Analysis of Global Biological Drugs Marketed in 2009-2018 from Type, Region, and Therapeutic Area (2)

Secondly, the distribution of the top 10 types of biological drugs is shown in Fig. 2.

Research and marketed varieties of antibody drugs have been hot in recent years, however, vaccine formulations have been the biological drug with the largest quantity marketed in recent decade in the world. New vaccines are one of the key fields of the biomedicine industry in China, and the frequent negative vaccine events have raised higher requirements for vaccine development and manufacturing enterprises. The cervical cancer vaccine marketed overseas has eventually been marketed in China, however, it is still an imported drug. We look forward to the rapid strengthening of R&D of Chinese-produced vaccines, to break the monopoly of imported drugs in the future.

Antibody drug family mainly consists of monoclonal antibodies, which are specific drugs against tumors and characterized by strong targeting, high specificity, and low toxic and side effects. The global market concentration of antibody drugs is very high: Roche, AbbVie, J & J, and Amgen, the top 4 by market share, occupy a total of 60.5% market share, however, the marketing of two Chinese-produced anti-PD-1 drugs and many anti-PD-1/PD-L1 drugs to be marketed in the future give the Chinese people great confidence, and the low-cost high-quality antibody drugs bring hopes to more Chinese families.

In recent decade, recombinant cytokines produced using genetic engineering techniques in the world have good efficacy in treating tumors, hematopoietic disorders, and infections, etc. as biological response modifier. The marketing of the first-in-class new biological drug: Recombinant Cytokine Gene Derived Protein Injection ("Novaferon") in 2018 has brought more choices to the large population of hepatitis B patients in China.

Finally, let’s see the distribution of top 10 therapeutic areas.

We can see from the figure that the new drugs in recent decade were focused on the infectious diseases, tumors, endocrine and metabolic disorders, hematological system diseases, and immune system diseases.

Drugs for infectious diseases mainly consist of antivirals and vaccines. Speaking of vaccines, the Chinese virologist Gu Fangzhou took the lead in successfully developing the Live-Attenuated Poliomyelitis Vaccine in Dragee Candy in 1962, which, after its popularization in China in 1964, reduced the annual average incidence of polio from the 0.00406% in 1949 to 0.000046% in 1993 and prevented hundreds of thousands of children from disability. Let’s honor the memory of Mr. Gu!

Oncology has been one of the fields with the fastest market capacity growth in recent years, which many pharmaceutical enterprises and online medical supply companies have laid out. The quantity of biological drugs in tumor therapeutic area may be in the top position in the next decade. More and more people are likely to suffer cancers with the increase of life expectancy. Chemical drugs do not lead to satisfactory effects in tumor treatment, while precision medicine and the rapidly developing biological drugs have been increasingly recognized by doctors and patients.

Is it a little confusing that cardiovascular and cerebrovascular drugs were not among the top 10 therapeutic areas of biological drugs marketed in recent decade? Why were there no biological drugs in such a large field? The ratio between the chemical drugs and biological drugs marketed in the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular field was 5:1 in recent decade. What were the reasons for such a wide gap? We’ll talk about it in my next article.

References:

1. https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/DrugInnovation/ucm592464.htm
2. http://www.pmda.go.jp/pnavi-04.html
3. www.emea.europa.eu

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Analysis of Global Biological Drugs Marketed in 2009-2018 from Type, Region, and Therapeutic Area (1)

Author Biography

Xuanyao, an independent observer of the pharmaceutical industry, with a master’s degree in Pharmacology from China Pharmaceutical University; having successively served in the Market Department of a listed pharmaceutical enterprise in China and Marketing Department of a Global 500 foreign enterprise; currently engaging in the pharmaceutical private equity investment industry, with the WeChat account: pharmacology_cpu

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