Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Decision Resources: Obesity market seeking drug developers

By Mass High Tech staff

Decision Resources Inc., a Waltham-based research and advisory firm focusing on pharmaceutical and health-care industry insight and analysis, has filed a report called Commercial Outlook for Metabolism: 2003-2014, which has uncovered a wide-open market in the field of obesity treatment. The report cites the withdrawal of Sanofi-Aventis’ Acomplia drug in Europe and the limits in safety and efficacy for existing treatment as the reason for the obesity market failing to “reach its potential,” according to Decision Resources associate analyst Ben Duncan.

The lack of late-stage obesity drugs opens the possibility of smaller pharmaceutical and biotech companies to bring successful obesity drug candidates to late-stage, then attracting the attention of large pharmaceutical and biotech companies interested in acquiring them, Decision Resources reported.

The metabolism report offers the company’s first outlook on the obesity, diabetes and growth hormones market and outlines each drug within those markets. The report also concluded that Novo Nordisk AS, with its multiple insulin offerings, will lead the metabolism sector in 2014, while Merck & Co. Inc. will pull itself into top rankings, due to its DPP-IV inhibitor Januvia.

Decision Resources also owns research firms HealthLeaders-InterStudy, focused on the managed care industry, and Millennium Research Group, which provides market intelligence on the medical device industry.