Despite low innovation, Asia-Pacific anti-hypertensive drugs market to hit $27 billion by 2022, report

The market for anti-hypertensive therapeutics across the five Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries of India, China, Australia, South Korea, and Japan, is set to grow from $19.1 billion in 2015 to $27 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%.

According to business intelligence provider GBI Research’s latest report, this relatively solid rise in market value will be driven by the increasingly elderly population – where the prevalence rate of hypertension is highest – and increases in risk factors such as obesity, low physical activity levels, urbanization, and smoking. Indeed, growth will not be aided by the weak anti-hypertensive pipeline, due to lack of innovative products in late-stage development.

Gautam Arora, an analyst for GBI Research, explains: “The anti-hypertensive pipeline consists of 112 pipeline products, most of which are small molecules. The limited presence of other types of molecules in the pipeline suggests that large pharmaceutical companies are refraining from developing novel molecules and are more inclined to focus on patient-compliant combination therapies. It is therefore unlikely that any completely novel molecules will enter the market during the forecast period.