Rakuten Medical trying to commercialise novel cancer therapy in India

US headquartered Rakuten Medical, which has recently established a subsidiary in India, is now exploring regulatory pathways to commercialize treatments based on the Alluminox platform in India, beginning with head and neck cancer.

This therapy area uses non-thermal red light to target cancer cells in the head and neck region after the patient has been administered with an injectable drug about a day back. The therapy is already approved in Japan, and Rakuten is working to get it approved by the USFDA. The company’s co-CEO Mickey Mikitan met top cancer specialists in India recently.

Abhijit Bhatia, Chief Strategy Officer, India Lead, Rakuten Medical said that they want to bring this treatment to India as soon as possible.

In India, the total number of new cancer patients in 2020 was over 1.3 million – the fourth largest population in the world. Particularly, there is a high occurrence of head and neck cancer, which accounts for 30 percent of all cancer types. India accounts for around 26 percent of all head and neck cancer cases globally.