Due to the growing number of cancer patients worldwide, health care spending in developing countries are increasing. The growth rate of global anti-cancer drug market will be twice of the other drugs. With the increase of government spending in the cost of cancer treatment, China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging countries will become the anti-cancer drugs of large customers. In the next 15 years, medical expenses in India, Mexico and Turkey will remain 12% to 13% of the annual growth rate. However, the developed countries will have only a single-digit growth.
In 2012, the global anti-cancer drug spending will have an estimated annual growth of 12% to 15%, 750 billion to $ 80 billion. However, the total global drug market is expected to grow by only 6.4%. The companies who can meet the huge demands of these markets will be those who spend one billion USD in R & D budget per year, such as Genentech, Amgen and Novartis. As the insiders pointed out that the anti-cancer drug development will become the first major projects for pharmaceutical companies.
It is reported that global cancer drug sales this year is expected to reach $ 48 billion. The leading products are Herceptin from Genentech, Gleevec from Novartis, and other blockbusters. However, the slowing economic growth will have impact on the anti-cancer drug market to some extent. Other negative factors including expiration of patent protection of old drugs, and policy of government to limit health care spending and refuse to pay for some expensive anti-cancer drugs.
Many European countries have begun to pay for pharmaceutical companies based ib the therapeutic efficacy of anticancer drugs (The pharmaceutical companies have to promise to refund to the government and consumers if the drugs are ineffective). For instance, the Italian government has applied this policy to the product, Velcade by Johnson & Johnson's Velcade. If this policy is applied in USA, the growth of anti-cancer drug market will be slowed.
On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies in the United States are facing more stringent regulatory approval. FAD in USA has delayed the approval of several highly promising anti-cancer drugs. Last year, Provenge, the vaccine for prostate cancer, made by Dendreon, had an overshelming vote in the FAD advisory committee, but did not get approval by FDA. The statistics has shown that the current processing of application in FDA has become more conservative and slower than 10 years ago.
More stringent reviewing process of FDA may affect development of 5 to 30 types of novel anti-cancer drugs under developing, and the enthusiasm of investors. Some analysts pointed out that the best sale anti-cancer blockbuster drugs over the past 10 years will lose protection from their patents in the coming years, such as Sanofi - Aventis's Taxotere and AstraZeneca's Arimidex. And the sequential competition from generic drugs will make the cost of anti-cancer decline. It is expected that the percentage of these drugs in global anti-cancer market will be reduced from current 71% to 65% in 2012.
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