New treatments to boost hepatitis C market to $19.2 billion by 2016

The launch of interferon-free regimens is expected to boost the hepatitis C market from $2.9 billion in 2013 to a peak of $19.2 billion in 2016, according to independent analysts Datamonitor Healthcare.

The superior efficacy and tolerability of oral regimens is forecast to prompt a lucrative backlog of warehoused patients to initiate treatment, driving rapid growth of the market, the analysts said. While competition for genotype-1 (GT-1) patients is likely to be fierce, US biotech major Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) stands to profit greatly from the scarcity of competition for the warehoused GT-2/3 population.

Gilead’s Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) represents the first interferon-free regimen approved for GT-2/3 patients, whose treatment options have previously been limited to peginterferon alfa and ribavirin therapy. Datamonitor Healthcare forecasts that high uptake of Sovaldi in this subgroup will increase the commercial importance of this market segment, from 16% of the market in 2013 to 25% in 2022.