A newly released report titled "Immunotherapy Drugs Market by Type, Therapy Area, End User - Global Forecast to 2025" forecasts the global immunotherapy drugs market to reach USD 274. 6 billion by 2025 from USD 163. 0 billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 11. 0 % during the forecast period.
Companies on the leading edge of the treatment of cancer are developing new and novel treatments in this market, with many already preparing trials or testing treatments including Genocea Biosciences (NASDAQ: GNCA), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), and Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK).
The report comes as many new and potentially breakthrough cancer treatments are emerging from within the immunotherapy sector. One company contributing exciting advancements is Oncolytics Biotech Inc., ( NASDAQ: ONCY ) ( TSX: ONC ), a development stage biotech company forwarding an immuno-oncology virus called pelareorep. Pelareorep is a safe and well-tolerated drug demonstrated to kills cancer cells. It is in study for potential combination with major drug developers including Opdivo® from, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Roche’s Tecentriq®, Pfizer’s and Merck’s KGaA’s Bavencio®, as well as Keytruda® from Merck & Co. Inc.
It appears that the market for these new therapies will be prolific and growing rapidly as biotech companies and pharma companies devote major resources to this field.
The Market Characteristics
The report states that market growth is being primarily driven by the rising demand for immunotherapies over conventional treatments and a growing prevalence of target indications. It says that timeline issues, side-effects, and manufacturing complexities are the major factors that may restrict market growth, to a certain extent.
One point that is made very clear in the report is that the adoption of immunotherapy in cancer has been rising in recent years due to the introduction of safe and efficient treatments.
Monoclonal antibodies are expected to see high demand during the immediate period. Monoclonal antibodies are immunoglobulins derived by cultivating immune cells in the lab to target specific antigens (a type of protein) present on the surface of cancer cells.
These types of antibodies can be used as a therapy and attach themselves to cancer or abnormal cells and mark them for destruction by the body’s natural immune system. They hold the greatest share of the immunotherapy drugs market based on to their high specificity and relatively few side-effects.
Based on the therapeutic area, the immunotherapy drugs market is segmented into cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases, and others. The cancer category accounted for the largest share of the immunotherapy drugs market in 2019.
The report reiterates this is mainly due to the large number of approvals, rising prevalence of cancer, and growing research activity in this area, among other factors.
Immune Therapies Are Taking the Lead
Cancer grows in our bodies as our immune systems fail to recognize tumors as foreign or a threat. The cancer suppresses our immune system telling it and T cells to ignore the threat and leave it to flourish. Immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitors, help our immune systems to recognize and destroy the cancer. However, for checkpoint inhibitors, which are the largest and fastest growing segment of immunotherapies for cancer, this only occurs in as low as 1 in 5 patients who respond to immunotherapy treatments.
This is the area of focus for the emerging company Oncolytics Biotech. Its treatment, Pelareorep comes with very compelling metastatic breast cancer survival data, and positive clinical biomarker data.
Oncolytics’ primary objective is to obtain regulatory approval for Pelareorep as quickly as possible. The company is also moving to expand pelareorep into commercially valuable new treatment areas with pharmaceutical partners.
Most recently, Oncolytics Biotech announced clinical data supporting a predictive biomarker of Pelareorep response in breast cancer at the ESMO Breast Cancer Virtual Meeting. Important point of the AWARE-1 trial demonstrates pelareorep primes an adaptive immune response:
- Systemic delivery yields robust pelareorep replication selectively in tumor cells
- Pelareorep administration increases CelTIL - known to be associated with positive clinical outcomes
- Peripheral T cell clonality emerges as potential predictive and prognostic biomarker
A Very Attractive Market Indeed
The immunotherapy drug market in North America is projected to hold the largest share of the global market during the forecast period to 2025. The report says that this can be attributed to factors such as the rising prevalence of cancer along with increasing initiatives by the largest and most dominant industry players.
At the same time, the report details how the Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 11.9% during the forecast period to 2025 based on factors such as aggressive investments by key market players and the increase in government spending on healthcare.
A breakdown of the primary participants referred to for the report include:
- By Company Type (Supply-side): Tier 1: 29%, Tier 2: 37%, and Tier 3: 34%
- By Category (Demand-side): Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies: 55%, Hospitals and Reference Laboratories: 35%, and Academic & Research Institutes: 10%
- By Designation: C-level: 35%, Director level: 25%, and Managers: 40%
- By Region: North America: 35%, Europe: 32%, Asia: 22%, and the RoW: 11%
To gain a better understanding of biotech and pharma companies within this emerging market this report is a watershed.
Leading players that stand to benefit in this market space include:
Genocea Biosciences is a biopharmaceutical company developing personalized cancer immunotherapies. The company recently announced the filing of an Investigational New Drug (IND) Application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin a Phase 1/2a clinical study of GEN-011 in a range of tumor types, with a focus on patients who have failed standard-of-care checkpoint inhibitor therapy. The GEN-011 trial will evaluate patient safety, T cell proliferation and persistence, and clinical activity, with preliminary data expected mid-2021.
Pfizer Inc. develops, manufactures, and sells healthcare products worldwide. It offers medicines and vaccines in various therapeutic areas, including internal medicine, vaccines, oncology, inflammation and immunology, and rare diseases. Pfizer announced the United States (U.S.) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved NYVEPRIA™ (pegfilgrastim-apgf), a biosimilar to Neulasta® (pegfilgrastim). NYVEPRIA is indicated to decrease the incidence of infection, as manifested by febrile neutropenia, in patients with non-myeloid malignancies receiving myelosuppressive anti-cancer drugs associated with a clinically significant incidence of febrile neutropenia.
Merck & Co. provides therapeutic and preventive agents to treat cardiovascular, type 2 diabetes, chronic hepatitis C virus, HIV-1 infection, intra-abdominal, fungal infection, insomnia, and inflammatory diseases; neuromuscular blocking agents; cholesterol modifying medicines; and anti-bacterial and vaginal contraceptive products. Merck just announced FDA has approved a second biomarker-based indication for Merck’s KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab), regardless of tumor type.
For more about this story, see the article at USA News Group: https://usanewsgroup.com/2020/02/24/why-biotechnology-companies-are-so-important/
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