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Contrast Media Manufacturers Lock Up Distribution Channels

Thanks to the continued conversion of customers to non-ionic contrast media, the market for contrast agents exploded to phenomenal heights in the last decade. But with growth slowing, manufacturers are looking to cement their grip on distribution channels through big acquisitions.

Given all the reasons that growth of the contrast media market could have flattened dramatically by now, its rise to about $3.5 billion in worldwide sales last year is remarkable. Once projected to reach $5.5 billion by 1995 (the market was one-tenth that size in 1985), about $1 billion of the 1995 estimate was expected to materialize through the introduction and growth of MRI and ultrasound agents. But only one ultrasound agent, Molecular Biosystems Inc. ’s Albunex, has been approved in the US and sales of MRI agents have grown to only a third of the $900 million projected for 1995.

Driving the growth over the past decade has been the expanded use of low-osmolar, non-ionic contrast agents across a broad...

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