Huge increase in number of vaccine products in development; Report

Vaccine products in the R&D pipeline have more than tripled since 2005 and annual worldwide sales are on track to reach $40 billion by 2020, according to a recently completed study by the USA’s Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

The number of vaccine products in clinical trials worldwide has grown dramatically – ranging from 223 to 298 annually since 2008, up from 77 in 1998, Tufts CSDD said. In addition, worldwide vaccine sales grew at an average annual rate of 11.5% between 2005 and 2014, nearly double the 6% average annual growth rate for total pharmaceutical sales.

“Vaccines have become an important business for many large pharmaceutical companies, and the vaccine market is likely to expand as demand for new vaccines grows,” said Ronald Evens adjunct research professor at Tufts CSDD and Tufts University School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. He noted that that growth is driven by a variety of factors, ranging from efforts to reduce health care spending to increasing demand for new vaccines to treat and potentially cure cancer worldwide.