The colorectal cancer market across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, which covers China, India, Australia, South Korea and Japan, is set to rise from $4.7 billion in 2016 to almost $8 billion in 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%, according to business intelligence provider GBI Research.

The company’s latest report states that this relatively strong growth will be driven by the expected approval of promising therapies within several distinct patient segments, as well as the growing market uptake of therapies already approved in Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Early detection of colorectal cancer is strongly associated with an increase in survival rates, so the APAC region will see a considerable effort to improve the diagnostic techniques for patients in stages I-III of the disease.

As transforming biomarker discoveries into useful diagnostics is a slow and gradual process, however, the number of patients diagnosed in early-stage colorectal cancer will not drastically increase over the forecast period, except in India and China, where early diagnosis is very low due to a lack of awareness and healthcare resources. In this way, new drugs will play a more pivotal role in driving market growth.

Gayathri Kanika, Analyst for GBI Research, said: “The recent approval of Cyramza, Stivarga, Lonsurf and Zaltrap, as well as the expected approval of Keytruda, encorafenib plus binimetinib, napabucasin, and atezolizumab plus cobimetinib in APAC, are expected to play a critical role in market growth. These therapies have shown strong clinical results compared with the standards of care in colorectal cancer, including chemotherapy, but will have to compete against each other for market share.”

Despite the launch of a number of new therapies, GBI Research expects Roche’s anti-angiogenesis drug Avastin to retain its status as market leader of the colorectal cancer space over the forecast period.

Kanika continued: “A key label extension to include continuous use of Avastin after first-line progression of metastatic colorectal cancer has set Avastin’s dominance in the disease market, and allowed the drug to outcompete other angiogenesis inhibitors in the second-line setting, including Zaltrap (ziv-aflibercept) and Eli Lilly’s Cyramza (ramucirumab). The main threat to Roche’s blockbuster is represented by the approval of bevacizumab biosimilars after the drug’s patent expires in 2018.”