Expiring antibiotic patents ‘will constrain market’

Recently published analysis claims that the patent expiry of market-leading antibiotics from a number of pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, AstraZeneca, Daiichi-Sankyo, Abbott and Wyeth, will prove to be a major constraint on the market for antibacterial drugs over the next ten years.

Decision Resources’ Pharmacor report, entitled Emerging Antibacterial Agents, found that antibiotics from the above companies generated over $4 billion (2.06 billion pounds) of sales during 2005.

Danielle Drayton, an analyst at Decision Resources, said: “The hospital sector will become more dynamic owing to a number of late-stage antibiotics that have the potential to be introduced over the next several years.”

She added that a number of antibacterial products from pharmaceutical companies including Novartis, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, would address the currently unmet need for infections that have shown resistance to existing products.

Decision Resoureces predicts that resistant gram-negative pathogens and orally administered treatments for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) will be vital areas in the future of antibacterials in the pharmaceuticals industry.

In March 2005, John Reid, then health secretary, welcomed figures showing MRSA levels were at their lowest since rates were recorded in 2001, while stating that further work had to be done to fight against the “superbug”.