Media release Datamonitor

from The large new patient pool in emerging markets indicates huge potential for the life sciences industry in autoimmune diseases but a new report from Datamonitor* suggests that it may be too soon to generate substantial market value outside the major markets.

Autoimmune diseases offer a growth opportunity for pharmaceutical companies, with patients requiring long-term treatment, often with novel, expensive biologics. In a time when breaking even in other areas feels like a success, growing sales and burgeoning pipelines in autoimmune diseases across the major markets show why the industry is turning its focus to autoimmune treatments.

James Wentworth, senior healthcare analyst at Datamonitor, comments: "Whilst the autoimmune market grew by 16.2% in the seven major markets between 2005 and 2009, in the combined emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China and Turkey, (BRICT) growth was a staggering 38.6%.

"The launch and uptake of high-cost therapies, such as biologics, has driven this growth across some of the emerging markets. Despite the growth, autoimmune sales in BRICT regions only generated $644m in 2009 compared to $25 billion in the same year across the seven major markets, highlighting that affordability and differences in patient access to medicines have been a major limiting factor."

An estimated patient population of up to 51 million in BRICT* far exceeds that in the major markets and could offset low market sales value.

Datamonitor predicts that the most attractive emerging autoimmune disorder market is Russia thanks to favourable characteristics around access to expensive medicines, biosimilar threat, pricing, patient potential, market size and potential for foreign drugs. Russia outstripped its emerging market peers in 2009, generating autoimmune sales of $266m.

James concludes: "India and China are the least attractive autoimmune markets at present though the situation is likely to improve in future as certain indicators, such as India's growing urban middle class population and China's aim to provide healthcare to 90% of the population, suggest a move towards expanded patient access to the more expensive novel pharmaceutical products."