## Pakistan Approves Lower-Cost Alternative Cancer Therapy
China’s Kexing Biopharm announced that Pakistan’s Drug Regulatory Authority (DRAP) has granted market authorization for a biosimilar version of the expensive cancer medication bevacizumab.
This regulatory approval enables Kexing Biopharm to introduce the bevacizumab biosimilar, produced by China-based TOT Biopharm, into the Pakistani market. The biosimilar is a highly similar version of the widely utilized therapy effective against several advanced cancers, including colorectal, ovarian, and lung cancers.
The original bevacizumab therapy, marketed globally by Roche under the brand name Avastin, carries a cost of several hundred dollars per dose. This price point renders it unaffordable for the vast majority of patients within Pakistan, a nation exceeding 240 million people.
The necessity for more economically accessible treatment options is acute. According to data from the World Health Organisation’s Global Cancer Observatory, Pakistan experiences over 118,000 cancer-related fatalities annually. Lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancers—all conditions potentially treatable with bevacizumab—rank among the leading contributors to this mortality rate.
Pakistan’s 2018 drug pricing policy, implemented by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), explicitly aims to reduce healthcare costs by encouraging the adoption of more affordable generic and biosimilar medicines. A biosimilar is defined as a biological medicinal product shown to possess comparable safety and efficacy to an already licensed reference biological medicine, typically after the reference product’s patent protection has expired.
Kexing Biopharm, which maintains a commercial presence in more than 70 countries, specializes in supplying biosimilars, formulations, and innovative pharmaceuticals to emerging economies. The company emphasizes its focus on nations participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), contributing to the development of more robust healthcare infrastructures in these regions.
