Patent protection losses will hinder HIV treatment market growth within seven years: GBI Research

Thanks to patent expirations of several key therapies, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) treatment market value will increase at a slow pace in the coming years, from $14.3 billion in 2012 to $16.3 billion by 2019, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 1.9 per cent, says business intelligence provider GBI Research.

According to the company’s latest report, the first-line antiretroviral therapies Atripla and Truvada will lose patent protection during the forecast period, which will hurt their markets in Europe and Canada.

Angel Wong, Analyst for GBI Research, says, “Despite such patent losses, a number of drugs will enter the HIV market by 2019. Among these new entrants, 572-Trii is expected to perform the strongest commercially and will compete with Atripla following its approval. However, these drugs will not offset the impact of generic erosion.”

Currently, the HIV pipeline is strong and displays a high degree of novelty and diversity, according to GBI Research. The pipeline also consists of therapies that address the unmet needs of drug resistance and toxicity. These drugs are Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NRTI) apricitabine, censavudine and elvucitabine, which deal with the issue of NRTI resistance.

Another candidate in the HIV pipeline, which is a new pro-drug of tenofovir, called tenofovir alafenamide, has also demonstrated a more favourable toxicity profile than its predecessor Viread.

Wong says, “Despite the promising outlook, the HIV pipeline has suffered from high attrition rates in recent years, particularly with vaccines. None of these have been approved for the treatment of HIV.”

“These failures reflect an urgent need for a more thorough understanding of immune response against HIV and more streamlined clinical trial designs,” the analyst concludes.

EP News Bureau–Mumbai