 DecisionBase PDFs --
2008
 Overview:
Treatment for obesity represents an enormous market owing to
the increasing number of obese people worldwide and the limited efficacy of
available treatments. Only three key drugs have launched in the obesity market
in the last decade: orlistat (Roche’s Xenical/GlaxoSmithKline’s OTC Alli),
sibutramine (Abbott’s Meridia/Reductil/Sibutral), and rimonabant
(Sanofi-Aventis’s Acomplia/Zimulti). The late-stage obesity pipeline is composed
largely of combinations of older drugs, a feature that reflects the complexity
of obesity and the need for better understanding of the underlying processes.
Questions Answered in This Report:
 Weight loss, weight maintenance, and improvement of
metabolic and cardiovascular parameters are key goals in the treatment of
obesity. What are the key primary and secondary clinical trial end points with
which new therapies are evaluated? How do primary care physicians weight
specific efficacy end points and other drug attributes in their prescribing
decisions for obesity?
Orlistat (Roche’s Xenical/GlaxoSmithKline’s OTC Alli) is the
2006 major-market sales leader for obesity. How will emerging agents fare
against orlistat? Will emerging therapies offer improvements in the efficacy
end points and drug attributes that are most influential in physician
prescribing decisions? Which emerging therapies, if any, are best positioned to
challenge the market-leading status of orlistat?
By 2011, Vivus’s phentermine/topiramate combination (Qnexa) will
emerge as the gold-standard therapy in our drug comparator model because of its superior clinical profile over the current
therapies evaluated in this study. On what clinical attributes is Qnexa most
differentiated from its competitors? Which current therapies are at greatest
risk of being replaced by Qnexa?
Scope:
Key drug development opportunity tested in our target
product profiles for obesity: A therapy that is more effective than orlistat at
inducing weight loss for the treatment of obesity.
Physicians surveyed for this study: 60 U.S. primary care physicians, internal medicine specialists, and family medicine
specialists.
Comprehensive List of Therapies Included in Our Research and
Modeling
Current therapies:
- Orlistat (Roche’s Xenical/GlaxoSmithKline’s OTC Alli)
- Sibutramine (Abbott’s Meridia/Reductil/Sibutral)
- Phentermine (GlaxoSmithKline’s Fastin, UCB’s Ionamin,
generics)
Emerging therapies:
- Naltrexone/bupropion (Orexigen Contrave)
- Bupropion/zonisamide (Orexigen’s Empatic)
- Phentermine/topiramate (Vivus’s Qnexa)
- Lorcaserin (Arena Pharmaceuticals)
- S-2367 (Shionogi)
About DecisionBase
Obesity: Current Pipeline Falls Short of Physicians'
Expectations for Efficacy and Safety is a DecisionBase 2008 study from Decision
Resources. DecisionBase 2008 combines market forecasts with clinical and
commercial end points to assess market share projections in 35 indications.
These outputs are driven by quantitative and qualitative primary research.
DecisionBase 2008 provides detailed market share, patient share, and
price-per-day projections for emerging drugs in development. The market share
projections are based on prescriber surveys that compare physicians’
expectations of a potential target product profile with an emerging product
profile of the leading drugs in development.
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