The Second Highest Percentage of Surveyed Rheumatologists Selected Remicade as the Most Efficacious Therapy for the Indication, According to Findings from Decision Resources
BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Decision Resources, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the highest proportions of surveyed rheumatologists (46 percent) and surveyed managed care organizations’ (MCOs) pharmacy directors (45 percent) selected Abbott/Eisai’s Humira (adalimumab) as the most efficacious therapy for moderate to severe psoriatic arthritis, when compared to other available therapies. Rheumatologists who selected Humira gave it higher satisfaction scores for its effect on psoriasis than the scores given to other current therapies by rheumatologists who selected these therapies as being most efficacious.
Decision Resources’ analysis of the psoriatic arthritis drug market reveals that interviewed thought leaders indicate that Humira has the best risk-benefit profile of the currently marketed agents, which drives it position as the patient-share leader among the TNF-alpha inhibitors and as the overall sales leader for the indication. Surveyed MCO pharmacy directors who selected Humira as the most efficacious therapy gave the drug neutral satisfaction scores on all three peripheral efficacy measures they were asked to assess. In contrast, surveyed rheumatologists indicated satisfaction with Humira’s performance on those same efficacy attributes, which reveals a gap between surveyed MCO pharmacy directors’ assessment of the drug’s performance on key efficacy goals in psoriatic arthritis. However, the perception of Humira as the most efficacious therapy by the highest number of surveyed payers does not translate into a significant reimbursement advantage for this agent as its formulary tier status is generally similar to that of TNF-alpha inhibitors which have been marketed longer—Amgen/Stiefel/Pfizer/Takeda’s Enbrel (etanercept) and Centocor Ortho Biotech/Merck/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Remicade (infliximab).
“Although Remicade’s patient share trails that of other TNF-alpha inhibitors in the psoriatic arthritis market, it was selected as the most efficacious therapy by the second highest percentage of surveyed rheumatologists, and these physicians express high satisfaction with the drug’s efficacy,” said Decision Resources Analyst Dancella Fernandes, Ph.D. “In contrast, only five percent of surveyed payers chose Remicade as the most efficacious therapy, an outcome that was likely influenced by the variability of its coverage in different formularies—because Remicade is delivered intravenously, it can be covered by medical rather than pharmacy benefit.”
The findings also reveal that, due to the market entry of biosimilar versions of leading TNF-alpha inhibitors beginning in 2014, the psoriatic arthritis drug market will experience only marginal annual growth as sales will increase from approximately $1.2 billion in 2009 to $1.37 billion in 2019 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan. Through 2019, emerging biologics that are expected to receive approval for psoriatic arthritis—UCB/Otsuka’s Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) and Centocor Ortho Biotech/Janssen-Cilag’s Stelara (ustekinumab)—will contribute only modestly to the market expansion.
Although methotrexate (Dava Pharmaceuticals’ Rheumatrex, generics) was the patient-share leader in 2009, sales of the TNF-alpha inhibitors approved for the indication accounted for 85 percent of major-market sales in 2009, owing to the TNF-alpha inhibitors’ significant price premium over conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and the availability of inexpensive generic versions of methotrexate. Through 2019, the TNF-alpha inhibitor class will continue to dominate major-market sales.
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