Decision Resources, a research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, has found out that sales of therapies to treat hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in China will nearly triple from $53 million in 2009 to $144 million in 2014. Fueling this growth will be greater access to medical care, a growing drug-treated patient population and a rising number of higher-income HCC patients requesting the more-efficacious and costly Western brands of targeted agents such as Bayer's Nexavar.

The new Emerging Markets report entitled 'Liver Cancer in China' finds that, based on positive results obtained in medical practice and ongoing clinical studies, the use of targeted therapies to treat HCC in China will continue to increase as physicians become more confident using these agents. Chinese physicians report that Nexavar, Shandong Simcere Medgenn's Endostar and Chengdu Huasheng's Li Ka Ting are the main targeted therapies used for HCC in China. Additionally, by 2014, another targeted agent—brivanib (Bristol-Myers Squibb's BMS-582664)—is expected to be formally approved for HCC in China, but its uptake will be modest and will most likely occur initially in the second-line setting.

The report also finds that sales of agents manufactured by multinational corporations (MNCs) will account for more than two-thirds of total HCC drugs sales in China in 2014.

"Liver cancer drugs manufactured by MNCs, which accounted for 54 percent of total sales in China in 2009, will increase to 68 percent of total sales in 2014," said Decision Resources Analyst Mr Jing Wu. "The key reason for this growth is the increasing uptake of expensive MNC brands of targeted therapies in urban regions of China – the uptake of these targeted therapies will offset the declining market share of conventional branded chemotherapies manufactured by MNCs."