Unipolar Depression | Pharmacor | G7 | 2015
Last Updated 29 June 2015
Unipolar depression—comprising major depressive disorder (MDD), minor depression, and dysthymia—is a highly prevalent psychiatric disorder affecting nearly 85 million individuals in the seven major markets under study (United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and Japan). Throughout our 2014-2024 study period, the unipolar depression therapy market will consist almost entirely of generic products that dominate treatment, particularly in the early lines. Only a few branded products—namely Actavis’s vilazodone (Viibryd), Lundbeck/Takeda Pharmaceutical’s vortioxetine (Brintellix), Actavis/Pierre Fabre’s levomilnacipran (Fetzima), Otsuka Pharmaceutical/Lundbeck’s brexpiprazole, Actavis/Gedeon Richter/Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma’s cariprazine, Sumitomo Dainippon/Sunovion/Takeda Pharmaceutical’s lurasidone (Latuda), Alkermes’s ALKS-5461, and Naurex’s rapastinel—will be competing for market share during the forecast period in this highly genericized space. Because of generic competition from current therapies, it is unlikely that any emerging drugs will become dominating first-line treatments; however, low patient response rates and even lower remission rates following treatment with first-line therapies leave opportunity for adjunctive agents for MDD and for monotherapies targeting specific patient subpopulations, particularly those with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) or residual symptoms of depression.
