BLISTERING sales of Herceptin, the breast cancer “wonder” drug, and Tamiflu, said by some to be the most promising line of defence in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak, lifted first-quarter sales at Roche to another record yesterday.

The Swiss drugs group reported a 22 per cent jump in sales to SwFr9.8 billion (£4.3 billion) — more than three times the pace of growth in the market as a whole — prompting the company to reiterate expectations that results for the full year would significantly exceed those for 2005.

Roche said that sales of three top drugs more than doubled in the first three months of the year, while only five of the Basle-based developer’s portfolio of top-20 medicines failed to rack up double-digit growth.

Worldwide sales of Herceptin, the only targeted treatment that has been approved for breast cancer sufferers, jumped by 107 per cent over the same quarter last time to SwFr861 million. The drug targets a protein produced by cancerous cells carrying the HER2 gene. Although only one in five cancer patients suffers from a type that carries the gene, use of the drug appears to halve the risk of the disease returning.

Sales of Avastin, a medicine approved for the treatment of colon cancer, also surged by 141 per cent, to SwFr676 million, amid mounting clinincal evidence that it is also highly effective in the fight against lung and breast cancers.

However, the fastest growth was achieved by Tarceva, which has been proved to prolong the lives of nearly half of patients suffering late-stage lung cancer by at least a year. Sales of the drug, approved for sale only last November, soared by 182 per cent to SwFr172million.

Roche’s suite of cancer products, which in total generated a 52 per cent increase in sales over last time, is the result of a longstanding tie-up with Genentech, the biotech company. Roche bought a 50 per cent stake in Genentech in 1990.

Bill Burns, chief executive, forecast that profits growth this year would match sales growth: “The confidence is there, having seen our first-quarter performance,” he said.

Sales of Tamiflu jumped 37 per cent to SwFr601 million, bringing total sales of the pill to more than SwFr2.1 billion.

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