Owing to ongoing demographic shift towards geriatric population in conjunction with rapidly deteriorating lifestyle of the masses, prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease has increased substantially in the past few years. This disease’s market is characterized by a lack of products with strong disease-modifying properties and a number of high-profile product failures in late stages of development. Moreover, recent or impending patent expiries for all of the four currently marketed products and a late-stage pipeline with limited-to-moderate prospects are expected to impede growth over the next few years.

According to research report, “Global Alzheimer’s Drug Market: Trends, Opportunities and Forecasts (2015-2020)” global market is projected to display a vigorous growth represented by a CAGR of 8.54% during 2015 – 2020, chiefly driven by rising geriatric population, growing healthcare infrastructure in addition to increased R&D expenditure by leading pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The segment of Disease Modifying Therapeutics has been dominating the global market and this trend is expected to continue in the forecast period as well. Among the regions, Asia Pacific accounts for the largest regional share in the Global Alzheimer’s Drug market in 2014. Key factors driving the growth in the region include rising medical infrastructure, increasing healthcare expenditure and growing prevalence of this disease in the geriatric population. Japan is expected to incur maximum expenditure on dementia followed by Australia. Countries such as New Zealand and Malaysia will incur relatively lower costs. Moreover, it is likely that there will be a considerable shift from informal (family) care to formal (paid) care services, particularly in low and middle income countries.

Alzheimer’s Drugs are gaining major traction as the next major development in therapy of neurodegenerative diseases; however, there are certain challenges that will need to be addressed, including poor diagnosis rate and lack of effective choices of drugs available in the market. Further, rising demographic shift towards elderly population is going to boost the global market in the forecast period. Several biopharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc., Novartis International AG, Axovant Sciences Ltd., Acadia Pharmaceuticals etc., have increased R&D investment in order to develop new drugs that treat, slow and prevent Alzheimer‘s disease. Early diagnosis of this disease would also aid in developing opportunities for the global Alzheimer‘s disease therapeutics market.