DecisionBase PDFs

February 2010

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Opportunity Exists for Combination Therapies that Offer Improved Convenience and Outcomes

Introduction:

The pharmaceutical market for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has yet to realize its maximum commercial potential. Population aging and increases in diagnosis rates will drive expansion of the drug-treated pool of COPD patients over the next ten years. A disease-modifying therapy that can halt the decline in lung function and/or repair damaged lung tissue in COPD patients is needed, but emerging therapies will not address this need. They will offer only incremental improvements (e.g., new formulations, new combinations) over existing agents. Second-generation, long-acting beta2 agonist (LABA)/inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) combinations, long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMAs), and LABA/LAMA products will emerge, and many will provide convenient, once-daily dosing and slightly better efficacy and safety profiles than the first generation of drugs in these classes.

Questions Answered in This Report:

  *   Lung function improvement, reduction in exacerbations, changes in dyspnea, quality of life improvement, and effect on mortality are key goals in the treatment of COPD. What are the key primary and secondary clinical trial end points with which new therapies are evaluated? How do U.S. and European primary care physicians (PCPs) and general practitioners (GPs) weight specific efficacy end points and other drug attributes in their prescribing decisions for COPD?

  *   Salmeterol/fluticasone (GlaxoSmithKline’s Advair/Seretide, GlaxoSmithKline/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Adoair) is the 2008 major-market sales leader for COPD. How will emerging therapies fare against salmeterol/fluticasone? 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 salmeterol/fluticasone?

  *   Based on its clinical profile, tiotropium (Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer’s Spiriva) is the 2009 clinical gold standard in our Drug Comparator Model. What attributes do thought leaders believe differentiate this drug from competing current and emerging therapies? Will any drugs in development challenge tiotropium as the future gold standard in 2013 or 2018?

Scope:

Key drug development opportunity tested in our target product profiles for COPD: a therapy that is a single-inhaler, once-daily LABA/LAMA combination for the treatment of moderate to very severe COPD.

Physicians surveyed for this study: 60 U.S. and 30 European PCPs and GPs.

Comprehensive List of Therapies Included in Our Research and Modeling

Current Therapies

- Salmeterol/fluticasone (GlaxoSmithKline’s Advair/Seretide, GlaxoSmithKline/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Adoair)

- Formoterol/budesonide (AstraZeneca/Astellas’s Symbicort)

- Tiotropium (Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer’s Spiriva)

- Albuterol/ipratropium (Boehringer Ingelheim’s Combivent)

- Arformoterol (Sepracor’s Brovana)

Emerging Therapies

- Aclidinium (Forest/Almirall’s Eklira)

- Indacaterol (Novartis’s QAB-149/Onbrez)

- Olodaterol/tiotropium (Boehringer Ingelheim)

- Indacaterol/glycopyrronium (Novartis’s QVA-149)

- Roflumilast (Forest/Nycomed/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Daxas)

Search Reports

Mentioned in this report:

  • Companies:
  • - 3M
  • - Abbott
  • - Almirall
  • - AstraZeneca
  • - Astellas
  • - Boehringer Ingelheim
  • - Chiesi
  • - Cornerstone Therapeutics
  • - Dey
  • - Forest Laboratories
  • - GlaxoSmithKline
  • - Kyorin
  • - Merck
  • - Mitsubishi Tanabe
  • - Mundipharma
  • - Mylan
  • - Novartis
  • - Nycomed
  • - Pfizer
  • - Sandoz
  • - Sepracor
  • - SkyePharma
  • - Sosei
  • - Teijin
  • - Teva
  • - Theravance
  • - Vectura