Russia's Biocad to launch new anti-cancer drug in domestic market

Russia’s leading biotech firm Biocad is finishing clinical trials of a new anti-cancer drug that will soon appear in the Russian market and will be able to compete with imported analogues, according to recent statements by Russian Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

It is planned that the new drug will be launched in the Russian market in one to five years and is expected to be significantly cheaper than its foreign equivalents, which are currently imported from abroad.

The new drug is known as PD-1, which is the name of the active protein of the drug. The protein interacts with the tumor, making it visible to the human immune system. The drug - the so-called check-point inhibitor – is designed for the treatment of melanoma, a disease that leads to the death of 70% of patients with this skin cancer in Russia.