Enbrel, Remicade, and Humira Have Dramatically Transformed the Drug Market for the Treatment of Psoriatic Arthritis

WALTHAM, Mass., April 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the recent emergence of three high-priced biologic agents - - Amgen/Wyeth/Takeda's Enbrel, Centocor/Schering-Plough/Tanabe's Remicade, and Abbott/Eisai's Humira -- has dramatically transformed the drug market for treating psoriatic arthritis.

The new Pharmacor report Psoriatic Arthritis finds that although no drugs had been approved for treating the disease prior to 2002, the TNF-alpha inhibitors Enbrel, Remicade, and Humira have emerged over the past five years as highly effective treatments for psoriatic arthritis in the world's major pharmaceutical markets (the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Japan). The psoriatic arthritis market, which had previously been served by inexpensive drugs that were used off-label, is now characterized by a small but significant percentage of patients who are treated with high-priced TNF-alpha inhibitors.

Despite the success of TNF-alpha inhibitors, the report finds that the pipeline for psoriatic arthritis is notably weak and includes few therapies with novel mechanisms of action. Additionally, only one of the novel agents in development, Centocor/Medarex's dual interleukin inhibitor known as CNTO- 1275, is expected to launch.

"Although TNF-alpha inhibitors have expanded treatment options, some psoriatic arthritis patients do not respond to these agents, and few therapies in development are likely to satisfy this need," said Joanna Kim, analyst at Decision Resources. "By 2015, Centocor/Medarex's CNTO-1275 will be the only therapy approved for psoriatic arthritis that has a mechanism of action not based on the inhibition of TNF-alpha."

About Pharmacor from Decision Resources

Pharmacor is a unique family of studies that assesses a host of market- impacting factors and analyzes the commercial outlook for drugs in research and development.

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  Elizabeth Marshall
  Decision Resources, Inc.
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  emarshall@dresources.com