Patent Expiries of Key Therapies, Including Drugs From GlaxoSmithKline and Roche, Will Cut the Chronic Heart Failure Market in Half by 2016

WALTHAM, Mass., January 16, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the patent expiries of key therapies, most notably GlaxoSmithKline's Coreg and Roche's Dilatrend/Kredex, will cause the chronic heart failure drug market to decline by more than 50%, from $2.5 billion in 2006 to $1.2 billion in 2016.

The new Pharmacor report entitled Chronic Heart Failure finds that although the market to treat the disease has a wide array of effective and well-established treatments, many patients remain under-treated as a result of physician non-compliance with guidelines, particularly at the earlier stages of the disease. Additionally, there is no current evidence that emerging treatments for chronic heart failure offer significant improvements in patient outcome over existing therapies. Key agents in development are primarily focused on targeting cardiovascular neurohormonal pathways, such as arginine vasopressin antagonists (which include Otsuka's Tolvaptan) and renin- angiotensin aldosterone system modulators (which include Novartis's Aliskiren).

Agents that launch for chronic heart failure over the next decade are expected to be used in addition to already existing therapies in patients at the later stages of the disease who remain refractory. As such, the report forecasts that no emerging agent will replace current therapeutic options and that they will be restricted to niche populations.

"The level of mortality in chronic heart failure remains high, with the majority of patients not surviving beyond five years after diagnosis," said Graeme Green, Ph.D., analyst at Decision Resources. "Significant opportunity remains for improved treatments that can address the high level of mortality and offer longer-term survival for patients."

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