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TauRx Group Fact Sheet
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The Market
The market for therapies to manage Alzheimer’s related dementia is driven by its severe impact on patients, their families, carers, healthcare budgets and the absence of drugs that reduce the rate of disease progression or prevent its development entirely. These factors are exacerbated by the rapid increase in disease incidence due to the growth of aging populations. The most complete statistics are available in the USA where the Alzheimer’s Association has estimated that 5.3 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease, a new case is diagnosed every 70 seconds and it is the fifth leading cause of death. If patients who have not yet received a formal diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease related dementia are included, such as those with mild cognitive impairment and suspected Alzheimer’s, then there are an estimated 12.5 million with AD in the US alone. World-wide prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease meeting full diagnostic criteria in 2007 was 10% of those over the age of 65 and as many as 50% of those over the age of 85 or about 26 million people. These figures are expected to quadruple by 2050 to 1 in 85 persons, or about 106 million people. Again, these percentages would increase tremendously if those with early stages of dementia were included. Alzheimer’s disease related costs to the US government’s healthcare program, Medicare, were US$94 billion in 2008 and are expected to reach US$189 billion by 2015, US$294 billion by 2025 and over US$1 trillion by 2050.
There is currently no marketed AD therapeutic that slows or stops the progression of the disease. The available drugs treat the symptoms, but only transiently. The drugs have such poor utility that only 18-30% of patients remain on treatment for more than one year, with median time on treatment only 120 days. Yet, despite this lack of utility and poor uptake, worldwide sales of the market leader Aricept reached US$3b in 2007. AD related drug sales grew from around US$500 million in 1999 to over US$6 billion by 2008, an increase of 33% per year. Just five approved drugs dominate sales with an 88% market share.
The AD market is expected to reach US$9.5-15 billion by 2015-2017 in the seven major markets (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, US) with some analysts forecasting multibillion-dollar peak year sales for individual drugs that slow or halt disease progression.
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