Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd has launched a new drug for treatment of lung cancer in Delhi on Thursday, costing about Rs 40,000 for a 10-course injection, about a tenth of the cost of those made by multinationals.

While launching the drug, Mycidac-C, Rajiv Modi, Chairman of the Ahmedabad-based Cadila, said this was a breakthrough in treatment of squamous cell non-small cell lung cancer. This kind of cancer is estimated to affect 30 per cent of all lung cancer patients across the world.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.25 million people are diagnosed with lung cancer annually.

“This is the first novel product for cancer management from India,” Modi said, adding that “hundreds of crores” have been spent in developing this drug over 15 years.

According to the company, the drug is likely to improve survival rates of patients with lung cancer by about 40 per cent.

The drug, which has been approved for launch in India by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), is likely to hit the domestic market by December. The company is looking for global partners to market the drug in other regions such as the US, Europe and Japan.

However, Modi said in developing countries, where the company has its presence and which need affordable medicines, Cadila will sell the medicine through its own pipeline.

In India, the drug has a use patent, meaning no other company can replicate the drug, while Cadila is in the process of obtaining product patents for the drug in other countries. It has already obtained patents in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.

Cadila said this drug can be used along with chemotherapy, and clinical trials have shown increase in response to treatment as well as survival rates and has no side-effects.

> aesha.datta@thehindu.co.in

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