Singapore: Japan-based Eisai has filed two products, Halaven (eribulin) for metastatic breast cancer and Fycompa (perampanel) for epilepsy, for approval with Medicines Control Council (MCC), South Africa. 

The South African government has set out plans to introduce a universal healthcare system with the public health budget growing considerably. Eisai's continued growth is part of the company's Hayabusa plan to have a presence in the top 20 pharmaceutical markets and deliver effective treatments to more than 500 million patients by 2015.

Mr Gary Hendler, president and CEO, Eisai Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russian (EMEA) business, said that, "The filing of Halaven and Fycompa in South Africa shows our commitment to our expansion plans to provide effective treatments to more patients around the world. This also further validates our human healthcare (hhc) mission to satisfy unmet medical needs and contribute to the health and well-being of people worldwide."

The filing of eribulin in South Africa is based on data obtained from the Embrace study. Since the launch of eribulin in Europe, it has given heavily pre-treated women with metastatic breast cancer precious additional time with their loved ones.

Discovered and manufactured by Eisai, perampanel has been approved by the European Commission (EC) and is now available in the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as an adjunctive therapy for patients with partial-onset seizures (the most common form of epilepsy) in patients aged 12 years and above. Eisai expects the availability of perampanel in South Africa in will be a significant step for people with epilepsy, as successful control of partial-onset seizures remains a challenge. An estimated one-in-100 people have epilepsy in South Africa.