to render the original, three-times-daily formulations nearly obsolete by the second half of the 2012-2022 forecast period. Similarly, the use of the once-daily, transdermal product rotigotine (UCB/Otsuka Pharmaceutical's Neupro, other brands) will continue to grow within the class, primarily outside of Europe, following its 2012 U.S. market re-entry and 2013 launch in Japan.

The findings also reveal that the launch of three emerging therapies through 2015 will provide useful treatment alternatives in PD. Impax Laboratories' Rytary, a reformulation of levodopa (multiple brands, generics), is expected to be prescribed, at least initially, in more-advanced patients experiencing periods of "off" time but will compete with established levodopa-adjunct therapies including the catechol-O-methyltransferase inhibitor entacapone (Novartis/Orion Pharma's Comtan/Stalevo, other brands, generics). Third-to-market monoamine oxidase-B inhibitor safinamide (Newron Pharmaceuticals/Zambon Pharma/Meiji Seika Pharma) has proved effective both in early PD and as an adjunct to levodopa in more advanced patients but will contend with the class leader rasagiline (Teva/Lundbeck's Azilect). Lastly, Acadia Pharmaceuticals' inverse agonist of 5-HT_2A receptors pimavanserin is poised to become the first therapy approved specifically to treat psychotic symptoms associated with PD (a key comorbidity), but will likely compete with current antipsychotic agents that are used off-label with some clinical success today. All three of these emerging agents will face intensifying competition from generic alternatives within their respective market segments.

"The late-stage PD therapy pipeline is populated with a range of symptomatic agents targeting niche populations, but, as such, these products may have more-restricted commercial potential," said Decision Resources Senior Business Insights Analyst Nadja Rozovsky, Ph.D. "Delaying disease progression remains the greatest unmet need in the treatment of PD, but it is one that is still far from realization."

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