TUBERCULOSIS VACCINE MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Challenges And Opportunities

Tuberculosis Vaccine Market Dynamics

Tuberculosis account for the highest amount of death caused due to infectious disease across the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) factsheet 2018 on TB, 10.4 million people fell ill with TB in 2016 and 1.7 million people with TB died in the same year. More than 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income economies. Deaths caused due to TB also includes death of 0.4 million people infected with HIV. Such high number of patients across the world confirms the enormity of disease and urgent requirements for vaccines worldwide. Therefore, the launch of tuberculosis vaccine would gain significant revenue and in turn, would propel the market growth. According to a global report on tuberculosis vaccine in 2018, TB costs around US$ 21 billion annually to global economy. Another important impetus to tuberculosis vaccine market would be current complex drug regime and resistance TB has created to this drug regime. TB patient has to take more than 2-3 drugs for a prolonged time period of 6 months in order to suppress the infection. Often this results in poor patient compliance and eventually leads to drug resistance incidence which further deteriorates the TB. According to WHO, there were nearly 600,000 new cases with resistance to rifampicin antibiotic, which was the most effective first-line drug in 2017, of which around 490,000 had MDR-TB globally. If effective steps won’t be taken by 2050, MDR-TB alone could cost the world US$ 16.7 trillion as per global report on tuberculosis vaccine 2018. Drug toxicity due to high daily dose and prolonged treatment is another concern with current TB drugs. Although the cost of TB drug is not much of concern in developing economies due to government support and free medication, it is a matter of concern in developed countries such as the U.S. and Europe. Increased recognition of TB’s fatality by intergovernmental organization and national government would prosper funding for TB vaccine research. Increased research and development activities for development of vaccine against TB by companies and intergovernmental organizations is expected to boost growth of tuberculosis vaccine market. For instance, Aeras is an NGO, which supports TB vaccine development and has helped develop 9 TB vaccine candidates and conducted over 35 Phase 1-2b clinical trials.