GSK's Relovair likely to emerge as market leader among once-daily LABA/ICS combinations

In the asthma treatment market, at the expense of market-leading drugs that are dosed twice daily, emerging agents that offer the convenience of once-daily dosing will generate more than $2 billion in sales in 2019 in the asthma drug market, says a new report from advisory firm Decision Resources.

Driving these sales will be the uptake of emerging once-daily long-acting beta2 agonist (LABA)/inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) combinations such as GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) and Theravance’s (Nasdaq: THRX) Relovair (fluticasone furoate and vilanterol), Novartis’ (NOVN: VX) indacaterol/mometasone and Chiesi’s carmoterol/budesonide.

The findings from the DR Pharmacor topic entitled Asthma reveal that Relovair will emerge as the market leader among once-daily LABA/ICS combinations as GSK wages an aggressive campaign to switch patients off of Advair/Seretide prior to branded-generic entry in the USA and generic and branded-generic entry in Europe. As the only once-daily LABA/ICS combination expected to launch in the USA and as a result of its high price, Relovair will garner nearly one-third of sales within the LABA/ICS drug class by 2019 in the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and Japan.