Biocon launches nano drug for breast cancer
Business Line | Saturday, Jul 19, 2008

Our Bureau

Bangalore, July 18 Biocon Ltd says it expects its just-launched breast cancer drug Abraxane to become a Rs 100-crore product over three years.

The nano particle-based drug, unveiled here on Friday, is developed by Abraxis BioScience Inc and marketed by Biocon within the country and some more regions.

The paclitaxel protein and albumin bound medicine is available as a single-use 100-mg vial for intravenous administration. The Drugs Controller General of India approved it in October 2007.

Addressing a news conference, Biocon?s Chairwoman and Managing Director, Ms Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, called it a breakthrough therapy recommended as a safe, ?gold standard? second line defence for patients for whom combination therapy has failed or the tumour recurs after six months of chemotherapy. One lakh breast cancer cases are detected a year in India and 45,000 women die of it, she said, adding that the medicine would be affordable, easily available and have fewer side-effects over certain alternatives.

Mr Rakesh Bamzai, President ? Marketing, Biocon, said the Rs 80-100 crore domestic market for taxanes was alarmingly heading towards double the size in the next three years. Biocon expected to earn Rs 10 crore in the first year.

?We want to build it into a Rs 100-crore product in the next 3-4 years. We have also made sure it would be affordable. We will look at the other taxanes and price it accordingly.? A vial costs $400 (around Rs 17,200) compared with $1,000 in the US (around Rs 43,000).

Under an August 2007 marketing tie-up, Biocon is licensed to market Abraxane in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and a few more South Asian and Persian Gulf countries.

Dr Neil Desai, Vice-President of R&D at Abraxis, said some 120 trials were on or about to begin worldwide to expand its use to first-line metastatic breast, non-small cell lung, malignant melanoma, pancreatic and gastric cancers. Against breast cancer, he said, ?The drug has demonstrated superiority in progression-free survival over both Taxol and Taxotere injections in recent random clinical trials.?

Abraxis notched a cumulative global revenue of $ 750 million from Abraxane since 2005-06 ? out of that $ 325 million in 2007 ? and expected it to become a $ 1-billion blockbuster.

For Abraxis, which opens its India business, ?Our marketing agreement with Biocon covers more than ten countries, and we are working closely with national authorities throughout the region to receive regulatory approvals and commence marketing activities soon,? a release quoted the Abraxis Chairman and CEO, Mr Patrick Soon-Shiong, as saying

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