Sales of cancer pain therapies set to grow to $5.2 billion in the G7 by 2021

Sales of cancer pain therapies will increase to $5.2 billion in 2021 in leading seven markets (the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and Japan), according to a new report from Decision Resources. Over the next decade, several premium-priced agents will enter the market, taking significant patient share from low-cost drugs and spurring growth.

Further growth will be restricted, however, by the enduring presence of generic opioids, which will continue to play a major role in cancer pain treatment, and by the onset of generic erosion in other drug classes, most notably the bisphosphonates.

The Pharmacor report entitled Cancer Pain finds that the product development pipeline for cancer pain therapies is dominated by potential treatments for severe cancer pain as most of these drugs are reformulated long-acting opioid analgesics. Over the past few years, the market for transmucosal immediate-release fentanyl products for breakthrough cancer pain has quickly become crowded, and as a result, fewer companies feature breakthrough cancer pain products in their development pipelines.