• 7/15/2005
  • Bangalore, India
  • Baby Manoj
  • Express Pharma Pulse (www.expresspharmapulse.com)

Biocon’s head and neck cancer drug molecule TheraCIM – developed in association with the Cuban firm CMAB—has entered into phase II-B clinical trials.

A phase-II B clinical trial is a typically single-arm study aimed at deciding whether a new treatment is sufficiently promising, relative to a standard therapy, to include in a large-scale randomised trial
‘‘As far as our cancer molecule is concerned, the development is progressing as per our expectations; we should be able to market it as per schedule,’’ Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Biocon chief told this correspondent. It may be recalled that this newspaper had earlier reported Biocon’s cancer drug would reach market at the end of the financial year 2005-06. However, company officials denied further details.

Developing a successful cancer drug would catapult an R&D based pharmaceutical company like Biocon into the zeniths of profits.

Almost all the large sized pharma companies (both allopathic and ayurvedic) in India— like their more well equipped counterparts in the developed countries—are actively pursuing research in cancer.

With the increasingly changing food habits (read fast food culture), life-style and more over a rapidly changing environment by the adverse human activities can definitely be linked to cancer, experts say, making R&D in cancer, a lucrative business proposition.

Globally, about nine million new cancer cases are diagnosed every year (of which over half are fatal), it is learnt. In India, half a million new cases of cancer are reported annually with nearly 250,000 deaths, sources in Biocon say.