Ovarian Cancer Therapeutics Market: US Sales to Drive Minimal Global Growth by 2020, According to a New Study on ASDReports

Thursday 19 June 2014, Amsterdam

The high inflation on the cost of ovarian cancer therapeutics in the US, predominately on Avastin, will drive the global market through to 2020, despite Avastin’s current limitation to off-label usage in the country, according to a new report, now available on ASDReports.

The company’s latest report* states that there is a lack of targeted therapies for the treatment of ovarian cancer in comparison to other cancers. Avastin and Yondelis are the only approved targeted therapies in the EU, and were accepted on the basis of improved rates of Progression-Free Survival (PFS), despite a lack of an improvement in Overall Survival (OS).  

However, while the improvements in PFS observed with Yondelis and Avastin were not sufficient for either drug to be granted approval in the US, Avastin has been approved for other indications within oncology, and there is evidence that the drug is being prescribed off-label in the US for treating ovarian cancer. Avastin currently costs up to $100,000 per course of treatment, which is substantially greater than the average $30,000 cost of therapy for ovarian cancer.

Katie Noon, Analyst of the new report, says: “Due to the failure of several late-stage pipeline drugs to demonstrably improve median patient OS, drug inflation, predominately on Avastin, is expected to be the main market driver in the US and subsequently the global market over the next few years. Despite this, its effects will be small, with the market only growing minimally.

“Furthermore, Avastin’s high cost and minimal clinical benefit is also expected to create a negative opinion among healthcare professionals and regulatory bodies across the world, therefore limiting its prescription volumes.”

Of ten current late-stage pipeline drugs identified, only one was found to have a positive impact on OS in patients with ovarian cancer, namely Telik’s Telcyta. However, doubts were raised over the validity of the data associated with this drug. The remaining treatments have demonstrated no improvement to OS, and only minimal improvements in PFS.

As a result, it has been proposed that there is a need for improvement in clinical trial processes, which have previously yielded poor results as a consequence of an inefficient “universal approach”. Such an approach has neglected disease subtypes and variations in genetic alterations.

Noon concludes: “While current treatment focuses on off-patent chemotherapies, the development pipeline is moving towards addressing a wide range of targets specific to ovarian cell tumor growth and progression. These targets include growth factors, serine/threonine protein kinases and tumor-associated antigens/genes.”