Roche's armed antibody will help drive breast cancer drug salesAugust

22, 2012 | By John Carroll New breast cancer therapies will earn blockbuster revenue in the years to come. But don't expect these new drugs to dramatically change the life expectancy of women diagnosed with an advanced case.The clear likelihood that Roche's ($RHHBY) T-DM1--its "armed antibody" developed by Genentech--is headed for an approval encouraged analysts at Decision Resources to project a solid rise in revenue for all breast cancer drugs in the 10 years ahead.Combined with the newly approved Perjeta, another Roche/Genentech drug, and Afinitor from Novartis ($NVS), the group projects that major market sales to breast cancer will rise from $8.6 billion in 2011 to $10.9 billion in 2018 before that figure levels out through 2021."T-DM1 has demonstrated impressive results in later-line treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer and Decision Resources anticipates the agent will be approved in this setting in 2013, and will move into earlier settings through 2021," notes the firm. But despite a tremendous amount of new R&D work in the field, Decision Resources believes that only a handful of new agents will dominate the field.