Eisai’s Lenvima is threatening Bayer’s Nexavar, the No. 1 drug in the liver cancer treatment market. Lenvima’s outpatient prescriptions jumped 132 percent in 2020 compared to a year earlier, while those of Nexavar dropped 31 percent.

U-BIST data, analyzed by Korea Biomedical Review, has shown that outpatient prescriptions of Nexavar declined from 20 billion won ($17.9 million) in 2019 to 13.8 billion won in 2020.

Adding woes to Nexavar was Hanmi Pharmaceutical’s winning of health insurance coverage for generic drug Soranib Tab in December. As Nexavar has to compete against generics with its price reduced, the falling of Nexavar prescriptions is likely to accelerate this year, observers said.

With the arrival of generic copies, the original drug Nexavar’s maximum reimbursement went down to 12,992 won or 70 percent of the original price of 18,560 won. The price will further slide to 9,938 won, or 53.55 percent of the original price, in December this year.

In contrast, Eisai Korea’s Lenvima enjoyed rapid growth in outpatient prescriptions after winning the indication for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma in the first-line therapy in October 2019. Outpatient prescriptions of Lenvima rose significantly from 4.3 billion won in 2019 to about 10 billion won in 2020.

In 2019, outpatient prescriptions of Lenvima were equal to 22 percent of those of Nexavar. However, the proportion jumped to as high as 73 percent in 2020.

By month, Nexavar’s monthly prescriptions stood at 1.8 billion won in January in 2019, dwarfing those of Lenvima at 84 million won and leaving the gap at 1.7 billion won. However, the gap gradually narrowed, and Lenvima’s prescriptions marked 1.09 billion won, first surpassing those of Nexavar at 1 billion won, in August 2020.

By quarter, Nexavar’s prescriptions showed ups and downs in a declining curb, while those of Lenvima steadily grew but dipped in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The two drugs had a neck-and-neck competition in the fourth quarter of 2020, with Nexavar’s outpatient prescriptions recording 2.36 billion won and Lenvimar’s 2.39 billion won.