Glaxo foresees explosive growth in vaccines market; plans 5 new vaccines |
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Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:35
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LONDON: Vaccines are finally proving their huge commercial worth. To many pharmas making preventive medicine, vaccines now appear to be the future of healthcare. This optimism was echoed by Europe’s biggest pharma GlaxoSmithKline Plc, who yesterday announced plans to launch five major vaccines in growing markets over the next five years.
The GSK products currently at the development stage will include vaccines for influenza and meningitis. A vaccine for cervical cancer has been successfully developed and the company hopes to get approval from the FDA and European regulators soon.
Analysts agree to the company’s estimates that markets for vaccines may reach £6 – 10 billion over the next five years. This forecast complete turns around all pervious views on vaccine markets.
Until now vaccines were considered low-price products which in turn offered very low-growth prospects. However, advancements in lab technologies have greatly altered the scope for preventive medicine. A good example would be the vaccine for cervical cancer (named Cervarix); analysts speculate that the price of this vaccine could be around £167 per course. (GSK offered no comment about the price of this product.) Even * by conservative estimates, the markets for cervical cancer vaccine alone, promises to reach £4bn a year by the year 2010. {* even if we assume just 20 percent of the target markets (or 80 million women) are vaccinated.}
The success of ‘Prevnar’ – the meningitis and pneumonia vaccine made by Wyeth, has been so successful that it has been called the ‘first billion dollar drug’. GSK’s rival to Prevnar, currently under development stage, is billed as more effective than the Wyeth product.
Some new vaccines offer clearly great prospects. Some promise even to become pharmaceutical blockbusters with sales crossing Prevnar’s record of $1 billion a year. At a seminar here, David Stout, president of GSK said the global vaccines market was “poised for accelerated growth”. He said he was happy that his company had held on to its vaccines business despite many peers abandoning theirs. He said GSK’s patience and commitment are paying off and “the benefits are now coming through”.
The vaccines market, currently at £5.2 billion, is growing at a very encouraging rate and over a decade it “could reach somewhere between £17 billion and £24 billion.” the GSK executive said.
He also said the FDA had granted their product the status of “fast track” for a review.
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