Not long ago, Hyderabad start-up Zenotech Laboratories was contacted by lawyers to Swiss pharma major F. Hoffmann-La Roche. Zenotech founder Jayaram Chigurupati told a reporter it had cloned Roche’s anti-cancer drug Mabthera and could sell it for Rs 25,000 a vial, a quarter of its price. Roche warned that as the copycat was not on the market, Chigurupati’s claims were misleading and demanded the interview be pulled from its website. Chigurupati says this means Zenotech is serious competition: “I consider it a badge of honour.”

The drug, rituximab, is a monoclonal antibody (MAB), a class of biotech medicines previously sold in India by blue-chip MNCs. Now, Zenotech and others such as Bangalore’s Biocon are making inroads into this preserve. Biocon has a MAB licensed from Cuba-based CIMAB in the market. Last week, after good quarterly results, analysts such as Merrill Lynch’s Visalakshi Chandramouli upheld a ‘buy’ on Biocon. One of the reasons was a “sales build-up” for nimotuzumab, branded Biomab.

MABs (literally clones of a single parent cell) target sites in the body responsible for disease. Valuable in cancer treatment, where chemotherapy can destroy healthy cells, MABs are used for many indications. Mumbai’s Bharat Serums And Vaccines has one for tetanus.

Globally, costly MABs such as Genentech’s Avastin, at $49,000 (Rs 21.6 lakh) for a 10-month course in the US, are set to become the largest class of biotech drugs. Worth $15 billion (Rs 66,000 crore) a year, that is slated to double by 2010 to roughly match statins or cholesterol reducers — the largest drug class ever. But while statin copycats abound in India, MABs do not. They require biological expertise. Indian firms are chemistry experts. “The competencies are different,” says Sanjiv Kaul, managing director, ChrysCapital, a Delhi private equity firm investing in pharma companies. But this means competition may be limited. “There are probably 20 drugs that do not have generic versions — like MABs. They ought to be more affordable, but aren’t as there hasn’t been the capability,” says Cartikeya Reddy, vice-president (biologics), Dr. Reddy’s. The Hyderabad-based company will soon launch a copycat MAB of its own.