According to current forecasts, sales of orphan drugs will double within a few years.
According to the Alliance for Chronic Rare Diseases (ACHSE), four million people with so-called rare diseases live in Germany alone. The definition of the term “rare diseases” is not uniform. In the EU, diseases are defined as affecting fewer than five in 10,000 people. Drugs used to treat these diseases are called orphan drugs.
As a rule, they are economically unattractive for the pharmaceutical industry due to the small number of people affected. On the other hand, orphan drugs are usually so expensive that they generate significant sales, as the Statista chart shows. EvaluatePharma predicts that sales of orphan drugs will grow to $273 billion by 2026. If the analysts are correct, the market volume would double compared to 2020.
However, this should only be a positive trend for those affected in exceptional cases. Because according to ACHSE, there are around 8,000 rare diseases. Many of them are unlikely to make it into the research departments of pharmaceutical companies.
Those: Statesman
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