Roche Pharma launches India’s first seven-minute subcutaneous lung cancer therapy

New Delhi: One of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, Roche Pharma, on Thursday launched in India a costly but effective lung cancer therapy that can be administered through a subcutaneous injection in just seven minutes, compared to conventional intravenous infusions that take several hours.

Each dose of this immunotherapy from Roche Pharma would cost Rs 3.7 lakh and patients, on an average, would require three to six dosages depending on the severity of the disease, said oncologists who have been prescribing the treatment to some of their patients.

The medicine, atezolizumab, can either be an adjunct to a chemotherapy regimen or be given separately. It received approval from the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation for India launch, nearly two years after the company released it in Europe and USA.

“Immunotherapy has transformed the treatment landscape for cancer patients, but conventional IV infusion can be long and arduous. The subcutaneous administration allows patients to be treated more quickly,” said Sajjan Rajpurohit, director and head of medical oncology at Medanta hospital. An IV version of the same medicine is also available.

Immunotherapy medicines are highly expensive because they are complex biological products rather than chemical molecules. While their production requires highly specialised manufacturing and strong research, these medicines are under strong patent protection, which in turn raises their prices.

Immunotherapy was introduced in India in 2016. While their prices have come down substantially in the last decade, they are still out of reach for the majority of cancer patients in India.

“Such therapies may come under private medical insurance policies only if the policy supports ‘modern therapies’ for which the premium amount is higher,” said Rajpurohit, noting that without insurance support, the majority of lung cancer patients in India might not be able to afford it.

The Central Government Health Services (CGHS) scheme includes this therapy among the medicines that CGHS beneficiaries can avail.

Every year around 80,000 lung cancer cases are detected in India of which nearly 40-50 per cent is diagnosed at an advanced stage. Also around 30 per cent seek care in government institutes.

According to the company officials, there are patient support schemes to provide financial relief to people opting for this therapy. But they refused to divulge the details of such support programmes.

“Cancer care is evolving beyond survival outcomes alone, towards approaches that also prioritise patient experience, convenience and quality of life,” said Sivabalan Sivanesan, chief medical officer at Roche Pharma India.