RE: PXS22 Sep 2018 09:51
(Reuters) - Large drugmakers with piles of cash are on the hunt for promising medicines being developed by small companies to treat NASH, a progressive fatty liver disease poised to become the leading cause of liver transplants by 2020.
The eventual market for the complex disease, formally known as Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis, is forecast to be $20 billion to $35 billion as populations with fatty diets increasingly fall victim to a condition with no approved treatments.
With intense competition and pricing pressure eroding sales of medicines for diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and other lucrative disease categories, and an already crowded field for developmental cancer drugs, big pharma sees NASH as an enormous new market for future profit that will accelerate a wave of deal making.
Estimates for the prevalence of NASH in nations with fatty diets range from 5 to 20 percent of the population with up to 15 million potentially affected in the United States alone.
Driven by the obesity and diabetes epidemics, the disease guarantees an enormous pool of patients for decades, making it a prime target for deals for promising therapies for NASH and its consequences - advanced fibrosis and liver-destroying cirrhosis. The very early stages of many of the drugs, and the complicated nature of the disease itself, pose risks for drug developers and their investors alike.
But the upside potential is still enticing to Raghuram Selvaraju, managing director and senior healthcare analyst at Rodman and Renshaw. He calls NASH one of the hottest spaces in the healthcare sector.
"We anticipate that there will be more transactions, more licensing deals from big pharma involving emerging biotechnology companies," he said.
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