What Are the U.S. Market Access and Prescribing Hurdles for the Growing Number of LAMA- and LABA-Containing Competitors in the COPD Market? | Physician & Payer Forum | US | 2014
The U.S. market for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) therapies consists entirely of symptomatic treatments, namely bronchodilators and anti-inflammatory agents, which improve patients’ quality of life (QOL) but do not alter the natural history of the disease. Physicians tend to favor well-established treatments, such as the long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) Spiriva (Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer’s tiotropium) and the long-acting beta2 agonist (LABA)/inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) fixed-dose combination (FDC) Advair (GlaxoSmithKline’s salmeterol/fluticasone propionate), but more options from these drug classes are becoming available. In addition, the first LABA/LAMA FDC, Anoro (GlaxoSmithKline/Theravance’s vilanterol/umeclidinium), has launched, and four more LABA/LAMA FDCs are expected to launch by 2016. Changes in prescribing habits to accommodate these new therapies will strongly depend on the number of different agents in each drug class that payers are willing to reimburse and the restrictions that will be placed on them. In this report, we gauge physicians’ and payers’ opinions of current and emerging therapies for COPD to anticipate potential changes in the prescribing patterns and reimbursement climate.