Zurich (Reuters) – the laboratory Roche reported that
patients with aggressive a type of breast cancer lived by
more time without the disease worsening after receiving his
experimental drug “loaded with antibodies”, compared with
who received a mixture of their drug Xeloda next to
Tykerb by GlaxoSmithKline.
The positive results of the first phase III trial on
new medicine-nicknamed T DM1 – pave the way towards the
requested approval this year to European authorities and
Americans, which improves the odds of an asset
pending approval is key to the Swiss firm.
Analyst WestLB Oliver Kaemmerer, which sees peaks of
sales potential for T-DM1 around 1 billion of
Swiss francs ($ 1.1 billion), said that the
news was clearly positive, but that remains to see what was the
general magnitude of benefit in the study.
In a brief statement Friday Roche revealed
only to the patients treated with T-DM1 lived “time
“”
significantly more” unless his illness progress.
Roche has developed T-DM1 as successor of their leader
sales Herceptin, which is expected this year to generate sales of
around $ 6 billion.
A clear advantage of T-DM1 on conventional treatment
Herceptin plus chemotherapy is the fact that causes less
as hair loss and low count side effects of
white blood cells.
T-DM1 combining trastuzumab, an antibody and the ingredient
Active of Herceptin, with agent DM1 – a derivative of a type
powerful chemotherapy called maitansina – is
transported straight to cells.
Positive results
The Swiss company obtained the license of certain technology
used for the new drug of the biotech firm
American ImmunoGen, whose shares climbed a 10 by
% in the first operations of the NASDAQ stock market before the news of
the positive results of the clinical trial.
In addition to having fewer unpleasant side effects
Roche believes that its new drug is more convenient, since it is
a medicinal product only and eliminates the need to manage
chemotherapy.
Roche reported that advance-free survival data
obtained from the essay disease will be presented in a
next meeting medical, and added that the final results of
overall survival is not yet mature.
WestLB Kaemmerer thinks the series full of
results on advance-free survival of the
disease probably will be presented at the annual meeting
of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, to be
held between 1 and June 5.
Meanwhile, the results of survival for the analyst
general will arrive in 2014.
At the commercial level, T-DM1 should help protect the
franchise of breast cancer Roche, given that Herceptin could
be exposed in Europe to the so-called generic competition
“biosimilar” near 2015.
Also the drug keeps Roche in the race by the
innovation against the breast cancer, before more new medicines
pointing to rival Herceptin as GSK Tykerb.
(1 dollar = 0,9073 Swiss francs)
(1 dollar = 0,6285 GBP)
