We will begin the conference today with a presentation by our management team. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Please note that we have time until 9:00 A.M. for the media conference. At this point, it is my pleasure to hand over to Severin Schwan, CEO of the Roche Group. Over to you, Severin.
Thank you, [Nicola], and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our virtual media conference on the first quarter results. If we can go to the first slide, please. Group sales grew at 3% in local currencies and declined 1% in Swiss franc as a result of the appreciation of the Swiss franc. In the pharmaceutical division, sales decreased by 9%. This development was actually expected, l et me outline the main factor for this development and put it into context. First of all, we are pleased to see the continued good uptake of our newly launched medicines, which grew 20% in the first quarter. On the other hand, the first quarter was challenging for the pharmaceuticals division due to base effects, as the first quarter last year still showed a very strong growth. As you know, the pandemic hit us in the second quarter only.
We have a negative base effect versus previous year in the first quarter, t hat should improve, of course, as we go forward as of the second quarter. On top, we experienced the significant impact of biosimilars. Again, this was expected, as you know, for our established cancer medicines, in particular in the United States. Shifting to diagnostics, sales grew by 55%. On the one hand, here we saw a continued high demand for our COVID-19 tests. At the same time, and that's really encouraging, our routine business, which was significantly impacted last year already in the first quarter, diagnostics was ahead in the curve, recovered and grew strongly already in Q1.
Overall, if we shift to the next slide, we continue to grow on a group level in spite of the negative impact of the pandemic and biosimilars on the pharmaceutical business, and we expect to accelerate the growth in Pharma in particular for the remainder of the year as vaccinations progress and patients are resuming their doctor visits. If we look at the outlook on the next slide, you can see that we confirm the outlook to expect to grow in the low to mid-single digit range for sales and to grow earnings in line with sales. Before I hand over to Bill, let me just point out two highlights of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Next slide, please.
On the Diagnostics side, as you know, we have recently launched a rapid antigen nasal test for COVID-19 as a self-testing option in Switzerland and also other countries in Europe. The added value of the antigen self-test is primarily that it quickly and reliably identifies highly infectious individuals, including these potential super spreaders. Obviously with the home test, the threshold for testing oneself at home is very low, and this allows people to be tested who would otherwise be unlikely to go for a test, especially if they don't suffer from symptoms. On the Pharma side, we have, together with our partner Regeneron, recently published very strong phase III data on the antibody combination treatment. These results are really impressive, with a reduction of hospitalization or death by 70%.
The treatment is now benefiting patients in an increasing number of countries, including the U.S., Germany, Italy, France, and now also very soon in Switzerland. Thank you for your attention. With this, I'd like to hand over to Bill. Bill, over to you.
Thanks very much, Severin. Actually, we can go right into the next slide. As Severin mentioned, pharmaceutical division declined by about 9% in Q1, and this was largely due to the effect of biosimilars and the COVID pandemic. In the case of the pandemic, that primarily affected the uptake of our new products, which we've been relying on to offset the impact of biosimilars, that's how the impact was felt. You can see in the U.S. was the greatest impact, about a 14% reduction in sales. Again, we think that's largely driven by biosimilars, and we see improving conditions ahead. If you go to the next slide, you can see the impact by product, w hat you see is there's about 10 products at the top that are driving growth, while the biosimilar impact is portrayed at the three rows on the bottom.
I would point out that Avastin biosimilar impact, or the impact in Europe was mostly felt on Avastin because the exclusivity from Avastin was lost in the middle of 2020 in Europe. If you look ahead in the quarters to come, we actually think that the biosimilar impact has sort of peaked because the amount of sales of Herceptin, Avastin, and MabThera has now come down substantially from where it was before biosimilars. There's not as much ground to lose there. We expect a lower impact of biosimilars in subsequent quarters, and we expect to have continued strong growth from the growth products in the quarters ahead. The outlook is improving for pharma as we move forward into the rest of 2021. Next slide, please.
This is a pretty significant milestone because the chart on the left shows the sales as a % of the total of our new products. Those new product offerings launched since 2012 now represent 50% of our total sales, which is pretty remarkable considering we were at 19% just three years ago. You can see on the right the list of products, t here's 19 products that we've launched in that period. We're filing four more in 2021, t wo of those, the antibody drug cocktail for COVID, which is casirivimab and imdevimab, and then the Port Delivery System for Lucentis. We've completed the filing of those in the U.S. and have begun submitting around the world. We look to continued strong growth from new products in the quarters ahead. Next slide; I wanted to highlight two of these advances in the pipeline.
Faricimab, which is our bispecific antibody. It targets actually two molecules that we think are important for eye diseases like macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. You're familiar with Lucentis, which is our groundbreaking product that targets the VEGF pathway. Faricimab targets VEGF, but another pathway called Ang2, and we believe that's key to achieving a more thorough reduction in the swelling that causes macular degeneration and macular edema. What we've shown now in four large phase III studies is really compelling results. Essentially, if you think about today's landscape, patients with these diseases, they require between six, nine, even 12 injections a year in order to maintain their vision. What we showed with faricimab is that about 50% of patients were able to go to only three injections per year. Another 25% could go with about four injections a year.
This is a substantial improvement you can imagine for people that require an injection in their eye. We will be submitting these filings for approval around the world yet in 2021. Tecentriq, which is our cancer immunotherapy that's been available now in multiple indications for about four years. We had a really big first in Q1, w e announced that Tecentriq was the first cancer immunotherapy to show a benefit in people who have early lung cancer. These are patients whose lung cancer was detected early enough that they could have the cancer surgically removed, t ypically today, after that surgical removal, those patients are given chemotherapy. We ran a study where half the patients were given chemotherapy, and the other half were given chemotherapy plus Tecentriq. What we found was a very meaningful impact on the rate of disease-free survival.
Essentially, these are patients whose disease does not return. What we're hoping for in this setting is a cure, that hopefully for most of these patients, their disease will never return. We're really pleased that Tecentriq showed this result, w e look forward to presenting these results at ASCO and submitting filings to regulatory authorities around the world. Next slide, please. Finally, Severin mentioned a bit about the neutralizing antibody cocktail that we've announced results on. I just mentioned, in addition to that, we've continued to deliver results on Actemra. We've done a number of randomized phase III studies. You can see at the top, there's been a mix of results on those, but if you look, and we provided the sample size on those, t he largest study to read out so far was the Recovery study in the U.K.
That had over 4,000 patients, i t showed a significant benefit for Actemra-treated patients who were also treated with dexamethasone, which is one of the only other therapies that's been shown to have an impact on mortality. The patients that were treated with Actemra had a significant benefit on both reduction in the need for mechanical ventilation, but also an impact on mortality. Based on these results and the totality of evidence, we've received emergency use authorizations for Actemra in some countries, and we've continued to supply Actemra to many countries around the world for use in treating COVID patients. I would just highlight at the bottom, you can see AT-527, t hat's a small molecule.
That's something that I think the public health authorities around the world have been very much looking forward to and seeing the need for basically a pill that you can give people that are infected or people who've been exposed to prevent infection. We have an ongoing phase II program in that, and we look forward to starting a phase III any week now. We're actively working with sites to get that going. More to come on that, a nyway, we're very proud of the progress we've made in fighting COVID, and we look forward to continuing to help the world with that. Speaking of that, a lot of the help we've done is on the testing front, and I'll turn things over now to Thomas Schinecker, Head of Diagnostics.
Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everybody. We can go to the next slide. I'm happy to present the Q1 Diagnostics division performance. With sales of about CHF 4.3 billion, we had 55% growth at constant exchange rate. This growth was driven on the one hand by the COVID-19 testing, but also due to strong growth of our routine non-COVID testing, which overall grew at 18%. We did see some impact already last year in Q1 in our routine testing business, particularly in China. Still, the 18% growth, even taking that into account, is just a stellar performance by the routine business. This is highlighted specifically also in the area of the core lab, where testing increased by 31%. This is again, mainly due to the strong growth of the routine non-COVID testing.
Molecular is still showing significant growth with 86%. This is driven by COVID-19 PCR testing. This is compared to a higher base last year because we were the first company to launch a solution already in January on a NA purification and PCR portfolio and the first company to launch a test that was approved in the U.S. on a high throughput platform in March already last year. Despite the base effect, we had huge growth also in molecular continuously. Point of care growing at 281%, t his is driven by the rapid antigen test sales. Diabetes care growing at 13% and pathology 9%, which was driven mostly by advanced staining. If we look at the next slide, we can see that the regional sales growth is coming from all regions, and it's coming from all businesses. Latin America, 71%, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, both at 62%, North America, 34%.
As mentioned, we did see already a negative effect in our routine business last year, but that was specifically mostly in China, and therefore, we did see a strong recovery in China based on this effect. Going to the next slide, please. Since the start of the pandemic, we've developed really in record time, people working really night and day not taking any holidays, 18 solutions to help fight this pandemic. These solutions include both molecular and immunology solutions, both in a laboratory setting and the point-of-care setting. This also includes digital solutions, and I'll get back to that one as well. This test portfolio has become a significant factor in supporting patients and healthcare systems during this pandemic. Let me just highlight a couple. First, something that Severin already mentioned.
We launched the SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Test, which can allow healthcare professionals to easily collect samples from the tip of the nose, which provides much more convenience for patients. We've also launched a version of this test as a nasal self-test, and this provides the option for patients to self-collect the sample. This test has been approved for self-testing in several countries, including countries such as Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Greece, Austria, et cetera. The clinical performance is excellent and was independently validated by the University of Heidelberg and Charité Berlin. Moreover, in a meta-analysis that was published of 20 rapid antigen tests across 74 independent studies with more than 30,000 patient samples, the SARS-CoV-2 test from Roche achieved the highest overall sensitivity of all test studies.
Let me highlight another example on this slide, which is the cobas SARS-CoV-2 Variant Test. This test helps to understand the prevalence of different new variants that are emerging. It can qualitatively detect and differentiate SARS-CoV-2 mutations in variants such as the South African, U.K., and Brazilian variants. On the next slide, I would like to comment on some of our most recent activities to access external innovation. On 15th March, Roche signed a definitive merger agreement with GenMark to access this novel technology to test for a broad range of pathogens. In fact, dozens of pathogens just with one patient sample in only 90 minutes. This is called syndromic panel testing, this will complement our current Roche molecular diagnostics portfolio. With our global reach, we'll be able to take this product, which is predominantly sold in the U.S. today, also into other markets.
Infectious diseases are a leading cause of death globally, early detection of the cause of an infection has been shown to improve patient outcomes. Also it's helping to improve key initiatives such as antibiotic stewardship. Making sure that we don't have antibiotic resistance, also length of stay in hospitals. On the slide, you can also see that we'll be launching cobas 5800 later in the year, which is also exciting to see how much innovation we've brought to the market in just one quarter, even outside of the COVID portfolio. That being said, let me show you the last slides of two another great milestones and highlights of Q1. We recently launched the cobas pure and cobas pro integrated solutions for the high throughput segment.
We completely have a new product portfolio on the system side for our biggest business, and really extending our leadership position in this area. These solutions are key because we have the opportunity in hospitals and hospital networks to have similar solutions with similar test results, similar tests across the different parts of the hospital network. The tests are absolutely comparable. We are the only company that has solutions from the low to the high throughput end. Let's first look at cobas pure: w ith this, we bring efficiency and automation as well as simplicity to the low to mid-volume labs, i t runs about 870 syndromic panel testing per hour, and we have all of our 230 tests, more than 230 tests on this platform. This is by far industry leading, having the broadest amount of menu.
On the cobas pro side, we've announced that we launched this platform on the 23rd March. This is really an ideal solution for the high throughput labs. Overall, I'm extremely excited, not only what our teams have done to really support fighting this pandemic, but really to bring more innovation to the market also in other areas. If you look at other disease areas, they're also devastating, and we need to help people also fight other diseases also beyond COVID. With that, I thank you, and I believe I hand over to [Nicola].
Thank you, Severin, Bill, and Thomas. Now we have time for questions. I'd like to remind you that you may use the raise your hand functionality that can be found when clicking on the reactions icon in Zoom to let us know you have a question. If you cannot see this functionality under the reactions icon, you may be using an older version of Zoom in which you will find the raise your hand functionality under the participants icon. You may also ask questions via the chat function in Zoom if you prefer. Please also note that the conference is being recorded and will be made available as a playback on roche.com within a couple of hours. We have a couple of question. The first question comes from Hannah from the Financial Times. Over to you. Unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thank you very much for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about the antibody drug cocktail for COVID. There have been problems in the U.S. about making it accessible and making sure physicians were actually offering it to the right patients. I wondered if that was still a problem in the U.S., and also how you were tackling those kind of issues in Europe.
Yeah. Great question. It's actually one of a number of examples in the pandemic times of need of the healthcare system to adapt. In this case, I think probably the biggest challenge has been that the sweet spot, the patients who could have the best benefit, are probably those patients who are sick, but not sick enough to go in the hospital. Part of the challenge has been that they're requiring an IV infusion, and typically the IV infusions are given either in hospital outpatient departments or private practice oncology clinics, rheumatoid arthritis clinics. Of course, you can't just take someone who's infected with coronavirus and put them in one of those settings.
It's required a bit of an adjustment for hospitals to set up kind of a dedicated room that has the limited equipment that's required to provide an infusion, but that's an area where it's okay to have people that are infected with coronavirus. I think some progress has been made in that. In the U.S., there was a long delay between the initial trial results and inclusion of the antibody cocktails in the treatment guidelines. Those have now been included in the treatment guidelines, and I think outside the U.S., we've been working with the authorities in each country to make sure not only that they have the data required to give approval, but also that they are prepared in terms of actually administering the medicines to patients.
I guess I would say we're hopeful that there will be a lot of the medicine made available to patients in the weeks ahead, especially as some countries are having another wave of coronavirus. Even just yesterday, we received additional word from countries that are approving it. Anyway, we have a positive outlook, I think that the IV does remain somewhat of an obstacle to use.
Okay. Thank you, Bill. The next question is from Michael Christof, I think, from The Market. Over to you, Michael.
Yes. Hello. This is Michael Christof from The Market. I have three questions, if I may. The first is can you give just the impact on the growth rate of COVID on pharma sales in percentage points in constant currency? The second question is, I understand, correct, is the growth rate in Diagnostics without COVID is at 18%, I understand, right? In constant currency. The third question is the self-tests you sell now in Switzerland, can you give a range what do you expect of sales in this year of this self-test?
Okay. These questions go first to Bill and then to Thomas.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. I think the question about the impact in percentage points of COVID on pharma sales is very difficult to answer. Not only because it's hard to know how much the effect is on each product. For example, we know that on a number of our new products, that fewer patients were seen by physicians last year. Fewer new patients, fewer patients with chronic diseases that, let's say, were not having an ideal outcome from their current therapies, but they didn't go to the doctor, or they didn't go to the doctor in Q1 because of the wave of coronavirus infections. That resulted in lower sales, but it's very hard to precisely estimate how much lower. We know that there was some sort of special sales that happened in Q1 of 2020 when the pandemic was just starting.
Some patients were ordering extra boxes of their medicine because they were worried that they wouldn't have it or wouldn't have access, as the pandemic worsened. I'm afraid it would be very difficult to give a precise estimate on that.
Yeah. To the two questions on diagnostics. Your first one, it's correct that diagnostics without our COVID portfolio was growing at 18% in Q1. Regarding self-testing, what I can say is that we do see now somewhat of an acceleration starting in Q2 versus Q1 in the self-test area. Looking at the full year, I'm hesitant to give a concrete number simply because we need to see how the vaccine rollouts go, a lso how the emergence of new variants go. We see that with the emergence of new variants, we see that the protection through vaccines is somewhat impacted, and we'll have to see what new variants do come, right? Specific school children are not yet being vaccinated. It's really a number of factors which depend on how this will look like.
When we talked about it at full year, what I said is that we basically put all of our targets in terms of COVID testing into the first half year, not knowing exactly how the second half of the year will look like. I do believe that testing will reach more into Q3 for the year. Beyond that, I cannot really predict simply because this pandemic is rather unpredictable. I also wouldn't declare victory yet on this virus, so we need to keep watching this.
Okay. Thank you, Thomas. The next question is from John Miller from Reuters. Over to you, John. Unmute yourself. Good.
Thank you very much for taking my question. The first question is for Mr. Schwan. I guess I'd preface it by calling it a question about management challenges in a crisis. Obviously, just as the pandemic is hitting the drugs business and keeping people away from the doctors, you are having to spend a great deal of your energy also fixing problems at Credit Suisse, where you're the vice chairman, and you're going to have to onboard a new chairman. How are you balancing these duties, and how long can you do it? Can you just talk about your thinking behind this, how you balance your time between your role at Credit Suisse and Roche amid sort of twin crises? Thanks.
I mean, you will understand that at a Roche call, I wouldn't comment on Credit Suisse matters. Certainly on a higher level, there is no doubt that COVID-19 puts an additional strain on all of us, as we have to manage through that crisis. As far as Roche is concerned, I think we can be very proud of our contribution, in the fight to COVID-19, both on the diagnostic side, and on the pharma side, as you have seen in my slides and as you have seen from the comments which have been made so far. As far as Credit Suisse is concerned, you know that the results will present it soon for the first quarter. The AGM is upcoming, I would refer to those occasions for any specific questions around Credit Suisse.
If I could ask a follow-up question for the Diagnostics Chief.
Sure.
Given you expect you're seeing an acceleration in self-tests, what advice would you have for people who are using the self-test in a manner that they're self-testing, they get the free tests at the pharmacy, for instance, and then they test themselves, in an effort to make themselves safer to go visit relatives. Are the self-tests, are they adequate for that? How would you advise people to use them, if you really need a higher viral load to detect disease? Thanks.
Yeah. These tests are excellent to really screen and make sure that we detect people who potentially could infect other people. It's really detecting people that are infectious. Let me just give you a good example in a story of something that has happened, actually to the person who is heading our COVID task force in the Diagnostics division. Right? What he had is, he had a situation over Easter that he had his family come, his daughter, a friend of his daughter, to spend Easter together. What they all did is, before they actually physically met in the house, they all got tested by the Roche test. What actually happened is that his daughter and the friend were both positive with the test. This was then later confirmed by PCR, and it was confirmed that it was the B.1.1.7, the U.K. variant.
Now, if he hadn't done that, he would've been infected, and I can say him and the rest of his family were not infected. These are the perfect use cases, and I think we have a lot of those examples where if people would not have done those things, we would not stop the infections. Testing is key, absolutely key to stop this, even if it's not always 100%, i f it's 90%, you're still catching nine out of 10.
Let me perhaps add also here a comment, because there's a lot of discussion, how useful are self-tests, how should you use them, et cetera. There's no doubt that PCR is the gold standard and the most sensitive test, but with self-tests of high quality, such as the Roche test, what you do catch and where you have a very high sensitivity is if the patient has a lot of virus, right? That is when the test is very sensitive. If a patient has only a very low level of virus, then you might still catch it with PCR, but not with a self-test. It is about the level of virus, which determines of whether a self-test could potentially show you a positive result or not.
That's a decisive point from a medical point of view, because those people who have a high virus load are the ones who are most likely to infect other people. Those are the super spreaders. Some of them, most of them actually would have symptoms, but some of them actually do not have symptoms, especially younger people. That's where the value of a self-test comes in. You catch the people with the high-risk virus load, which are typically also the people who are the most infectious ones, t hat's where the value comes from. Of course, what is really, really important is that you use a self-test which has a high sensitivity. Let me put it mildly, the variability of the quality of those self-tests, which is out there, is quite high.
Thomas referred to these independent studies which have recently been published, and I encourage you to have a look at those.
Yeah. Also, maybe let me add one more thing, because actually there are some studies from Oxford University and also from Charité that look at infectiousness of patients, and to what viral loads they're infectious. This is exactly highlighting this point. This is really detecting infectious people that is critical here.
Okay. Thank you, Thomas and Severin. The next question comes from Naomi Kresge from Bloomberg News. Over to you, Naomi.
Hi. Good morning. I have two questions, if I might. The first is, you said that your drugs unit is turning the corner, and I wonder if this means that we should expect the sales decline to actually reverse in the second quarter, and what assumptions are driving this? What impact should we expect from continued lockdowns in Europe and other large markets? I'm also wondering on a different note, how you're thinking about a return to the office as the vaccination drive picks up, particularly in the U.S. Thanks.
Yeah. Naomi, on the question about the pharmaceutical outlook, it's really driven by two principal parts. One is the biosimilar impact in Q1 was CHF 1.6 billion, the reduction in sales on Avastin, Rituxan, and Herceptin, we think that that's probably the high watermark in terms of impact in a quarter. Essentially the erosion of all three products simultaneously in the U.S. only just began in Q1 2020, there was not much impact in Q1 2020, whereas then there was 12 whole months of impact accrued. The comparison from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021 is where we saw the sort of the biggest impact. In subsequent quarters, we see that loss of sales to biosimilars narrowing, getting smaller in each quarter.
We also see a strong resumption of growth for most of the new products, and that strengthening over time as the healthcare system returns to normal. We know, for example, in cancer screening, there's been major drop-offs in cancer screening, in breast cancer, colorectal cancer, in lung cancer over the previous 12 months during the pandemic. Again, as these things start to return to normal, there'll be higher levels of office visits in oncology, in chronic diseases, and we think that will continue to reinforce the growth of the new products. The combination of those two things will mean that we'll have either lower loss or a return to growth on a monthly basis.
Thank you, Bill. On the second question, in terms of working from home or returning to the office, I think that really two factors. On the one hand, of course, is the development of the pandemic in a specific country and related regulations then. If you look to Asian countries, for example, China, people are back to the office, right? Are working again from the sites. On the other spectrum of it, if you look to Europe, Switzerland, for example, wherever possible, people work from home, and actually regulations are in place where people should not go to the office beyond Roche. That is obviously one factor. As far as the U.S. is concerned, clearly the situation is improving, I would hope that people can now increasingly return to the office, even though this is not yet the policy.
I hope that soon we will get to this state. The second factor, which is very critical in our industry, is what function are you talking about? Because there are certain functions where people just have to come to site. Last but not least, for production and supply chain. We have to keep the supply of medicines, including COVID medicines and diagnostic tests, up and running. Therefore, throughout the pandemic, we had many of our colleagues to come to site to keep healthcare delivery up and running. For that very reason, we, our industry in general, and certainly Roche, we were very strict to have all other people at home to decrease the infection risk for those people whom we really need on site.
That's a special factor in our industry, that some people have to come, and as a consequence, we are particularly careful not to have anybody else to come to the office to reduce the risk of infection. I hope this gives you a bit of a flavor of the dynamics. Really, Asia is improving a lot, U.S. is on a good way, Europe will probably still take a bit longer.
Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Henrietta Rumberger from AWP. Henrietta, please.
Can you hear me?
We can hear you well.
Excellent. Wonderful. Three questions, if I may. One is on the biosimilar impact, just to clarify. You said when presenting full year results that you expect the impact this year to be around CHF 4.7 billion. Does that still hold? Considering CHF 1.6 billion in the first quarter, that's quite a lot. If you would just add up, it would be much more than CHF 4.7 billion, so it needs to come down quite a bit during the next few quarters. Secondly, on this topic, China, what about biosimilar impact there, d o you have any biosimilar impact in China? Thirdly, on the diagnostics business, how is the situation with supply and demand? I remember from the full year results that there were some issues about not meeting all demand that's there. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Henrietta. Regarding the full year guidance, I believe, actually, the number we referred to was CHF 4.6 billion for the full year as a best estimate. I don't want to lend any sort of false precision to that number, but that's still essentially what we're predicting for the full year. Because, as I mentioned, Q1 is particularly impacted. For example, if you look at Q4 of 2020, we had a large impact in Q4 of 2020. When we get to Q4 of 2021, we'll be comparing our results versus that earlier year quarter that had a large impact already. Whereas Q1 of 2020, there was not so much impact. I hope that makes sense. If you look at the graph I showed, for example, the Avastin impact in Europe in Q1 was very large.
Well, by Q4 of last year, Avastin impact had already largely happened, so when we get to Q4 of 2021, there won't be so much of an impact, h ope that makes sense. Regarding China biosimilar impact, it's a bit of a complex picture because in China there are some biosimilars There's also a lot of patients who are just now getting access because of our inclusion in the National Drug Reimbursement List several years ago. The penetration of these therapies is still reaching the kind of distant parts of China. So we have a dynamic in place where we're selling more Avastin, MabThera, Herceptin in China, and there's also some biosimilar competition. The net effect in recent quarters, in the last few quarters, has been generally either stable sales or slight growth on our end, but that in the presence of some biosimilars. Thomas?
Yeah. Let me answer those questions. First, on the antibody tests, both in the lab and in point of care, there is enough supply, but demand is starting to increase, specifically on the lab antibody tests. On the antigen tests, both on lab and the point of care, there is enough supply there as well. On PCR tests, let me answer it in two ways. One is giving you a market view, and then giving you a Roche view. Right? Specifically, if you look in the U.S., you see a significant drop in PCR testing, but we have not seen a drop in PCR testing. The market has seen a drop, we have not seen a drop. This is exactly happening.
What we had predicted that would happen is that people are just tired of using these research platforms, and they're trying to consolidate on automated platforms. Platforms like our platform, where you just put the test tubes on and you can walk home, and you can have good night's sleep. The next morning, you come back and it's done. Right? You don't have to have people working throughout the night manually to do these test results. That's the one component that we see that why people are more trying to consolidate on our platforms and why we haven't seen any impact, specifically. I would say on the market perspective, probably the demand is being met, or even there may be more supply.
From a Roche perspective, we're still in a situation, we have higher demand than supply. That will be changing in this quarter as we are really ramping up significantly. I would put it from that perspective.
Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Dominik Feldges, NZZ. Over to you.
Yes, hello. Thank you. Well, I am sitting actually here in, just on a personal note, in isolation, and thank you for your test. I can confirm, this is rapid, I have not been tested positive myself, but someone in the family. One can really say that your rapid test seems to be pretty precise, and the PCR test then confirmed the results in two cases. Of course, what I also experience here is that you feel pretty alone here as a patient, because the policy really is still, if you call here in Switzerland, at least your doctor, "Please stay away. If you want to be seen by a doctor, please go to the emergency unit." Then it is really up to the patient to help himself or herself. Obviously, there are some old medicines that are out, which can be tried with various results.
It's difficult to get an overview. To put a long story short, I still think we desperately need such a pill, as you mentioned. I'm a bit disappointed or wondering why you cannot accelerate this. Why this pill cannot be, if it's apparently so efficient, being brought maybe faster to the market? If you could comment on this. The second question would be about, I know you are not in vaccines, but still some pharmaceutical companies, even Bayer, which is also not in vaccines, has now also provided support to these vaccine providers in production. Why are you not doing this as Roche, or is this something maybe you might envisage in the future? Thank you.
Perhaps I could just quickly comment. First of all, thank you very much for your personal endorsement of the self-test. It's good to see how we can actually make a contribution in the fight to COVID with innovation, right? That's really at the core of it, so thanks for that. In terms of your frustration about doctor visits, and the possibility to return to kind of a normal healthcare delivery, I share your concern, and that goes much beyond Switzerland. We see this around the world, that unfortunately, due to the pandemic, many severely ill patients are hesitating or sometimes even not able to visit their doctors to go to the hospital. We see that diagnostic screening in certain areas like cancer is not at the levels where it was before. We see that patients are showing up at a later stage with their disease.
The sad reality is that we will have many people who will potentially even die from other severe diseases because they are not diagnosed in time or not treated in time due to this situation. All I can say is I'd encourage patients, if they suspect that something is not all right, that they still go to the doctor, that they go to the hospital. I should say, also in Switzerland, that in the meantime, healthcare systems have adapted, right? It might be that one or the other doctor indeed is hesitant, but at the end of the day, if you are a patient and you have a need, also in Switzerland, you have now a possibility to get your doctor visit, and I think it's very, very important.
Otherwise, we might reduce perhaps one or the other risk related to COVID, but we have a lot of suffering and people potentially dying from other diseases. I think that's really very important. Now, your last point, in terms of our efforts on the medicine side, I wish we could launch a pill tomorrow. That's just the very nature of drug development, that it takes some time beyond the discovery of the molecule to then also validate the molecule in sufficiently large patient cohorts. The phase II studies are going on, w hat we do is actually we already plan for phase III at risk. We are preparing the phase III, the confirmatory trials, which you need for registration and approval. We prepare for that already in parallel, even though we do not yet have the phase II results. That's one way how we can accelerate.
We do everything to bring such potential medicines to the market as soon as possible, number one. Number two, I should also say the collaboration with the authorities, both for testing and medicines, is excellent. What we have seen over the last year, I would never have thought that is possible. If you think of filing, for example, where we share data kind of online with regulatory authorities, so that when the study's completed, both the regulatory authorities and the companies at the same information level, that has helped enormously to accelerate the approval of new medical options. It's a miracle that we got the first vaccines already approved end of last year. I would never have thought that to be possible. Part of that is, of course, also the good collaboration with the authorities.
I really have to say that on the day, it feels like it takes forever, but if you put it into perspective, it's incredible how fast those medicines and vaccines actually made their way to patients. In spite of all the hurdles, we still have to remove in particular now on the supply side. Why is Roche not in vaccines? It's a different business, w e would be very open to help if we had capacities or capabilities we could bring in. We are just not having those specific capabilities which are needed now in the vaccine space. I should say, the collaboration in other areas is really fantastic. The antibody cocktail is a wonderful example of that. The underlying reason why Regeneron and Roche came together is because we have capacities and a lot of knowhow in antibody production.
Here we joined forces, and that's the very reason why we are able to provide already now those medicines around the world. Without this cooperation, that wouldn't have been possible. We have companies supporting us, actually, I should also say that. Wherever we can and wherever we would have capabilities or free resources, obviously we would make them available for vaccine producers as well. It's just not the specific capabilities we have in-house we could provide for those companies at this stage.
May I just-
Thank you. Yeah, Mr. Feldges, you have a follow-up question or comment?
Yes, just a quick point, because there might have been a misunderstanding a bit. What I was referring to is also what I see as a problem is, with COVID patients suffering acute symptoms, that they are not allowed to see their doctor and are left to themselves. I think it's not only a, b ecause doctors simply don't want to receive them, and I see this a bit of a problem.
No, it's absolutely fair, and there is a need for the healthcare system to adapt. Actually, Bill referred to the issues around infusion chairs for antibody cocktails. I mean, it's a similar problem that if you have a COVID-infected person coming to a healthcare institution, you cannot just enter the normal room. There are other patients being treated because there is the infection risk then. You have to have a separate patient flow for COVID-infected patients. That adds complexity, and that's actually what we have seen with the adoption of the antibody cocktails. There's no doubt, everybody agrees, that this is a fantastic medicine which can save lives. I mean, hospitalization and death rates down by 70%. There's the logistic challenge that you have to bring the patients to the infusion chair, basically.
As they are infected with COVID, you need a special setup in the institutions. Then, of course, if it's a small, say, doctor's office, that gets even more complicated. You might not have a second waiting room, i t can be as simple as that, right? That's the reason why then those patients have to be referred to bigger institutions. I should say systems are increasingly adapting to the situation, but it remains a challenge. You're absolutely right.
Okay. We still have questions from three people. We are very close to 9:00 A.M. we can go a little bit beyond, so I really would like to give everyone the opportunity, and please keep the answers short. We will be starting with Étienne Lavigne . Over to you.
Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you. Two brief questions. Severin, just following on from your point about the speed of the regulatory process, can we anticipate this continuing post-pandemic? A second question, Bill. Sadly, the Huntington's phase III trial was stopped fairly recently. Can you just talk a little bit about the prospects for tominersen at this stage? Also, in your gene therapy in Spark, are you working on other possible Huntington medicines, or is there any research in that area? Thank you.
Certainly on the question of regulatory approvals, I would certainly hope and believe that we can benefit from the learnings during this pandemic, in particular for highly innovative life-saving medicines. Frankly, two years ago, if you would have asked me this question, and if you would have asked regulators or other players in the healthcare system, they would have said it's impossible. Now, for many reasons, right now we know that it's possible. I see no reason why patients should wait for other life-saving medicines if we now have shown that we can bring such medicines faster to patients. I've no doubt that it will have an impact on how we work together in the future, I mean, companies and regulators, and I really do hope that we keep this momentum, in particular for highly innovative and high-value medicines. Bill, for Huntington.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. Obviously, it's a very sad situation when we have to stop a pivotal program in a disease like Huntington's, where there's such a high unmet need and such a terrible impact on these patients and their families. We were acting on the recommendation of the independent data monitoring committee that, based on their view of the data, didn't see a likelihood that there would be a beneficial effect. We agree with that view, and we've stopped dosing. We are following up with these patients to try to have a really thorough assessment of what happened in terms of the effect of therapy, both because we had two different dosing arms. I probably wouldn't want to speculate on it.
It's obviously not a good sign for future development of tominersen, and it's a major setback for the field, but we will do everything we can to learn from the work that's been done. If there's a way forward, we would certainly pursue it. We do have efforts, not only on tominersen, but in our neurology groups in gRED and pRED, looking at what are ways to target this disease. You asked about gene therapy. Because there's a mutant protein that's present and we believe you have to knock that mutant protein down, that's not so easy to do with gene therapy. I mean, we're certainly considering that, but gene therapy is sort of better at adding something than it is at taking something away.
I'm not sure that gene therapy will be the approach, but I know we're going to continue to work hard to see if we can find some hope for Huntington's patients.
Okay. Thank you. The next question goes to Stefan Stoffel. Over to you, Stefan.
Hi, t hank you, Nico. Okay. Bill, can I just ask you, looking forward, what's Roche's plans in the area of targeted cancer vaccines? The theory being combining targeted cancer vaccines with drugs that could be synergistic. Do you have approaches there that you could tell us a little bit about and flag it as going forward? One quick question to Severin. Okay, you've got the FTC, you've got the U.K. and Europe apparently making large noises about how they're going to come down hard on potential antitrust issues. Is that something that is going to be taken on board by yourselves going forward, or is it more or less just politicking, do you think? Thanks.
Sure. On targeted cancer vaccines, we've felt for some years that this is a promising approach, and we did a partnership agreement that we've been involved in now, I think, for four years, with a company that probably most of you hadn't heard of called BioNTech, and we have a cancer vaccine program with BioNTech that's ongoing. That is in combination with other cancer immunotherapies. We think it's a promising approach, but we're still working to demonstrate proof of concept on that. We won't know for a bit of time. We also have other programs that are similarly looking to have sort of targeted immune approaches that are targeted on an individual patient basis, and we think it's a promising field for cancer. Let see.
Thanks.
Right. On the antitrust developments, clearly we have seen increased attention in this field. I should say it very much originated in the tech field. If you see where it all started, if you like, in particular in the U.S., it was a discussion about the need for potential new antitrust measures in the tech industry. I remind you when we did the Spark acquisition, I remember this acquisition was delayed because of the FTC going into a more detailed analysis. Eventually, the authorities cleared that transaction, not only in the U.S. but around the world. What you can see from that, it impacted us, right? In a very real sense.
I was spending many calls and many meetings to better understand the situation, and also educate the authorities to a certain degree, because you cannot always extrapolate from one industry to another industry, and every case is a bit different. I would agree with your observation. There is increased scrutiny, and again, it's very much coming from the tech industry, but it has, if you like, spilled over to pharma and biotech. In terms of does this actually change something for the future? That remains to be seen, right? Because if you look at Spark, eventually the transaction was concluded on the basis of what we have expected and the current regulations. There's other investigations ongoing, and we will have to wait for the outcome of those investigations. We'll see, o f course, we watch that very closely, so does the whole industry.
That will also have an impact, depending on what the outcome is, on how we look at potential acquisitions in the future.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. The last question we can take comes from John Miller. Over to you, John.
Two super quick questions. Bill, does that mean that the Spark program for Huntington's has been stopped, because you said gene therapy's not a real good option? The second question, Christoph Franz in March 9th, in an interview, said weeks until we get the data on the COVID pill. We're going into May or towards May, c an you give an updated guidance on when that phase II data should arrive? Thanks.
Yeah. First off, no, I'm not commenting on anything on the Spark gene therapy program. They have research and early development stage programs. Those are ongoing. I simply mean that there are different types of genetic disorders. Some of them, you have a case where you're missing a protein, and it's a relatively easier thing to add a protein when you're missing a protein with gene therapy than if you have a genetic defect that is causing a toxic protein to form, in which case you have to knock that down. That's a harder task for gene therapy, i t doesn't mean it's not possible, i t's just a trickier thing to do. Yeah, t here are lots of things that we're doing these days that we didn't think we could do a few years ago, and so we remain hopeful that we will find a solution.
I think the tominersen setback is definitely a challenge.
Otherwise, I wish you a great day. Thank you, b ye-bye.