The New King of Cancer Drugs, Can You Guess It?

800 drugs in development

The incidence and mortality of cancers continue to increase in China. According to estimates, the new cancer cases in China reached 4.29 million cases in 2015, accounting for 20% of the world’s new cases, with 2.81 million death cases.

The highest-incidence cancers for males and females in China were separately lung cancer and breast cancer, different from the developed countries. The highest-incidence cancers for males and females in developed countries were separately prostatic cancer and breast cancer, according to 2012 data of GLOBOCAN.

Cancer prevention and treatment are great challenges confronted with by all humans. The reduction of cancer incidence and mortality and extension of patients’ survival time are important subjects for Chinese and global pharmaceutical industries.

The latest report of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America shows that there are more than 800 cancer drugs in development, wherein, 73% drugs have the potential to become "personalized drugs".

The drugs for solid tumor, lung cancer and leukemia all exceed 100 among those products in development.

Furthermore, there is another staggering figure. The latest data of the clinical trials database of World Health Organization show that there were more than 21,000 clinical studies for cancers underway in total of 7 countries including China, U.S., UK and Japan, etc. by December 2016, including 19,103 of China, close to the project quantity of Canada, with U.S. having the most clinical studies of more than 100 thousand.

Which possesses the most cancer drugs?

There are differences regarding the size of global cancer drug market due to the different statistical indicators, however, it is an industry consensus that the size has exceeded USD 100 billion.

Then which has the most cancer drugs in this huge market? One Oncology Drug Research Report (2016) has made statistics on the oncology drugs currently marketed, and the top 10 enterprises are organized as follows by the Healthcare Executive:

As the company with the highest annual sales and most products in cancer field, Roche had the 2015 sales in cancer field of USD 23.74 billion and 12 marketed products.

Novartis and Amgen ranked second and third separately, with 2015 sales in cancer field separately of USD 13.48 billion and USD 11.23 billion, and separately with more than 10 cancer drugs.

It’s important to note that the total sales of the top 10 companies in sales in cancer field exceeded USD 80 billion in 2015, accounting for half of the entire cancer drug market.

Which is the king of cancer drugs?

Which cancer drug had the highest sales in 2015? Not surprisingly, it was still Roche’s Rituxan of which the 2015 sales reached USD 6.897 billion, ranking first. And all the top 3 in sales were from Roche.

Top 20 cancer drugs in sales in 2015: