Biotechnology major Biocon will start selling breast cancer drug ‘CANMAb’, developed jointly with US-based Mylan , in the country from next month.
The company said the drug, which would be manufactured at its biologics facility in Bangalore, will be sold to the patients at a discount, Biocon Ltd said in a statement.
CANMAb will be available at about 25 per cent discount to the current list price of the reference product – Roche’s Herceptin – in India, which is already significantly lower than its price in developed markets, it added.
Herceptin 440mg, is currently sold at Rs 57,500 in the country. Biocon’s product would be available in 150 mg and 440 mg strengths.
“In addition, CANMAb’s 150 mg formulation, priced at Rs 19,500/vial, will allow extra savings to patients as they can buy smaller quantities as per their requirement,” the company said.
The company would start selling the drug to patients around the first week of February 2014, it added.
Around 1.5 lakh new patients are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in India, of which nearly 25 per cent cases are eligible for treatment with CANMAb.
Commenting on the launch, Biocon Ltd CMD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said: “Biocon intends to make a significant difference in the treatment paradigm for HER2-positive breast cancer in India by enhancing access to more affordable treatment with CANMAb (biosimilar trastuzumab), which offers the same level of safety and efficacy as the reference product.”
CANMAb, which has been developed jointly by Biocon and Mylan under a global partnership, is the world’s first biosimilar version of Roche’s Herceptin drug.
“Both 150 and 440 mg formulations of CANMAb can be stored for one month which is an important offering for patients in India, as it will ensure that there is no under-dosing or wastage of drug which is quite common today,” the company said.
The global sales for Herceptin stood at $6.4 billion in 2012, while in India it recorded sales of $ 21 million.
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