Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that 98 percent of surveyed rheumatologists indicate they will prescribe Roche's Actemra, an interleukin-6 inhibitor, for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis following the agent's expected launch in 2010. When asked why they would prescribe the drug, more than 60 percent of these rheumatologists cite the fact that, in clinical trials, Actemra has exhibited efficacy comparable to the efficacy demonstrated in separate trials for TNF-alpha inhibitors such as Amgen/Pfizer's Enbrel and Abbott's Humira, the two leading agents in the rheumatoid arthritis drug market.
The new Physician & Payer Forum report entitled The Rheumatoid Arthritis Biologics Landscape: Differentiation and Reimbursement in a Crowded Market finds that the majority of surveyed rheumatologists indicate that they will welcome the availability of Actemra because interleukin inhibition represents a promising novel mechanism of action in rheumatoid arthritis treatment. The report also finds that the market potential for novel oral agents such as Pfizer's CP-690550 is significant as, on average, surveyed rheumatologists estimate that more than half of patients treated with conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs fail treatment and require subsequent therapy with a different drug class.
"More than two-thirds of surveyed rheumatologists expect that the majority of patients who require therapy with a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug would choose oral dosing over subcutaneous delivery," said Decision Resources Analyst Joanna Kim, M.Ed.