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Severe flu season boosts Roche drug sales

Basel-based drug giant Roche says heightened demand for its Tamiflu drug amid a severe flu season, as well as for its cancer medicines sent its first-quarter sales up five percent, beating analyst expectations.

Published: 11 April 2013 11:33 CEST

Severe flu season boosts Roche drug sales

Photo: Roche

The company said on Thursday that its overall sales shot up to 11.6 billion francs ($12.4 billion) during the first three months of the year.

Analysts polled by Swiss financial news agency AWP had expected it to rake in 11.4 billion francs during the period.

"We got off to a very good start in 2013 due to strong organic growth," Roche chief executive Severin Schwan said in a statement.

The growth was largely due to a spike in Tamiflu sales amid a difficult flu season in the United States especially, as well as rising demand for its main cancer treatments, which helped push sales in the company's all-important Pharma division up six percent, to 9.1 billion francs.

Roche's Diagnostics division meanwhile saw more modest growth, with sales up just one percent from the same period in 2012 at 2.4 billion francs.

During the first quarter, Roche also launched two new drugs to fight breast cancer, Kadcyla in the United States and Perjeta in Europe.

"Based on the first quarter results, I am confident we will meet our full-year targets," Schwan said, confirming Roche's forecast at the end of January that it will this year see sales rise at the same rate as in 2012,
when they were up about four percent.

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Swiss-American antibody drug 'effective at preventing Covid infection'

Photo: Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

The results of the Phase 3 trial showed that the combination of the antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab dramatically reduced the risk of symptomatic infection among people living with Covid-19 patients, Roche said in a statement.

The trial entailed injecting 1,505 people not infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus but living in households with people carrying the virus with the Regeneron antibody cocktail or a placebo.

READ MORE: Why are vaccination appointments still vacant in Zurich?

The trial, which was conducted in cooperation with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, showed that those who received the antibody cocktail saw their risk of symptomatic infection reduced by 81 percent, the companies said.

It also indicated that those treated with casirivimab and imdevimab who did experience symptomatic infection on average saw their symptoms clear within one week — far faster than the three-week average for those who received the placebo.

In a separate part of the study, 204 people who had recently tested positive for Covid-19 but showed no symptoms received either a dose of the antibody cocktail or a placebo.

Those who received the cocktail saw their risk of developing symptoms reduced by 31 percent compared to the placebo group, the companies said.

“Today’s data confirm the potential dual value of casirivimab and imdevimab to reduce household Covid-19 infections and to decrease the disease burden in those who do become infected, when given as a subcutaneous option,” Levi Garraway, Roche’s chief medical officer said in a statement.

“Although vaccinations are increasing globally, there remains a critical unmet need worldwide to prevent infections and provide immediate protection from Covid-19 between close contacts,” he said.

EXPLAINED: How Switzerland is speeding up its vaccination programme

Regeneron president and chief scientist George Yancopoulos agreed, pointing out that in the United States alone, 60,000 people are being diagnosed with Covid-19 every day.

The antibody cocktail “may help provide immediate protection to unvaccinated people who are exposed to the virus”, he said in a statement, adding that it could also potentially “provide ongoing protection for immunocompromised patients who may not respond well to vaccines”.

Regeneron said it would present the data to the US Food and Drug Administration and request it clear the Covid antibody cocktail for use as a preventative treatment.

The companies said they would share the new data with health regulators worldwide.

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