Drugmakers counting a new hot seller for a primary care market ought to think again. New chemical entities aren’t contributing very much these days - the average launch curves for the top 10 new chemical entities shows that 2007 had the weakest result since 2003.

“Fewer of these NCEs are top-performing, contributing much less to growth,” said Diana Conmy, IMS Health’s corporate director of market insights, who spokes at conference covered by The In Vivo blog. As the blog notes, last year was the first time that pharma experienced a decline in the number of primary care blockbusters - 29 in 2007 vs. 33 in 2006 - IMS data show. However, there was an increase in specialty care blockbusters - 30 in 2007 vs. 25 in 2006.

Small wonder that the primary care market fell during the last seven months of 2007, contributing a negative 18 percent to overall market growth for the year, the blog writes, while specialty care contributed a positive 118 percent. The growth rates per therapeutic area tell the same story: specialty care grew 10.5 percent, while branded meds grew 2.9 percent - which is slower than the 3.8 percent growth for the overall market.

To underscore her point, In Vivo notes that Conmy believes three of four potential blockbusters to launch this year are specialty meds: UCB’s Cimzia for Crohn’s disease, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s ipilimumab for melanoma and Wyeth’s Pristiq for depression, assuming it ever gets FDA approval. The fourth potential blockbuster on Conmy’s list, the blog writes, is MedImmune’s Numax for respiratory virus.

Hat tip to The In Vivo blog