Decline in cardiovascular drugs noted at ESC congress

This year’s European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Munich, Germany, was a stark example of exactly where the cardiovascular market space is headed, note analysts at industry expert GlobalData. This congress fully emphasized the new and innovative technologies that are coming out on the medical device and medical technology side, while leaving the market’s pharmaceutical wing in the dust, they say.

In fact, out of the nine hours over three days and 18 seminars on cardiac therapy innovation, only one seminar, given by Amgen, spoke about a pharmaceutical interventional treatment for heart disease. Thus, if there is one message to take away from the ESC 2012 congress, it is that the pharmaceutical industry has moved away from the cardiovascular market.

Prominent talks at the Congress included ‘Multimodality Image Fusion Technology for Enhancing Complex Transcatheter Cardiac Procedures’ that was put on by Philips Healthcare, ‘Cardiac Contractility Modulation: An innovative device therapy for Heart Failure with narrow QRS’ presented by Impulse Dynamics Germany, and ‘Automated quantitative CTA software for systematic analyses of coronary artery disease’ organized by Medis Imaging Systems. All in all, these seminars followed the industry trend of shifting cardiac focus toward devices – in particular less-invasive procedures such as transcatheterization – and toward new software solutions that will help physicians with diagnosis. However, biotech giant Amgen did give a presentation called ‘PCSK9, a potential exciting new target for the treatment of high cholesterol,’ where they outlined the potential for using the PCSK9 enzyme that regulates LDL in humans as a target for the next generation of cholesterol-lowering therapies.