Emerging oral atypical antipsychotics to compete in increasingly crowded schizophrenia drug market

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, in the world's major pharmaceutical markets, emerging oral atypical antipsychotics will compete against each other and against established drugs for the same niche patient population in the treatment of schizophrenia.

The Pharmacor 2010 findings from the topic entitled Schizophrenia reveals that emerging oral atypical antipsychotics such as Merck's Saphris/Sycrest, Novartis/Vanda Pharmaceuticals' Fanapt, Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma's lurasidone and Forest/Gedeon Richter/Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma's cariprazine are expected to garner only limited uptake, owing to the increasingly crowded schizophrenia drug market as well as competition from established atypical antipsychotics. Most notably, emerging oral atypical antipsychotics will face strong competition from Bristol-Myers Squibb/Otsuka Pharmaceuticals' Abilify and the impending market launches of generics over the next several years.  

"Current branded antipsychotics have established themselves in particular niche populations within the schizophrenia market," said Decision Resources Analyst Sandra Chow, M.Sc., "Multiple new antipsychotics will compete for the same niches of patients as agents with more tolerable weight-gain and side-effect profiles."

Among the emerging oral atypical antipsychotics, the timing of Fanapt's launch for schizophrenia in the U.S. last month is consistent with Decision Resources' prior analysis and the agent is forecast to earn peak-year sales of up to $100 million in the schizophrenia drug market. Saphris/Sycrest, which launched in the U.S. last year for schizophrenia, is forecast to earn peak-year sales of up to $250 million. Additionally, Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma submitted a new drug application in December 2009 for lurasidone in the U.S. for the treatment of schizophrenia and the agent is forecasted to garner peak-year sales of as much as $500 million in this indication.

SOURCE Decision Resources