The seasonal influenza vaccines market is largely dominated by big pharmaceutical companies and expected to witness the entry of smaller companies, according to a report by GlobalData.
Titled: 'PharmaPoint: Seasonal Influenza Vaccines – Global Drug Forecast and Market Analysis to 2025’, the report projects the influenza vaccines market to reach $4.3bn by 2025 across the seven major pharmaceutical markets (7MM) of the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and Japan.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Big pharma companies such as Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca / MedImmune, Novartis, and CSL Limited / Sequris have been dominating the influenza vaccines market for a decade. In recent years, however, smaller companies such Protein Sciences Corporation, Mylan and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma have entered the market and acquired significant market share.
With the exit of Novartis in 2015, the market is currently left with just four established big pharmaceutical companies that are adopting various marketing strategies to remain competitive in the market, according to Christopher J. Pace, PhD, GlobalData’s Director of Infectious Diseases.
For example, CSL / Seqirus promotes the superior efficacy of its quadrivalent cell culture-based vaccines Flucelvax and Fluad over standard vaccines.
Similarly, GSK flagship product Fluarix Tetra has a strong presence in the market and has been positioned to compete with Sanofi’s Fluzone Quadrivalent in the US and Vaxigrip in Europe.
AstraZeneca has tried to market its FluMist product by focusing on the benefits of a nasal spray over intramuscular injectable vaccines. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to recommend against the use of FluMist, however, is expected to significantly affect the product's future sales.
Smaller companies are expected to play a key role in the market by adopting cell culture-based manufacturing methods although big pharmaceutical companies are not expected to lose their market leadership, the report adds.
