Advanced drug delivery to skyrocket
cent and exceed $76 bn (€62 bn) by 2014, spurred on by new
technologies emerging from the biotech and biopharmaceutical
pipelines, according to a new report by Kalorama Information.
The advanced drug delivery industry, currently worth $23 bn, is now booming as drug companies seek to improve formulations and delivery methods of existing compounds to give their product a new edge in the increasingly competitive drug market.
In the past, 80 per cent of drugs on the market have been standard oral formulations, but drug companies are now doing more complex and exciting things with dosage forms, including controlled-release tablets, multi-coated tablets, granule coatings, transdermal patches and new topical formulations.
The drug formulation industry is good example, having experienced a 38 per cent growth in the past five years due to the demand for specialist formulation companies to devise new formulations of existing drugs.
Another example is transdermal delivery, a relatively emerging market, which is already worth $12.7 bn and is expected to increase to $21.5 billion in the year 2010 and $31.5 bn in the year 2015.
In addition to improving existing oral drugs, there has also been a huge increase in demand for new ways of delivering drugs that have traditionally required intravenous infusion or frequent injection, such as insulin.
Non-injectable insulin is tipped to be a blockbuster market, and the first non-injectable insulin product set to explode onto the world market this year - Pfizer's Exubera - is predicted to earn $1.5 bn a year.
Other successful drug delivery innovations to emerge so far include transdermal nicotine patches, birth control implants, as well as technologies to accommodate the pharmacodynamics of newer drug compounds in the cardiovascular, cancer, CNS, diabetes, fertility control, infectious and pulmonary disease sectors.
"There are key therapeutic areas in which new drug delivery technologies will have a huge impact," notes Kenneth Krul, the author of the Kalorama report.
"Expect to see on the horizon oral insulin for diabetics, intradermal microchip delivery, organ-specific delivery, and even drug delivery through the administration of cells designed to produce therapeutic compounds. These and others should prove to be key market drivers," he said.
The report also predicts that the overall drug delivery market, which includes delivery devices, will also continue to grow, at an annual rate of slightly over 7 per cent - creating space for many firms to flourish.
The updated 2nd Edition of Advanced Drug Delivery: Technologies, Applications and Markets can be purchased at > Kalorama's website.
