After an unusually slow year for new drug
approvals—the FDA greenlighted just 22 meds in 2016—it remains to be seen
whether drugmakers can do much better in 2017. One thing’s for sure, though: No
matter what total the industry tallies up this year, the crop will bring some
would-be blockbusters and market disrupters.
At the top of the list, according to EP
Vantage’s 2017 preview, which ranks the year’s rollouts by 2022 sales, is
Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), the Roche multiple sclerosis drug that’s promising to shake
things up in more ways than one. In clinical trials, the candidate bested Merck
KGaA's standard therapy Rebif, and it’s also gone where no other MS drug has
gone before, posting positive data in patients with the primary progressive
form of the disease. Those data will put the heat on other meds—and invite
payers to pile pressure onto the segment, too.
Ocrevus isn’t the only new med slated to break
into a brand-new market. Analysts think Sanofi and Regeneron hot-shot Dupixent
(dupilumab) could make a big splash in severe atopic dermatitis, assuming
payers don’t get in the companies’ way. Ditto for Biogen's Spinraza, which in
December became the first FDA-approved product to treat spinal muscular
atrophy—but whose high sticker could raise eyebrows at a time when U.S.
President Donald Trump is threatening pricing action.
Several of 2017’s launches will mark
particularly pivotal points for their companies as their inaugural rollouts.
Tesaro is looking for its second-ever FDA approval, while Neurocrine is going
after its first, in ovarian cancer pill niraparib and tardive dyskinesia
therapy Ingrezza, respectively. And Kite Pharma is aiming to get the first-ever
CAR-T cancer drug to market, with a candidate, KTE-C19, that the oncology
community will be watching closely as the next big thing in immunotherapies.
Other big 2017 launches won’t necessarily be
pioneers in their fields or for their companies, but they could make
competitors sweat. Take Novartis’ ribociclib, aka LEE011, which aims to
challenge Pfizer’s Ibrance in the CDK 4/6 breast cancer space. Or semaglutide,
Novo Nordisk's weekly GLP-1 drug, a would-be successor to the company's
blockbuster Victoza; the Danish drugmaker boasts some early cardiovascular
outcomes data to use in the market-share fight against Eli Lilly's weekly
Trulicity.
And then there are those that have their work
cut out for them if they want to crack the industry leaderboard. Eli Lilly’s
rheumatoid arthritis remedy baricitinib is hoping to carve out a billion-dollar
opportunity in a market where Pfizer’s Xeljanz has faltered. And AstraZeneca's
durvalumab will be weighing into the already-racing immuno-oncology field, to
see how many checkpoint inhibitors that market can send to blockbuster land.
The top 10 drug launches of 2017
- 1. Ocrevus
- 2. Dupixent
- 3. Semaglutide
- 4. Durvalumab
- 5. Niraparib
- 6. Baricitinib
- 7. LEE011
- 8. KTE-C19
- 9. Ingrezza
- 10. Spinraza
