Hot topic: Why the cancer drugs market has staying power
What’s been the biggest pharma story of the last five years? Obesity drugs, of course. They are on a roll – and sales will continue to skyrocket.
This year they make up four of the top 10 selling drugs by dollar value. The big four – Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Zepbound – are collectively expected to pull in around $60bn.
And by 2030, five of the top 10 are due to be GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, according to data analysts Evaluate Pharma.
The obesity segment is predicted to grow much faster than today’s most valuable area, cancer drugs. One forecast has sales of obesity drugs expanding at an astonishing compound annual rate of around 17%, compared to 11% for cancer drugs.
Yet the surprising thing is that cancer drugs will still represent a bigger market in 2030 than obesity drugs – potentially by quite a margin.
Forecasts vary, of course. But, taken as a whole, they suggest the oncology market will retain its preeminent position.
Two well respected outfits (Allied Market Research and KBV Research) put the oncology drugs market as being worth around $275bn in 2030. They are at the lower end. Two others, Strategic Market Research and Fortune Business Insights, pin the tail on the donkey at a little under $500bn, while Coherent Market Insights has it at $533bn.
Meanwhile, most forecasts have the obesity / weight-loss drugs market as being worth somewhere between $100bn and £175bn in 2030.
Clearly, the latter is growing from a much, much smaller base – one that was virtually non-existent just a few years ago.
But the fact there appears to be no crossover between the lower forecasts for the cancer drugs market, and the higher forecasts for the obesity drugs market, tells us something: not to underestimate the importance of the oncology market.
Cancer drugs may not be the huge story they once were. The revolution wrought by the introduction of immunotherapies like Merck & Co’s Keytruda (still the world’s highest selling individual drug, topping $30bn a year, but going off patent soon), is now firmly in the rearview mirror.
Our improved understanding of the biology of cancer – that even one type of cancer is actually a myriad of different diseases, which thus requires a myriad of different drugs – also suggests a fractured future oncology market comprised of lots of ‘smaller’ drugs (in terms of $ sales, not patient impact).
By contrast, the obesity market looks set to be dominated by a few mega-blockbusters which will grab the headlines by virtue of their very size.
But those smaller slices do add up. Cancer drugs also give people facing death the hope of more life, which means that – rightly or wrongly – they are often valued more highly in dollar terms than other therapeutics.
Looking beyond 2030, the picture becomes less and less clear. Healthcare providers around the world are likely to be more cash-strapped than ever.
Will they prioritise weight-loss drugs, which show huge promise in preventing a range of obesity-related diseases, including cancer? Will they prioritise the next generation of highly promising cancer treatments, which people will no doubt demand, but are likely to be costly? Or will they somehow manage to fund both?
