Shares of Biocon will hog the limelight this week as the company launched a new and cheaper drug to treat ‘metastatic’ breast cancer that aggressively spreads to other parts of the body.

The company said its product would cost about 25 per cent less than the original.

Roche sells the drug in India as Herceptin, which generated 2012 sales worth around Rs 130 crore. Globally, it was around $6.4 billion. Biocon’s tumour-targeting product is slated to enter the market in the first week of February. It will make breast cancer treatment more affordable and accessible to many Indian patients who test positive for the cancer-indicating HER2 (short for human epidermal growth factor), Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told a news conference.