After launching the world?s first biosimilar version of Swiss drugmaker Roche?s Herceptin drug to treat breast cancer, Biocon has expanded its cancer treatment footprint with a licensing pact with Advaxis to co-develop and commercialise a cervical cancer treatment in India and key emerging

markets. Biocon chairman and managing director

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tells Ajay Sukumaran that they are surging ahead in the oncology space and is looking at adding more products. Edited excerpts:

Would your new products, Alzumab for psoriasis and CANMab for breast cancer, add significantly to revenues by the end of this fiscal?

Alzumab has had little time to contribute to the top or bottomline but we are seeing very good traction. In terms of CANMab, we will hardly have any contribution because we will have had less than a quarter (since launch). The real contributions from both these introductions will come in the next fiscal. But having said that, Alzumab is definitely contributing to some of the increased growth we are seeing in our branded formulations business.

Has the supply constraint from the impasse between trade and pharma companies been resolved, from Biocon?s point of view?

In the kind of segments we serve, most of these issues have been resolved. But I won?t say it has been resolved for the entire sector.

Going ahead, your branded formulations vertical would see better growth?

That?s what we expect.

You have previously said Biocon?s insulin business was outpacing its manufacturing capacity. With the Malaysia plant slated to start operations next fiscal, how fast do you expect the segment to grow?

The real impact of the Malaysia facility will be in the following fiscal because we are only going to be commissioning the plant in FY15. The actual contribution from the plant can only come in FY16. What is happening is that until then we are sort of stretched in terms of our Bangalore capacity, so we are trying small incremental expansions which will, of course, keep the growth going. But the real big exponential growth can only come after Malaysia is operational.