GSK India exec sees growth fueled by Novartis vaccine assets

GSK India exec sees growth fueled by Novartis vaccine assets

GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) emerging-market vaccines sales have seen better days, thanks to a $489 million bribery probe that recently led to the indictment of the company's former China head. But according to a local exec, good times are ahead for Glaxo's vaccines unit in India--and the company's recent pickup of Novartis' non-flu vaccine assets will help it get there.

According to Hasit Joshipura, managing director of GSK India, Novartis' ($NVS) vaccine products, like anti-rabies shot Rabipur, will bolster the company's efforts to push further into India's Rs1,600-crore ($271 million) vaccine market. Pointing to the country's large birth rate and rising income levels, he tabbed it "probably the most exciting vaccine market in the world" in an interview with The Economic Times.

"Typically, as education and income increase, the obviously one thing Indians will do is spend on their children," he told the paper.

Of course, Glaxo had to give up a fair bit to pad its vaccine lineup, trading away its oncology business to the Swiss pharma giant as part of the multi-billion-dollar transaction. But as Joshipura pointed out, in India, a jab like Rabipur alone is worth Rs110 crore ($18.6 million), compared with an estimated Rs50 crore ($8.5 million) for the oncology business.

That doesn't mean India's vaccine landscape is an easy one for multinationals to navigate. As the ET notes, price cuts in the country have wiped out their fair share of top-line growth for drugmakers--Glaxo included--and clinical trial delays have prompted many countries to move their operations elsewhere.

But Glaxo--a tiered-pricing pioneer in emerging countries--has built a model specifically to suit India's needs, Joshipura said. "We moved manufacturing many years ago to India, then we have pricing which is India-specific. "We got lucky in the early period where we have products specific for India's disease profile," said Joshipura.

Glaxo won't necessarily count on that kind of luck in other developing countries, however; the company recently announced it would tailor a vaccine portfolio to suit health needs in Africa as part of a wider access initiative.

 

Restricted diet may help slow down breast cancer

Restricted diet may help slow down breast cancer

Calorie restriction, a kind of dieting in which food intake is decreased by a certain percentage, may help slow down breast cancer, according to a new study.

Researchers found that the triple negative subtype of breast cancer - one of the most aggressive forms - is less likely to spread, or metastasise, to new sites in the body when mice were fed a restricted diet.

"The diet turned on a epigenetic programme that protected mice from metastatic disease," said senior author Nicole Simone, an associate professor in the department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University.

When mouse models of triple negative cancer were fed 30 per cent less than what they ate when given free access to food, the cancer cells decreased their production of microRNAs 17 and 20.

Researchers have found that this group of miRs is often increased in triple negative cancers that metastasise.

The study found that microRNAs - a type of RNA that regulates other genes in the cell - specifically miR 17 and 20, decreased the most when mice were treated with both radiation and calorie restriction .

This decrease in turn increased the production of proteins involved in maintaining the extracellular matrix.

"Calorie restriction promotes epigenetic changes in the breast tissue that keep the extracellular matrix strong," said Simone.

"A strong matrix creates a sort of cage around the tumour, making it more difficult for cancer cells to escape and spread to new sites in the body," Simone said.

Understanding the link to miR 17 also gives researchers a molecular target for diagnosing cancers that are more likely to metastasise and, potentially, for developing a new drug to treat the cancers.

In theory, a drug that decreased miR 17 could have the same effect on the extracellular matrix as calorie restriction.

However, targeting a single molecular pathway, such as the miR17 is unlikely to be as effective as calorie restriction, said Simone.

Triple negative breast cancers tend to be quite different genetically from patient to patient.

If calorie restriction is as effective in women as it is in animal models, then it would likely change the expression patterns of a large set of genes, hitting multiple targets at once without toxicity, researchers said.

 

Perfint Healthcare eyes $50 mn Series E fund

Perfint Healthcare eyes $50 mn Series E fund

Perfint Healthcare, which provides solutions for image-guided interventional procedures in oncology and pain care, is looking at raising $40-50 million through Series E funding to support its business plans.

S Nandakumar, CEO of the company, said, “We would be looking at $40-50 million in the next few months to enhance our market position.”

Perfint has appointed boutique investment management firm, GCA Savvian Advisors, as its advisor; and expects investments from some of the existing investors. Perfint earlier raised $32.7 million in four rounds of venture funding, participated by prominent investors such as IDG Ventures, Accel India Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners.

The company has received the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its oncology equipment and plans are to start sales in US in the near future. It also announced the USFDA approval for its product Maxio, an image-guided, physician-controlled stereotactic CT accessory, which helps physician see, plan, treat and verify during CT guided procedures like tumour ablation, a process of destroying the tumour using thermal or electrical energy or pain care.

The company has developed two products, Robio and Maxio, both image-guided interventional procedures in cancer care and paincare, which were used to perform over 2,000 patient procedures around the world in the last year.

These solutions are expected to support in treatment of lung and lever cancer. Another product, Sonio, with an ability to work with ultrasound scanning machines, will be out in the first quarter of the next fiscal. Perfint is expecting its turnover to touch Rs 100 crore by the end of the current fiscal year, as against Rs 50 crore in March, 2014. It expects turnover to reach Rs 500 crore in next 3-4 years.