Decision Resources: Crohn's disease drug market will increase 31% by 2019

BURLINGTON, Mass. The drug market for Crohn's disease treatments will see moderate growth over the next decade, Decision Resources reported Wednesday.

The research firm projected that the market will increase a little more than 31%, from $3.2 billion in 2009 to $4.2 billion in 2019, in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan. Decision Resources said the the modest growth rate masks such market changes as new and emerging biologics, as well as generic competition.

According to a report by Pharmacor -- an advisory service that offers clients in the biopharmaceutical industry the most up-to-date information available on commercially significant disease topics -- such Crohn's disease treatments as Remicade, made by Centocor Ortho Biotech, Merck and Mitsubishi Tanabe, and Abbott and Eisai's Humira dominated the Crohn's disease market in 2009, capturing slightly more than three-quarters of major-market sales. The drugs are classified as biologic agents known as tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitors. Meanwhile, Biogen Idec and Elan's Tysabri (a cell adhesion molecule inhibitor) and TNF-alpha inhibitor Cimzia, made by UCB and Otsuka, had a negligible impact on the Crohn's disease market, Pharmacor said.

"In 2009, sales of maintenance therapies for Crohn's disease greatly exceeded sales of acute therapies," said Decision Resources analyst Kathryn Benton. "We expect growth in the market will be largely attributable to increasing sales of maintenance therapies and that sales of acute therapies will remain essentially flat through 2019. However, no current therapy is completely effective in maintaining remission of Crohn's disease, and as a result, significant opportunity remains for more-effective emerging therapies in the maintenance space."