Japan's Eisai to launch breast cancer drug in India

Japan's Eisai Pharma, a 741 billion yen ( Rs 46,439-crore) pharma major, is slated to launch in India its novel anti-cancer drug Eribulin, sold under the brand name of Halaven, as part of its strategy to expand its presence in the emerging markets.

Halaven is used in the treatment of third line metastatic breast cancer. The drug is credited to increase the life expectancy of the patients in the throes of the last stage of cancer.

Priced at about 31,000 per vial, Eisai will e ..

 

Eisai's move comes at a time when multinational companies have threatened not to introduce any new products in India because of what they term as an unfriendly intellectual policy regime.

"It's a new approach to affordable pricing. We used fixed low-pricing with Aricept (a drug that treats symptoms of Alzheimers). Here we have five tiers, from full-pricing to price zero," said Sayoko Sasaki, corporate officer, vice-president, Eisai.

 

The company has divided patient groups into different categories - the lower income group will get the drug for free, the middle income patients will be eligible for discounts on the full pricing, the rich patients will be asked to pay full price, followed by those who are covered under insurance schemes. "Before, our business model focused on the top two tiers. We can do business with them, but since access to medicine is quite important to us, we want to expand this to middle-income and low-i ..

 

Cancer is considered as one of the biggest public health threats in India, and the prevalence rate is rising according to various reports. It is this high prevalence that makes India's cancer drug market an attractive proposition for pharma companies.

India's oncology market is estimated to be close to Rs 700 crore and growing at 20%, it is estimated to touch to Rs 3,000 crore by 2017, according to a research done by consultancy firm Frost and Sullivan.

 

However, the high costs involved in treating the disease has become a controversial public health debate as health activists have constantly called for reducing the price of cancer drugs by multinational companies.

India last year issued a compulsory licence to Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma to sell cheaper generic versions of German drug maker Bayer's kidney cancer drug Nexavar, because the price of Bayer's drug was seen to be unaffordable to Indian patients. The Indian government is also considering to issue compulsory licence to three anti cancer drugs - Trastuzumab used for breast cancer, Ixabepilone used for chemotherapy and Dasatinib used to treat leukaemia.

 

Such policies have forced multinational pharma companies to consider putting in abeyance any plans to launch new products in India till sufficient protection is extended to their intellectual property rights.

As a company, Eisai believes that IP is important, but they are focused on selling affordable medicines in the emerging markets.

 

"We believe that IP is important, fair competition is important, but access to medicine is more important in developing or emerging countries. Therefore, at this moment, we are thinking that it is very important to provide a novel product for affordable price," said Yuji Matsue, corporate officer, Asia region.

Matsue says going by the company's past experience of selling drugs like Aricept and Parit, the company can still make profits with differential pricing, a strategy which his company believes will become key in emerging markets.