[rank_math_breadcrumb]

News

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Just Found Its Newest Blockbuster Drug. A $41 Billion Market Awaits

Updated: 25-10-2024, 11.38 PM

Every big pharma company relies on a roster of just a few blockbuster drugs — medicines that reliably bring in more than $1 billion in revenue every year — to fund its core efforts, and to deliver solid returns to investors. So when a business like Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) releases some new data on a potential blockbuster that could be just a few months away from being approved for sale, it’s a big development.

On that note, let’s dive in and investigate how the bull thesis for buying Vertex stock just got even stronger.

Vertex’s push to diversify its portfolio of medicines away from its traditional wheelhouse, drugs for cystic fibrosis (CF), looks like it’s on the verge of bearing fruit once again. On Oct. 20, the company presented new information about its non-opioid oral analgesic candidate, suzetrigine, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA).

Suzetrigine is particularly promising for a few reasons, the first of which is that it has a very large addressable market. Per a report by Grand View Research, the global market for analgesics was worth nearly $41 billion in 2023; by 2030, it’ll be worth approximately $61 billion. But not too many painkillers are both non-opioid, making them less likely (or not at all likely) to cause addiction, and also effective at treating moderate to severe pain, the kind patients might experience while recovering at home from minimally invasive surgeries or outpatient procedures.

One of the standard interventions in those contexts is a combination pill commonly known by the trade name Vicodin, which features a small dose of an opioid painkiller, hydrocodone, as well as a larger dose of a non-opioid painkiller, acetaminophen. Hydrocodone, while efficient at relieving pain and typically safe when used as prescribed, is sharply habit-forming when used consistently. It’s also less than ideal for treating patients with cardiovascular or respiratory difficulties, as it slows both heart rate and respiration rate.

Vertex presented data at the conference showing that suzetrigine was at least as effective as the hydrocodone-acetaminophen combination at reducing pain intensity in the 48 hours after patients underwent abdominoplasty, and almost as effective as the combination in the 48 hours after bunionectomy. The implication is that its candidate could potentially steal at least some of the market share currently held by generics like hydrocodone-acetaminophen if it’s approved for sale.

Leave a Comment

Design by proseoblogger