Use of Avastin and Erbitux in the Adjuvant Setting and Launches of Emerging Agents Will Drive the Colorectal Cancer Drug Market to $7.8 Billion in 2017

Unmet Need for Efficacious Therapies for Treating Patients With Mutated KRAS Genes Presents Significant Opportunity for Drug Developers, According to a New Report from Decision Resources

WALTHAM, Mass., March 11 /PRNewswire/ — Decision Resources, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the launches of Roche/Genentech/Chugai’s Avastin and Bristol-Myers Squibb/ImClone Systems*/Merck KGaA’s Erbitux will drive the colorectal cancer market to grow by $900 million to $7.8 billion in 2017.

The new Pharmacor report entitled Colorectal Cancer finds that market growth will be driven by the launches of Avastin and Erbitux into the adjuvant setting in 2011 in the United States and 2012 in Europe. Additionally, among the emerging therapies that will launch for colorectal cancer over the next several years, AstraZeneca’s Recentin, Pfizer’s Sutent and Sanofi-Aventis/Regeneron’s VEGF Trap will account for 9.2 percent of market sales in 2017 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan.

Although monoclonal antibodies such as Avastin and Erbitux and emerging tyrosine kinase inhibitors and vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors will drive growth, generic erosion will take market share away from some currently-available therapies, including oxaliplatin (Sanofi-Aventis’s Eloxatin/Eloxatine and Yakult Honsha’s Elplat). The expected entrance of generic oxaliplatin in the U.S. colorectal cancer market in late 2009 and in Japan in 2013 will reduce major-market sales of branded forms of this agent by almost $800 million in 2017.

The report also finds that there is significant remaining unmet need in the market for treating patients with mutated KRAS genes who do not respond to therapy using epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors.

“In recent years, clinical data have shown that patients with mutated KRAS genes do not respond to treatment with EGFR inhibitors, creating a significant unmet need for efficacious agents in the second-line setting for patients who have progressed on Avastin,” said Decision Resources Analyst Marcus Hoyle. “This unmet need, coupled with a rising incidence of colorectal cancer, presents a considerable commercial opportunity for drug developers in this market.”

*ImClone Systems is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company.

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SOURCE Decision Resources