Worldwide drug sales to hit $ 1.06 trillion in 2022: Study

Pricing pressure to cause drug sales forecasts to fall for first time in 10 years, says Evaluate

Last Updated : Jun 27 2017 | 3:00 PM IST

Increased scrutiny around the pricing of medicines is starting to have an impact on drug sales growth, according to Evaluate’s latest World Preview report. Despite consensus forecasts for worldwide drug sales hitting $ 1.06 trillion in 2022, this is down from the $ 1.12 trillion analysts forecast for the same period last year.

The fall also represents the first time in 10 years of Evaluate analysis that total drug sales have failed to beat previous year forecasts.

However, sales of some of the industry’s hottest products such as cancer immunotherapies (ie, Keytruda and Opdivo) are expected to help propel the sector to its expected trillion dollar sales target. The report also finds that, even with mounting questions around their pricing, orphan drugs are now set to make up a third of pharma sales by 2022.

“The continued political and public scrutiny over pricing of both the industry’s new and old drugs is not going to go away and we are starting to feel the impact now. Market access is becoming harder, as seen by the disappointing sales of the drugs like Repatha, Praluent, and Nucala. And the increasing cost of taking a novel therapy to market, now at $ 4 billion over the last 10 years puts additional pressure on the productivity of the industry and its longer term sustainability,” said Antonio Iervolino, head of forecasting, Evaluate.

The report predicts that 32 percent of the 2022 increase in sales twill come from orphan drugs (with market of over $ 95 billion). Patent expiries will potentially wipe out $ 194 billion worth of pharma sales during 2016-2022 - signalling a second patent cliff.

According to the report, Novartis, Pfizer and Roche will compete head to head for the crown of worldwide prescription sales in 2022, with Novartis seemingly having a slight edge. Celgene (with growth rate of over 15 percent) and Shire (more than 10 percent growth rate) are expected to record the fastest sales growth (CAGR) by 2022 although growth estimates have been revised downward in the last 12 months, added the report.