The European Commission approves the use of Erbitux in head and neck cancer

In late November, Merck Serono (the biotech subsidiary of Merck KGaA) received European Commission approval to extend the indication for Erbitux® (the world's first custom-designed monoclonal antibody for inhibiting the proliferation of tumor cells) to the treatment of patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and the neck. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated the efficacy of Erbitux in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy.

This represents a considerable step forward, since head and neck cancer leads to over 68,000 deaths worldwide each year and has a 40% metastatic relapse rate.

Merck Serono is located in Lyons (in the Rockefeller healthcare district) and Geneva (Switzerland).

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