Pertuzumab plus trastuzumab and docetaxel has advantages over current clinical gold-standard treatment

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, based on clinical data and the opinions of interviewed thought leaders, Roche/Genentech/Chugai's pertuzumab plus trastuzumab (Roche/Genentech/Chugai's Herceptin) and docetaxel (Sanofi's Taxotere, generics) will become Decision Resources' proprietary clinical gold-standard treatment for metastatic first-line HER2-positive breast cancer in 2015, following its launch for the indication in 2012 in the U.S. and Europe and in 2013 in Japan.

“Pertuzumab plus trastuzumab and docetaxel has competitive advantages in efficacy over our current proprietary clinical gold-standard treatment, trastuzumab plus docetaxel”

"Pertuzumab plus trastuzumab and docetaxel has competitive advantages in efficacy over our current proprietary clinical gold-standard treatment, trastuzumab plus docetaxel," said Decision Resources Analyst Amy Duval.

Decision Resources' analysis of the breast cancer drug market also finds that Roche/Genentech/Chugai's Trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1) is likely to initially enter later-lines of treatment before receiving approval for the first-line setting, which means it will gain use across all lines of therapy, fragmenting its patient share across lines of treatment and restricting its uptake in the first-line setting.

Additionally, according to insights from interviewed thought-leaders, pertuzumab plus trastuzumab and docetaxel and T-DM1 plus pertuzumab have demonstrated the potential to increase patients' overall survival, which has not been improved by drug-treatment since the approval of trastuzumab over a decade ago.

The findings also reveal that the overall breast cancer drug market declined from $10 billion in 2010 to $9.3 billion in 2011 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan. Decision Resources forecasts that the market will increase from $9.3 billion in 2011 to $10.8 billion in 2020. Significant declines in sales, due to generic and biosimilar price erosion and a substantial reduction in the prescribing of Roche/Genentech/Chugai's Avastin, particularly in the U.S., will be offset by the launch and uptake of premium-priced emerging therapies, particularly in the metastatic HER2-positive setting.