April 22, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
SAN FRANCISCO – Roche Chief Executive Officer Severin Schwan told Reuters this morning the pharmaceutical company is still interested in acquiring new products and technologies, but it not interested in a “megamerger.”
What those new technologies and products are though, were not disclosed. Over the past year Roche has made several large acquisitions to bolster its cancer treatments, including the 1.7 billion purchase of San Diego-based Seragon, the $8.3 billion acquisition of InterMune, Inc., focused on therapies in pulmonology and fibrotic diseases and the February acquisition of Germany-based Signature Diagnostics AG, which specializes in oncology and genomics.
Last week Roche nabbed a majority stake in U.S.-based Foundation Medicine, spending more than $1 billion to acquire 56.3 percent of the company that specializes in molecular and genomic analysis. Roche also acquired Capp Medical, a genomics research company focusing on DNA sequencing to provide early cancer testing, earlier this month. In January Roche also spent $545 million to acquire French-based Trophos, which is developing drugs for neuromuscular diseases.
Schwan’s announcement the company wasn’t currently interested in megamergers came on the heels of strong quarterly financial statements that revealed the Swiss company showed a three percent increase in sales to $12.4 billion over the same period last year.
Sales were boosted in part due to increased sales of cancer-treating drug Avastin, which saw a sales increase of 6 percent and breast cancer treatments including Kadcyla, Perjeta and Herceptin, which combined for 23 percent increase in sales. MabThera/Rituxan, which is used to treat blood cancers, saw a 5 percent increase in sales.
News of the strong first quarter helped boost sales in company stock this morning, up nearly a full point from its of $32.01 per share.
The company said it expects the remainder of 2015 to be as positive as the first quarter. In its quarterly report the company said it expects sales to continue to grow in the “low to mid-single digits,” which is good news, since some of Roche’s older cancer treatments are facing generic competition, such as Xeloda, used to treat breast cancer. In 2013, federal regulators approved the generic capecitabine from Teva Pharmaceuticals USA.
Schwan said during the first quarter the U.S Food and Drug Administration granted a second Breakthrough Therapy Designation for our cancer immunotherapy medicine anti-PDL1, for a specific type of lung cancer, in addition to bladder cancer.
“We started the year with strong growth and good uptake of new products. In particular, I am pleased to see continued strong demand for Perjeta for breast cancer, as well as Esbriet, which was recently approved in the US for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis,” Schwan said in a statement. “Overall, we are on track to reach our full-year targets for 2015.”
