Antidepressant market usher in new opportunities, and see 'a brother' status fall to who hand?

In recent years, as our country has entered a well-off society, people begin to pay more and more attention to their own mental state, and depression has also been exposed to the public. Although the etiology of depression is still unclear, it is certain that many factors such as biological, psychological and social environment are involved in the pathogenesis of depression.

At present, depression is the most common mental illness and the most important type of mental illness in modern people. The main clinical feature is continuous and long-term depression.

Recently, Janssen antidepressant rapid Kailang was approved by the State Food and Drug Administration, so that the antidepressant market once again set off waves......

The number of people with depression has skyrocketed around the world

Who will divide the market of over 18 billion?

According to the WHO, more than 350 million people in the world suffer from depression, with a growth rate of 18% in the past 10 years, and 5% of adults suffer from depression each year. According to the 2022 National Depression Blue Book, about 95 million people are affected in China, and 40% of the 280,000 people who commit suicide each year have depression.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 70 million new patients with depression have been reported worldwide. Statistics from the United States show that the incidence of depression before the pandemic was 8.5%, and the incidence of depression skyrocketed to 27.8% and 32.8% in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

In addition, depression is also accompanied by high recurrence symptoms, and the recurrence rate is as high as 50%-85%, of which 50% of patients will relapse again within 2 years after the onset of the disease. As the number of confirmed patients continues to increase, the demand for drugs is also expanding.

The treatment of depression is imminent, and in the face of such a large base, the domestic antidepressant market size is also rising. Frost&Sullivan has predicted that the sample hospital market size of China's antidepressant drug industry will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.7% in the next five years and will exceed 18.4 billion yuan by the end of 2022.

At present, the incidence of depression in China continues to rise, and the medication for depression does not cover all the patients, and the cure rate is low. There is still a big gap between China and some European and American countries. However, it is worth mentioning that compared with the current antidepressant drug market in China and some European and American countries with mature market development, the corresponding market development prospects in China are very vast, and a market size of 20 billion can be expected in the near future.

This enticing big "cake", and see which enterprise can seize the first opportunity.

The market for antidepressants is constantly shuffling

The future of domestic innovative drugs has arrived

According to statistics, a total of 18 kinds of anti-depression drugs have been listed in China, escitalopram, aripiprazole, mirtazapine are the main drugs in the anti-depression market, and the drug concentration is relatively high. Among them, more than half of them are imported drugs, which also represents that there is a large space for import substitution of antidepressants in China.

In 2017, sertraline hydrochloride of Pfizer, escitalopram oxalate of Denmark and duloxetine hydrochloride of Eli Lilly occupied half of the market in China's antidepressant drug market.

The good times did not last long. In 2022, the tripartite situation composed of Pfizer, Lundbeck and Eli Lilly was defeated by Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical. In 2014, Haosen was approved to produce agomelatine, and its sales in 2021 reached 450 million yuan, an increase of 60.92% year-on-year.

However, Lilly's duloxetine hydrochloride sales plunged 43.3% to 345 million yuan in 2021, and has been gradually dimming since then.

The dispute over antidepressant drugs has not stopped. On April 20, 2023, Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson&Johnson, announced that the National Food and Drug Administration (NMPA) of China had approved its esketamine hydrochloride nasal spray for use in combination with oral antidepressants. To alleviate depressive symptoms in adult depressive patients with acute suicidal ideation or behavior. This is the first new mechanism of antidepressant in nearly 50 years, the high-profile publicity, on behalf of Janssen will also strongly join the antidepressant drug market.

It is worth mentioning that China's innovative drugs have begun to rise, gradually from imitation to original research.

On November 1, 2022, Luye Pharmaceutical announced that its self-developed Class 1 innovative drug Torudivenlafaxine hydrochloride sustained release tablets (trade name Ruoxinlin) has been approved by the State Medical Products Administration for the treatment of depression. Ruoxinlin is China's first self-developed product with independent intellectual property rights, and its listing represents the first major breakthrough of domestic innovative drugs in the field of antidepressant treatment.

In addition, domestic pharmaceutical companies such as East Sunshine Medicine and Guangwei Medicine have antidepressant new drugs. It is believed that in the near future, the domestic antidepressant drug market will usher in a new "reshuffle". The future of domestic innovative drugs is coming, waiting for good news.