Every drugmaker dreams of developing a drug so important that it shakes up an entire market. And it happens--just think of Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) Zytiga, the prostate cancer drug that has not only grown by leaps and bounds, but arguably nudged aside Dendreon's ($DNDN) competing treatment, Provenge. Or Sanofi's ($SNY) Lantus, which grabbed the lion's share of business in its drug class--and still owns it years later.
Want new examples? That's what Motley Fool offers today: Its list of 7 drugs that promise to be "a disruptive force" in their treatment fields for the next 10 years. If you've read our new report on the top drug launches of recent years, a couple of the names will be familiar. Others are just coming down the pike.
Among drugs recently approved by the FDA, the investing site tagged Biogen Idec's ($BIIB) new multiple sclerosis pill Tecfidera, which racked up $192 million in sales in its first few months on the market. Then there's Eliquis, the widely anticipated third entrant into the warfarin-alternative market. So far, the Pfizer/Bristol-Myers Squibb drug hasn't taken off sales-wise, but it's early days yet, and analysts have predicted that it will dominate its peers, Boehringer Ingelheim's Pradaxa and Johnson & Johnson and Bayer's Xarelto. Finally, Kadcyla, the breakthrough breast cancer drug from Roche's ($RHHBY) Genentech unit. The armed antibody treatment launched in February and hit $83 million by June 30.
The rest of Motley Fool's disruptive-drugs list are candidates that haven't won regulatory approval yet. One of them is quite far from it, in fact, so we'll let you check that one out on your own. Two, however, are pretty close--one, in fact, could win the FDA nod any minute. That's Gilead Sciences' ($GILD) hepatitis C treatment sofosbuvir. It's one in a new generation of hepatitis C treatments aiming to cut the long-used but poorly tolerated interferon. Gilead's data on sofosbuvir is impressive, and experts figure it will storm onto the market. And on the disruption side, it has already had an effect; two brand new hep C drugs hailed as breakthroughs two years ago are on the slide as doctors warehouse patients for potential sofosbuvir treatment.
And then there's ibrutinib, the blood-cancer treatment developed by Johnson & Johnson and Pharmacyclics ($PCYC). It won the FDA's new breakthrough designation--three times--on the strength of an impressive ability to stave off cancer, and an impressive response rate, too. Analysts expect it to launch by year's end.
- see the Motley Fool story
Special Reports: Top 10 Drugs in Biopharma's Late-Stage Pipeline - Sofosbuvir - Ibrutinib | Top 15 Drug Launch Superstars - Tecfidera - Kadcyla