Ample room available for novel products in metastatic prostate cancer treatment market, says GlobalData Analyst

Despite numerous product launches in the metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) treatment market since 2010, ample opportunity still exists for drug developers to claim their stake in the arena, particularly through drugs with novel molecular targets, says an analyst with research and consulting firm GlobalData.

Raksha Mudbhary, Ph.D., GlobalData’s Analyst covering Oncology and Hematology, states that while mCRPC remains an incurable disease, its treatment landscape has been revolutionized by the approval of five new drugs in recent years.

Mudbhary says: “Chemotherapy docetaxel was the standard of care in the mCRPC therapeutics market prior to 2010. Since then, second-generation hormonal therapies, such as Johnson and Johnson’s Zytiga and Astellas/Medivation’s more recently launched Xtandi, have established themselves as the dominant players.

“Both drugs were initially approved for patients who progress following treatment with docetaxel, but they have since also shown an Overall Survival (OS) benefit in chemotherapy-naïve patients, allowing them to challenge docetaxel’s position as the gold-standard, first-line mCRPC treatment.”

However, GlobalData has found that the majority of patients receiving Zytiga or Xtandi encounter disease progression within one year of treatment, and cross-resistance between the two drugs is increasingly being recognized. Plenty of room is therefore available for new and more effective products, although these will have to demonstrate an OS benefit to gain regulatory approval.

Mudbhary continues: “This is where notable Phase III failures have occurred in the past year, involving drugs developed by the likes of Takeda and Oncogenex. San Francisco-based Exelixis announced earlier this month that its investigational drug, Cometriq, had also failed to show an improvement in OS, compared with prednisone in a Phase III trial.

“While these failures highlight the difficulty in treating this advanced stage of prostate cancer, drug developers should not be deterred from entering a therapeutics market with so much opportunity.”