Roche Pharma and Cipla announced that the two companies have entered into an agreement to provide better access to innovative medicines for patients in India. Under this agreement, Cipla will be responsible for marketing and distribution of Roche Pharma’s key trademark oncology drugs viz.,Trastuzumab (Herclon), Bevacizumab (Avastin) and Rituximab (Ristova).

Roche and Cipla had previously entered into a similar agreement in February 2018 for promotion and distribution of Tocilizumab (Actemra) and other products.

“We have been working as a partner with Cipla for some of our products and it has been a great journey working with them in ensuring access to our innovations in India. We hope to extend the same support to patients in India through this new agreement.”, said V. Simpson Emmanuel, General Manager, Roche Products. “This deal will ensure that our focus on providing Roche innovations in India remains steadfast in this portfolio and we will keep on collaborating with the relevant stakeholders in Indian healthcare system to ensure better outcomes for patient,” he added.

Commenting on the partnership, Nikhil Chopra, Executive Vice President & CEO – India Business, Cipla said, “Enabling access to high quality life-saving treatments is core to our purpose of ‘Caring for Life’. We are pleased to strengthen our partnership with Roche towards bringing innovative oncology medications to India. This represents our unwavering commitment to address the unmet needs of cancer patients through an enhanced portfolio of offerings in this space. We look forward to leveraging our solid marketing and distribution strengths in India to provide broader access to such transformative treatments in the country.”