Emergence of Cancer Vaccines Will Be the Key Factor Driving the Pancreatic Cancer Drug Market to More Than Doub...( Huge Opportunity Exists for Develop...)

Huge Opportunity Exists for Development of More Effective Therapies That Can Improve Survival, According to a New Report from Decision Resources

WALTHAM, Mass., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the emergence of cancer vaccines, including drugs from Pharmexa and Cell Genesys, will be the key factor driving the pancreatic cancer drug market to more than double by 2016.

The new Pharmacor report entitled Pancreatic Cancer finds that Pharmexa's GV1001 and Cell Genesys's GVAX will drive the market from $560 million in 2006 to $1.2 billion in 2016 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Japan. The report also finds that, owing to generic erosion, sales of cytotoxic therapies used in pancreatic cancer -- Eli Lilly's Gemzar, Sanofi-Aventis's Eloxatin/Yakult Honsha's Elplat, Pfizer/Yakult's Campto/Camptosar, Daiichi-Sankyo's Topotecin, and Sanofi-Aventis's Taxotere -- will decline significantly during the next decade.

Although it accounts for only about two percent of all cancers, pancreatic cancer -- one of the most difficult cancers to treat -- is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. As a result, the pancreatic cancer market carries extensive unmet medical need, creating a huge opportunity for the development of more effective therapies that can improve survival.

"In combination with Gemzar, the most promising emerging therapies have failed to improve survival in large-scale, Phase III studies," said Mary Argent-Katwala, Ph.D., director at Decision Resources. "Experts argue that the development model for pancreatic therapies needs to be reviewed, that more effort should be directed at identifying responder subsets at an earlier stage of the disease, and that randomized Phase II studies to identify the most promising drug candidates should be more widely implemented."
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