The annual Drugs to Watch™ report from Clarivate™ spotlights late-stage pre-launch drugs and biologics set to become blockbusters within five years of market authorization and/or transform treatment paradigms. See who made this year’s list.
We are now seeing personalized medicines representing a significant cohort in new drug approvals. These treatments represent a substantial leap forward for life sciences, in many cases providing treatments for previously untreatable diseases. However, because they are highly targeted, they address smaller potential patient cohorts than the mass-market treatments of yore, forcing pharmas to thread the needle on pricing in order to recoup the costs of development and fund the next cycle of innovation. In some instances, the resulting pricing may prompt payors to place tight constraints on novel therapeutics, limiting both their commercial potential and their potential benefits to patients. Even the most successful new targeted therapeutics now routinely fall short of blockbuster status, which was, in past years, the principal measure of our Drugs to Watch picks.
An updated methodology
With this evolving dynamic in mind, we have revised our Drugs to Watch methodology to include not just drugs forecast to earn more than $1 billion in annual global revenue five years after launch, but also drugs with critical potential clinical impact – those that answer unmet patient need and advance the standard of care significantly. For this year’s Drugs to Watch report, we drew from the expertise of more than 160 Clarivate analysts covering hundreds of diseases, drugs and markets and tapped 11 integrated data sets that span the R&D and commercialization lifecycle to identify 15 Drugs to Watch, including:
- Bimekizumab (BIMZELX®)
- Capivasertib
- Daprodustat (Duvroq)
- Deucravacitinib (SOTYKTU™)
- Foscarbidopa/foslevodopa
- Lecanemab (LEQEMBI™) and donanemab
- Lenacapavir (Sunlenca®)
- Mirikizumab
- Pegcetacoplan (EMPAVELI®/ASPAVELI®)
- Ritlecitinib
- Sparsentan
- Teclistamab (TECVAYLI®)
- Teplizumab
- Valoctocogene roxaparvovec (ROCTAVIAN™)
Key trends
In addition to the growing cohort of personalized medicines, the report touches on several other trends of importance to the biopharma industry in 2023, namely:
- the rapidly growing marketplace for biopharmas in Mainland China, where regulatory reforms have greatly expanded access to treatments and
- the need to balance development of complex biologics that address diseases of concern in the wealthy world, such as the recent burst of innovation in cancer and autoimmune disorder therapeutics, with development of new medicines for global scourges outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and waterborne illnesses.
The urgency of transformative innovation
R&D productivity remains a challenge for pharma in 2022, with a decline in NMEs approved across the globe. This may reflect a COVID-era pivot by companies toward seeking solutions to the disease, as well as the impact of the pandemic on clinical trials and regulator visits due to travel restrictions, etc. These ephemeral factors aside, R&D is getting more difficult, with more complex medicines and emerging but as-yet experimental platforms in play.
Robust data sets, properly used and harmonized, provide an opportunity to accelerate innovation – but in order to realize their potential, companies must be able to combine data sets from disparate sources and coax actionable insights from them. At Clarivate, we work alongside industry leaders to help them navigate the ocean of data and speed much-needed treatments to market in order to help patients live better, longer lives.
You can find the Drugs to Watch 2023 report, along with a host of other resources, here.
