The Bipolar Big Three: LAIs, Atypical Antipsychotics And Symptom Specific Drugs

The bipolar disorder (BD) market is dominated by generics but a recent Datamonitor Healthcare report highlighted that atypical long-acting injectables (LAIs) show strong growth potential and there are still gaps in the treatment paradigm. Scrip spoke with some of the leading R&D firms about trends and challenges in the space.

“Doctors often assume that patients don’t want injectable treatments but this is not necessarily the case,” said Oliver Howes, head of translational neuropsychiatry at H. Lundbeck A/S. The firm’s Abilify Maintena (aripiprazole), a once-monthly dopamine D2 receptor agonist LAI, showed one of the highest rates of relapse reduction over placebo in clinical studies, setting it up for market domination in the disease maintenance setting. Fourth quarter sales of the drug totaled DKK610m ($92.7m), an increase of 13% from 2020