Strides Arcolab has announced that Onco Therapies Ltd has got European Union approval for the marketing of carboplatin. This product is the first of the 37 products to be marketed by Pfizer Inc, as part of a strategic tie-up with Strides. Under this tie-up, Strides is to license and supply off-patent cancer drugs to Pfizer, for marketing in developed markets.
Onco is a 100% owned subsidiary of Strides operating in the oncology space. Carboplatin 10mg injection is prescribed for patients with ovarian cancer. The current market size of this product in the European Union is $138 million or about Rs 620 crore. At present, the approval covers only select EU countries and Strides will start the second round to cover the remaining countries, and expects to get it in 2011 itself. The product will be made at Strides’ oncology facilities in Bangalore, which got approval from European regulatory authorities in June 2010.
Onco has applied for permission to market 22 such drugs in the EU market and claims the market size of these drugs is about $5 billion or Rs 22,500 crore.
On March 1, Strides had announced that it got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for supplying vancomycin injection from its sterile injectable complex at Bangalore. This is not a new product but was taking up significant capacity at its existing facilities. Approval from its new facility will allow it to meet the US market demand without crowding out other products, for which it has approval at its older facility.
The flow of positive news appears to have cheered investors, with the company’s share up by about 4% at Rs 372, at the time of posting.
Read the statement on carboplatin here and on the vancomycin approval here.