Bictegravir accounts for 51% of new drug sales in Canada last year
TDS News – The latest edition of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) Meds Entry Watch reports that 40 new-to-Canada medicines were approved for market in 2018, of which 22 had reported sales by the end of 2019. This is in line with the annual rate of approximately nine new approvals per quarter since 2015, a trend that continued steadily into 2019.
Internationally, 51 new drugs were first approved in the US, Europe, and Canada in 2018, of which more than two thirds were high-cost and over 60% were treatments for rare diseases. Four of the five top-selling new medicines were approved in Canada in the same year, including the antiviral drug bictegravir (Biktarvy), which alone accounted for over half of total sales for the 51 new medicines by the end of 2019.
This report, produced through the National Prescription Drug Utilization Information System (NPDUIS) research initiative, is the fifth edition in the annual Meds Entry Watch series, which provides the latest information on new medicines entering Canadian and international markets.
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