Insights on the US Alzheimer's disease market

The treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) offers a compelling commercial opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry because of the large and growing patient population and the high level of unmet need, according to a new report from Decision Resources, titled Physician and Payer Insights on the Impact of Emerging Therapies and Generic Donepezil on the US Alzheimer's Disease Market.

As the baby boomer generation begins to turn 65, the AD population is expected to expand dramatically. Despite this growing patient pool (and thus the need to manage the disease in such a large number of patients), treatment options for AD are at present limited to symptomatic therapies with modest efficacy of limited duration at best, the report states.

These therapies include the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) donepezil (Eisai/Pfizer's Aricept, generics), galantamine (Ortho-McNeil Neurologic's Razadyne, Razadyne ER, generics), and rivastigmine (Novartis' Exelon, generics, and the Exelon patch) as well as the NMDA receptor antagonist memantine (Forest Laboratories' Namenda).