Roche maintains sales growth for Q3
pharmafile | November 2, 2007 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â BMSÂ
Third quarter figures show Roche's top-selling products have all posted double-digit advances on the same period in 2006.
Growth for the Swiss company has now hit more than twice the market average for the year to date.
Roche chairman and chief executive Franz Humer said: "With its strong nine-month sales growth of 12%, the Roche Group continues to outperform the market."
Roche is a famed pioneer in oncology, with this portfolio including its three best-selling products: Non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) treatment MabThera, breast cancer drug Herceptin and colon cancer treatment Avastin.
Avastin sales increased 41% worldwide, while Mabthera experienced 17% growth on last year, driven by its new indication as a maintenance therapy, adding to its first line treatment of indolent and aggressive NHL.
Global sales of Herceptin advanced 26% on last year. It was helped by new data showing that in combination with chemotherapy and used preoperatively, it eradicates breast tumours in nearly three times as many patients with inflammatory breast cancer as chemotherapy alone.
Lung cancer treatment Tarceva made 34% growth in the third quarter, but Roche has since been pressured to cut the drug's UK price for a limited time while NICE re-appraises it, making it available at the same price as the current second-line chemotherapy.
The third quarter saw a dramatic decline in sales of Roche's anti-viral treatment Tamiflu, after its uptake by governments and corporations slowed and outstanding orders were completed. Last year sales were driven by a peak in stockpiling orders for use in the event of a pandemic.
Excluding Tamiflu from its figures meant Roche was able to celebrate a 12% increase in its pharma sales and stay on target for double-digit growth in 2007.
Franz Humer added: "Particularly important for our future growth is the progress being made in our broad programme of clinical trials: several important projects are now entering or are ready to enter phase III."
New projects include phase III studies with Avastin in a number of additional indications (adjuvant non-small cell lung cancer, gastric cancer, aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma), studies of ocrelizumab in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and of pertuzumab in metastatic breast cancer.
Related Content
Elekta and BMS partner for digital treatment for melanoma
Elekta and Bristol Myers Squibb have announced a pilot collaboration in which the companies plan …
BMS acquires Mirati Therapeutics for $4.8bn
Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) and Mirati Therapeutics have announced that they have entered into a …
BMS shares new research and development  plans at the company’s R&D day
Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) recently held a Research and Development (R&D) Day in New York, …
