The tens of billions of migraine drugs market will usher in new changes!

Migraine is a recurrent primary headache characterized by pulsating moderate to severe headaches on one or both sides.
It is also a very common chronic neurovascular disease
.
In recent years, with the growth of the global population, the improvement of medical and health conditions, and the development of new migraine drugs, the global migraine drug market has begun to maintain steady growth
.
According to the "2020 Global Migraine Drug Industry Market Status Survey Report", the North American migraine drug market has reached 25.
185 billion yuan
.
At present, as the migraine drug market continues to expand, pharmaceutical companies are constantly increasing their layout
.
Recently, Pfizer announced that it has reached a cooperation with Biohaven to introduce the company's rights to the company's oral CGRP antagonist Rimegepant (Nurtec®ODT) outside the United States
.
In this transaction, Pfizer will make an upfront payment of US$500 million, including US$150 million in cash and US$350 million to purchase Biohaven equity at a market premium of 25%; potential milestone payments of up to US$740 million, and based on net sales outside the United States Royalties
.
Data show that Rimegepant is the first oral CGRP receptor inhibitor approved for the preventive treatment of migraine
.
It has been approved for both acute treatment of migraine attacks and as a preventive treatment of migraine drugs .
The drug was approved for marketing in February 2020 for the treatment of acute migraine; on May 27, 2021, it was approved for extended indications for paroxysmal migraine (the number of migraine attacks per month is less than 15) Preventive treatment
.
At present, in addition to the United States, the drug has also been declared for marketing in Europe, and phase 3 clinical trials for acute migraine have also been initiated in China
.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that, according to Biohaven's financial report, its sales in 2021Q2 have reached 93 million US dollars, a 112% increase compared to the first quarter; Q3 continued to grow to 136 million US dollars
.
At present, its cumulative product sales have reached 336 million U.
S.
dollars, and the number of prescriptions exceeded 1 million.

.
From the perspective of drug types, in the past, triptans, ergotamines and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were more common among migraine drugs
.
However, of the 4 newly approved migraine treatment drugs between 2018 and 2020, 3 target CGRP
.
In this regard, analysts believe that this indicates that pharmaceutical companies have changed their drug development strategies at drug targets
.
Since CGRP receptor antagonists (gepants) and 5-HT1F receptor agonists (ditans) have the advantages of better curative effect and mild side effects compared with old drugs for the treatment of acute migraine, their prospects are very promising
.
It is understood that in addition to Pfizer's continuous work on CGRP receptor inhibitors, companies such as Amgen and Teva have also begun to develop new CGRP targeted drugs
.
From the above point of view, the industry believes that the global migraine drug market, especially the competition in CGRP targeted drugs, may become increasingly fierce with the continuous development of generic drugs and the continuous breakthrough trend of new drug research and development in the future
.
In general, the number of migraine patients in the world is relatively large, and there are many types of migraine drugs.
As a new type of drug, migraine drugs based on CGRP antibodies will have a huge space for future development
.
In this context, although China's research on new migraine drugs for CGRP antibodies is still inferior to foreign countries, and the market is mainly occupied by foreign companies, in the future, the industry expects that there will be more room for domestic substitution in this field
.