Cancer vaccines market will soar to $7.5 billion by 2022

Therapeutic vaccines will increase the overall survival of poor-performance-status patients, and enable more rounds of treatments to be given, thus driving market growth.

The company’s latest report states that therapeutic vaccines, which are a type of immunotherapy, and have a lower toxicity than traditional chemotherapies, will increase the overall survival of poor-performance-status patients, and enable more rounds of treatments to be given, thus driving market growth.

Adam Bradbury, Associate Analyst for GBI Research, explains: “The cancer vaccines space will see such impressive growth over next decade for a number of reasons. There is a fairly large cancer vaccine pipeline, with over 1,200 products being developed, accounting for almost 17% of the overall oncology pipeline, the largest of any therapy area.”

Generic penetration is currently non-existent in the cancer vaccines market, further aiding market growth. Indeed, therapeutic vaccines are a relatively new form of cancer treatment, with the first FDA approval granted to Provenge in 2010. Prophylactic vaccines have not yet faced patent expiry, meaning the threat of generics/biosimilars restricting revenue growth in this market during the forecast period is low.

Bradbury continues: “In some instances, immune checkpoint inhibitors have demonstrated stronger efficacy than cancer vaccines. Nonetheless, it is thought that cancer vaccines will contribute substantially to the treatment landscape for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma during the forecast period, as expected approvals such as tisagenlecleucel-T will provide much-needed treatment options for refractory blood cancers.

“Given cancer vaccines often have more favorable safety profiles than immune checkpoint inhibitors, they may be promising candidates for combination therapy in future, which could substantially enhance sales.”

Only one cancer vaccine achieved blockbuster revenue status in 2015, namely Merck’s Gardasil, a prophylactic vaccine that inoculates against human papillomavirus. GBI Research expects that two therapeutic vaccines, Novartis’ tisagenlecleucel-T and Kite Pharma’s KTE-C19, will also generate blockbuster revenues by 2022.