Cancer Treatment Medicines: Cancer is a very deadly disease, which kills millions of people every year. Just hearing the name of cancer creates fear in the minds of people. Every year lakhs of people in India fall prey to this deadly disease, but a big challenge in the treatment of cancer is the availability of medicines and their huge cost. It is often seen that most of the effective and modern cancer medicines are imported from abroad. Despite India’s strong pharmaceutical industry, life-saving cancer medicines are imported from countries like America and Europe. After all, what is the reason that the treatment of cancer still depends on foreign medicines? Let us understand the big reason behind this.

Dr. Shyam Agarwal, Senior Cancer Specialist, Gangaram Hospital, Delhi told News18. That the biggest reason for cancer medicines coming from abroad is the long time taken and investment of billions of dollars in Research and Development (R&D). On average, it takes 10 to 15 years for a new cancer drug to reach the clinic from the lab. Big pharma companies of western countries spend heavily on this. Cancer cells keep changing their shape continuously, which requires very precise and targeted therapy. India still lacks that level of infrastructure and funding for research, due to which new medicines are mostly invented abroad.

The doctor said that before any cancer medicine is approved, it has to go through many difficult stages of clinical trials. This has to be ensured that the medicine is safe and effective in killing cancer cells. In developed countries, advanced technology and better facilities for data analysis are available for these trials. Apart from this, when a foreign company creates a new medicine after spending years of hard work and billions of dollars, it takes a patent on it. Under international intellectual property (IP) laws, no other company can make a generic version of that medicine for 20 years. The most modern and effective cancer drugs such as immunotherapy and biologics are under patent, so Indian companies do not have the right to manufacture them. In such a situation, Indian patients are forced to import these medicines from foreign companies.

Even though India leads the world in manufacturing generic medicines, India is largely dependent on imports for the raw materials required to make medicines, called Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API). The production of specific chemicals and raw materials required for complex cancer drugs is still limited in India. Due to lack of high technology and raw materials used in the manufacturing of medicines, Indian companies sometimes lag behind in the production of modern cancer medicines and have to choose the path of import.

Experts said that cancer treatment is now moving beyond simple chemotherapy towards personalized medicine and gene therapy. These medicines are not made chemically but from living cells, which are called biosimilars or biologics. To make these, highly advanced biotech labs are required. This technology has been developed in America and Europe for decades. Now steps are being taken in this direction in India, but at present the most effective biological medicines are still being imported from foreign labs.