Estimate by the specialized company GlobalData
By 2019, pharmaceutical companies are projected to suffer an estimated $65 billion in losses due to patent expirations of some major medicines and resulting estimated sales declines, according to GlobalData. A new report says that among the hardest-hit drugmakers will be Otsuka, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, with a significant share of the losses coming from the central nervous system diseases sector.
Adam Dion, Healthcare Industry Dynamics analyst at GlobalData, highlights that “the central nervous system segment will suffer losses for AstraZeneca on the expiration of the patent on Seroquel, treatment for bipolar disorder, which now has generic and cheaper versions manufactured by Teva and Sandoz.
Global-Data estimates that the Swedish company's share in the therapeutics area was around 9% in 2010, while in 2013 it has already dropped to 3%. Eli Lilly's market share also fell from 14.3% in 2010 to 11.2% in 2013, mainly due to the decline in sales of Zyprexa, a dopamine antagonist used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Sales plummeted from over $5 billion to $1.2 billion in the same period as a result of the loss of patent exclusivity in the US market in 2011. The analyst adds that “Otsuka's antipsychotic drug Abilify, which the company co-markets with BMS, was the CNS sales leader with $9.5 billion in
2013, but the imminent expiration of the US patent will lead to a massive loss of 6.2 billion dollars by 2019”.
