Global Pharmaceutical Market Review & World Top Ten/Twenty Drugs 2008

 

Krishan Maggon

Industrial R&D paradigm shift to vaccines.

Biotechnology Journal

2009, Volume 4 Issue 4 (April 2009),  p 458-461)

Special Issue: Protein Design and Evolution for Biocatalysis

Published Online: Apr 15 2009 7:53AM

DOI: 10.1002/biot.200900042

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   PDF (Size: 251K)

 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110544531/home

Under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

 

National institute of Biomedical Imaging and Engineering

www.nibib.nih.gov

 

Image of the Brain Metabolic Activity and Profile

 

Introduction

This is the first complete Global market research report to provide actual sales data for the World 10/20 top selling human medicinal brands. It beats all commercial reports by several months. All late coming market intelligence and data mining reports should compare their past and current forecast with actual company reported 2008 brand sales.

Marketing and sales data for top ten global medicinal brands in any therapeutic area is considered highly confidential in the market intelligence and data mining companies. These companies together generated total income of $7 billion in 2008 and issue hundreds of market research reports costing thousands of dollars each. In several instances the sales figures for a particular medicinal brand differed by over $1 billion when compared to the company annual sales data. In other cases these reports failed to predict the comeback of vaccines and rise of monoclonal antibodies and biologics. There is no reliable method to predict sales for high growth recently introduced products or sales loss due to patent expiry or labeling restrictions or black box warnings.   

 Methods and Data Collection

Company annual and quarterly reports and presentations provide easy access to real data for their top selling products. Several European and Japanese companies still do not provide sales data for their best selling products, use a different financial year than the calendar year, do not provide quarterly reports and report much later than US companies. In addition companies like General Electric, Proctor and Gamble. L’Oreal and Nestle with multibillion dollar sales in healthcare are excluded from current data collection as detailed drug sales information is lacking in their financial reports.

Data about approved drugs is available from FDA, FDA advisory committee material, Med Watch, Prescribing Information and Black Box Warning if any and EMEA scientific evaluation as well as safety alerts. Drug specific sites established by companies and other sites list drug related information, list of ongoing clinical trials, list of publications and abstracts at scientific meetings and reported adverse events. Many companies provide regular or annual update of their R&D pipeline and progress of development projects and latest results.

Most of the top pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have started reporting their 2008 earnings and results within the 1Q-2Q2009. The listing of their top selling drugs, sales and R&D portfolio and new drug filings and approval is available at company web site. The commercial research reports will start appearing in 2Q2009 dealing with global market trends and brand and company performance in 2008.

The projected sales for the year 2008 are based on actual sales data for 1-3Q2008 as provided by the company’s quarterly reports and the sales for the 4Q2008 were projected based on actual 3Q2008 sales growth and 4Q2007 performance of the same brand. This method has been validated during the past few years as well in 2008 as the projections were closer to the company reported annual sales. The higher values of European and Japanese currencies will results in higher sales for some brands when converted into dollars. Global market sales were calculated by adding up all company reported medicinal brands sales (>$100 million) in different therapeutic categories. As companies start reporting their 2008 financial results from late January to March 2009, these projections/estimates will be regularly updated with actual results during 1--2Q 2009 period. The projected results may differ from actual results due to a variety of factors like exchange rates fluctuations, market conditions, financial and market cap, national price controls, regulatory restrictions and approvals of new indications. To validate the projection method once again, both actual and projected brand sales for 2008 are provided.

This is the first time that a list of top or best selling global drugs/medicinal brands is provided in the public domain and at least 3-6 months before commercial market research reports. Considerable time and effort has gone into data collection and data analysis for this and other market research knols including direct and indirect costs.  For academic use of this data (fair use only), please ensure that a reference, citation and hyperlink for source data (my knols) is provided.

Results and Discussion

The current method of data collection and analysis provides annual sales forecast of blockbuster and top selling drugs which closely match and reflect actual brand sales. This method has been tested during the past 5 years and has consistently outperformed many commercial data bases and high priced market research reports. The results of 2008 once again validate the methodology and reveal close match of actual brand sale results with our market projections and forecasts. These forecasts were published in early December 2008 and beat major commercial reports by 3-6 months. With the addition of Japanese sales, most of the blockbuster drugs are likely to match the projected sales forecast.  Unlike commercial reports, differences of $1 billion and more were not observed for any top selling brand.

Commercial market research reports provide a comprehensive and concise list of blockbuster drugs, global and country specific sales and companies involved and market trends. The cost of these reports is high and many reports have somewhat outdated data, confidential nature of the data collection and evaluation and divergence of sales figures in comparison with company reports and other data mining firms. The online availability of sales and marketing data from some of these firms is a relatively new development. None of the commercial report provides historical perspectives of past predictions and evaluation of past forecasts with current market performance.

Fig 1  Top Selling Medicinal Brands Therapeutic Use

The global pharmaceutical market was $770 billion in 2008 (IMS data) and biotechnology drugs/biologics accounted for $120 billion and generics for $80 billion of the global market. The three top therapeutic categories were CNS drugs at $118 billion, cardiovascular drugs at $ 105 billion and Cancer drugs at $70 billion of sales. In biologics the top three categories were monoclonal antibodies at $33 billion, Vaccines at $24 billion and TNF inhibitors at $18 billion sales in 2008.  Lipitor still remains the world best selling drug with projected sales of $13.3 billion as its 12% sales decline in the USA was offset by higher international revenues and weak dollar. It was followed by Plavix and Enbrel. It is the first time that a biologic product has taken the 3rd top selling medicinal brand. Four biologics made the top ten best selling list and seven biologics made the top twenty lists in 2008. Patent expiry resulted in loss of sales of last year best sellers like Risperdal, Fosamax, Prevacid, Protonix and Norvasc. Regulatory action by FDA (black box warning, restricted use and labeling changes) resulted in loss of sales for Avandia as well as Aranesp and other erythropoietin brands. Tamiflu loss of sales was due to lack of demand to renew the stockpile for future avian flu pandemic. Seven brands had sales greater than $ 5 billion and fourteen drugs with sales more than $ 4 billion in the year 2008. Analysis of blockbuster brands sales and marketing data provides a better evaluation of the R&D performance of companies concerned.

IMS Health data release for global 15 top selling brands when compared to company released sales data showed differences of $2 billion or more for Nexium and Enbrel, differences of over $1 billion for Remicade and Rituxan. There were four brands with sales differences of over $500 million, two best selling brands were missing from the IMS list. The significant sales differences in biologics shows the weakness of IMS data collection methodology as one top selling biologics was missing from the list. IMS sales ranking of brands was different from the list derived from company reported sales.

Comments and suggestions for improved forecasts are invited from pharmaceutical and biotechnology executives and marketing professionals or Wall Street analysts. Reliable sales data from Japan and Europe is required for some of these listed products. The Introduction, Method and Data Collection and Para 1 and 2 of Discussion Section are common in all Global Market ---Review knols.

Acknowledgements

Fig 2  Leading companies in top selling drugs

Table 1. Top Selling Medicinal Brands 2006- 2008

Company Sales Data in bold, IMS data in second line. A  Actual Sales (P Projected Sales)

Sales data for 2008 is based on actual 1-3Q2008 data as reported by companies and adding 4th quarter projections based on

sales growth of current 3Q2008 and change between 3 and 4 Q 2007. Exchange rates are average of the period 1-3Q2008

as reported and used by companies. 

This projected data P will be regularly updated and replaced by actual results A as companies start reporting in 2009.

NHL  Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, RA Rheumatoid Arthritis, JRA Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, JIA Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis,

Ps Psoriasis, PsA Psoriatic arthritis, CD Crohn’s Disease; UC Ulcerative Colitis, AS  Ankylosing Spondylitis. 

Table 2    Top Ten Medicinal Brands Ranking in 2008 ($ billion)

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Krishan Maggon