Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG plans to offer cut-price versions of two blockbuster cancer drugs for the Indian market soon, a company spokesman said on Friday, days after New Delhi moved to slash the price of a rival cancer treatment. India stripped German’s Bayer AG of its exclusive rights to Nexavar earlier this month and licensed a local drugs company to produce a cheap, generic version, on the grounds that poor Indians could not otherwise afford the life-saving drug. Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, said it would offer “significantly” cheaper, locally branded versions of its two cancer drugs, Herceptin and MabThera, by early next year, under an alliance with India’s Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
