Asthma: Product Differentiation Remains a Key Challenge

DecisionBase PDFs -- 2008

  Overview:

The asthma market is commercially mature and stable. The most popular drugs used to treat the disease have been available in the major markets for many years, and the pharmaceutical companies that currently dominate the market are expected to remain leading players. Because of the saturated and competitive nature of this market, emerging products seeking commercial success will find it increasingly difficult to differentiate themselves from current products. The late-stage asthma pipeline is dominated by new fixed-dose, long-acting beta₂ agonist/inhaled corticosteroid (LABA/ICS) combination inhalers that can treat patients with persistent disease ranging from mild to severe. Therefore, the development of fixed-dose combinations is the most commercially compelling sector of the asthma pipeline.

  Questions Answered in This Report:

Lung function improvement and reducing the frequency of acute symptoms are key goals in the treatment of asthma. What are the key primary and secondary clinical trial end points for the evaluation of new therapies? How do primary care physicians weight efficacy measures and other drug attributes in their prescribing decisions for asthma?

Salmeterol/fluticasone (GlaxoSmithKline’s Advair/Seretide/Adoair) is the 2006 major-market sales leader for asthma. Do thought leaders expect emerging LABA/ICS combinations to offer significant improvements in efficacy over salmeterol/fluticasone? Which emerging therapies pose the greatest threat to salmeterol/fluticasone?

Based on its clinical profile, formoterol/budesonide (AstraZeneca’s Symbicort) is the 2006 clinical gold standard. What attributes do thought leaders believe differentiate this drug from competing current and emerging therapies? Will any drugs in development challenge formoterol/budesonide as the future gold standard in 2011 or 2016?

  Scope:

Key drug development opportunity tested in our target product profiles for persistent asthma: An inhaled drug with a novel mechanism of action for the treatment of persistent asthma.

Physicians surveyed for this study: 60 U.S. primary care physicians.

Comprehensive List of Therapies Included in Our Research and Modeling

Current therapies:

- Salmeterol/fluticasone (GlaxoSmithKline’s Advair/Seretide/Adoair)

- Formoterol/budesonide (AstraZeneca’s Symbicort)

- Montelukast (Merck/Kyorin’s Singulair)

- Fluticasone (GlaxoSmithKline’s Flovent)

- Mometasone (Schering-Plough’s Asmanex)

Emerging therapies:

- Formoterol/fluticasone (SkyePharma/Abbott/Mundipharma’s Flutiform)

- Formoterol/mometasone (Novartis/Schering-Plough)

- Formoterol/ciclesonide (Nycomed/Sanofi-Aventis)

- Indacaterol/mometasone (Novartis/Schering-Plough)

- GSK-642444/GSK-685698 (GlaxoSmithKline/Theravance)

About DecisionBase

Asthma: Product Differentiation Remains a Key Challenge is a DecisionBase 2008 report from Decision Resources. DecisionBase 2008 combines market forecasts with clinical and commercial end points to assess market share projections in 35 indications. These outputs are driven by quantitative and qualitative primary research. DecisionBase 2008 provides detailed market share, patient share, and price-per-day projections for emerging drugs in development. The market share projections are based on prescriber surveys that compare physicians’ expectations of a potential target product profile with an emerging product profile of the leading drugs in development.