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.