People with Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may experience flares, lasting for few days or weeks. Almost two decades ago, several drugs, especially biologics, entered the market for the treatment and were the blockbuster sales.

"Migraine today can be characterized as similar to RA in the past, in that it's a large but under-treated and also under-diagnosed, market," said Piper Jaffray, analyst. The burden of disease in terms of patient’s quality of life, function and resource utilization is also high. Because of these market dynamics, there is likely a room for multiple agents, even of the same mechanism - to be profitable.

The four pharma heavyweights want to bring their biologics to the market. The first three RA biologics drugs were made using living cells, and they were approved between 1998 and 2002. These drugs were also approved for other autoimmune conditions, which in part contributed to their higher sales. Many patients with migraine are currently treated with anti-depressants, hypertension medicines, but unfortunately showed little success.

It was confirmed last month that the medicine is succeeded in a second late-stage study. The two other companies were developing similar drugs and are expected in 2017 and 2018 by Late-stage data. The migraine market is expected to increase to more than $10 billion in 2025 from about $3 billion in 2015. Biologics are costlier than traditional drugs, but founding companies may end up pricing their migraine treatments more conservatively to avoid regulatory.