Immunotherapy Market To Boom In Next Eight Years, Study Shows

Recent research performed by the Decision Resources Group found that the immunotherapy market will grow from $1.1 billion to nearly $9 billion by 2022 – showing 23.8 percent annual growth. The organization studied current trends in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and Japan.

What are the reasons for such significant growth? Nine novel immunotherapies are expected to enter the market, including four novel immune checkpoint inhibitors and five novel therapeutic vaccines in new oncology indications and/or patient populations, according to the research.

Here are some other highlights of the study:

• Potential of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 agents: There is increased optimism surrounding anti-PD-1/PD-L1 agents based on promising data released to date in multiple oncology indications. Experts hope PD-L1 expression can be used as a potential predictive biomarker for personalized treatments, however they are remaining cautious at this point in the game.
• Combination approaches for immunotherapies: Early-phase data presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) reveals there is a lot of promise in combination approaches involving immunotherapies, including dual blockade of the immune checkpoint pathway, and combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors with therapeutic cancer vaccines, among others.
• Market outlook for therapeutic vaccines: It’s estimated that therapeutic vaccines will witness 13.6 percent annual sales growth over the 2012 to 2022 forecast period, but the study explained that these agents will not see the same commercial success that immune checkpoint inhibitors have.

"A plethora of immunotherapies are in development across a wide range of oncology indications, making this drug class one of the most exciting to watch. We anticipate that nivolumab will be the sales-leading agent among immunotherapies,” Decision Resources Group Senior Business Insights Analyst Khurram Nawaz, M.Sc, said. “However, it will face direct and intense competition from other anti-PD-1/PD-L1 agents — notably from pembrolizumab in malignant melanoma and non-small-cell lung cancer — and, to a lesser extent, from MPDL-3280A in non-small-cell lung cancer.”

The numbers from the study are impressive, but should come as no surprise. Pharma companies are progressively seeing success in the immunotherapy sector, especially for cancer treatments.

In June, Compugen reached the initial milestone in its cancer immunotherapy collaboration with Bayer, which provides for the development and commercialization of therapeutic antibodies against two checkpoint protein candidates discovered by Compugen.

Around that same timeframe, Pfizer and Cellectis announced that they formed a strategic partnership to develop Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) immunotherapies in the field of oncology directed at select targets.