Updated: 8/10/11 9:30 a.m.
Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) and Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) came out as the big players in the U.S. drug-eluting stent market, together staking claim to more than half of all DES revenues.
In 2010, Boston Scientific reported $1.5 billion in DES sales and held a 33 percent market share in the U.S., lead by its Taxus and Promus stents.
The Taxus stent competes with Medtronic Inc.’s (NYSE:MDT) Endeavor DES, and Medtronic recently announced data touting their next-gen Resolute DES, not yet available in the U.S. market, as better than Taxus for avoiding in-stent late lumen loss. *
BSX could gain even more market share if predictions pan out. Analysts in June foresaw much of the stent business left behind by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Cordis Corp. moving over to Boston Scientific.
Abbott came in at $1.4 billion in sales, with a 31 percent corner on the market driven by its Xience DES, according to market research firm CompaniesandMarkets.com’s report.
The global market for drug-eluting stents was valued at $1.7 billion in 2003 and saw 15 percent annual growth, coming to $4.6 billion in 2010. The market is expected to idle in the near future as average selling prices decrease, but volume of sales are expected to grow with increasing adoption.
The U.S. market remains the largest in the world, according to the report, rounding out at about $2 billion in 2010, having doubled since 2003 when the number of implanted drug-eluting stents was estimated at 440,000. The number of DES implanted in 2010 came to 1.2 million.
Abbott Labs was ranked 1st in the the MassDevice Big 100 list of the world’s largest medical device companies. Boston Scientific ranked 10th.
*Correction, August 10, 2011: This article originally stated that Boston Scientific’s Taxus stent competes with Medtronic’s Resolute stent. While Medtronic does use Taxus as a comparison, the Resolute stent is not yet commericially available in the U.S. and does not compete in the market. Medtronic’s Endeavor stent is the current market competitor for Taxus. Return to the corrected sentence.
