New cancer drugs escalate Roche earnings
pharmafile | October 16, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Cancer, Herceptin (trastuzumab), Kadcyla, Perjeta, Q3, Roche, ado-trastuzumab emtansine, pertuzumab
Roche’s sales saw solid growth in the first nine months of the year, increased by the firm’s new cancer medicines.
Sales climbed 5% from 34.75 billion Swiss francs ($36.79 billion) to to 34.87 billion, at constant exchange rates, for the first nine months of 2014. Its pharma divsion also saw sales rise by 4%, up to 26.96 billion Swiss francs.
It was unsurprisingly Roche’s oncology portfolio that was the biggest growth driver, with the Swiss firm’s treatments for HER2-positive breast cancer – Herceptin (trastuzumab), Perjeta (pertuzumab) and Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) – being among its biggest selling drugs.
Roche reported that Perjeta’s sales figures nearly tripled to 633 million francs whilst Kadclya’s jumped 148% to 371 million francs for the first three quarters.
In fact Herceptin, Perjeta and Kadcyla, all helped Roche’s pharma division grow overall, as together they saw sales increase by 21 per cent.
This has helped offset lower sales of chemotherapy drug Xeloda (capecitabine), which went off-patent last year, and hepatitis medicine Pegasys (peginterferon alfa-2a), which faces increased competition from a new generation of hepatitis C pills, such as Gilead’s Sovaldi.
Commenting on the results, Roche chief executive Severin Schwan says: “Demand for our products is strong in both divisions and we are well on track to reach our full-year targets.”
Roche also completed its acquisition of US firm InterMune in September, gaining with it the breakthrough idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) drug Esbriet (pirfenidone), which has also been approved by the FDA in October.
But it wasn’t all good news as sales of its new melanoma drug Zelboraf fell 13% in the third quarter alone as it faces fierce competition from GlaxoSmithKline’s new skin cancer treatments Tafinlar (dabrafenib) and Mekinist (trametinib).
Roche says that it expects low- to mid-single digit growth at constant exchange rates for the full year 2014.
George Underwood
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