Genentech, a leading biotechnology company based in San Francisco, has achieved strong financial performance during the year ended December 2007 mainly on account of significant growth in the sales of Avastin and Lucentis brands. The net profit increased by 31 per cent to US $2,769 million from $ 2,113 million in the previous year. The company's total operating revenues increased by 26.3 per cent to $11,724 million from $9,284 million. The sales in US increased to $8,540 million from $ 7,169 million, a growth of 19 per cent.

Arthur D Levinson, chairman and CEO, said, "We are pleased with our strong financial performance in 2007, which was our tenth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth. We remain steadfast in our focus on building a pipeline of novel therapies that have the potential to make an important difference for patients suffering from significant diseases. In 2008, we will continue to invest in the 20 new molecular entities in clinical development and look forward to new data from a number of potentially important line extensions, including Rituxan for multiple sclerosis and lupus and Avastin in combination with Tarceva for advanced non-small cell lung cancer".

The sales of Avastin increased by 32 per cent to $2,296 million during 2007 from $ 1,746 million in the previous year. Similarly, sales of Lucentis went up sharply by 114 per cent to $815 million from $ 380 million. The sales of Rituxan also moved up by 10 per cent to $2,285 million and that of Herceptin increased by 4 per cent to $1,287 million.

Its Research and Development (R&D) expenses increased by 40 per cent to $2,293 million from $1,633 million in the previous year. Genentech announced results from the Rituxan phase III Sunrise trial, a controlled re-treatment study for patients with rheumatoid arthritis who have had an inadequate response to previous treatment with one or more tumour necrosis factor (TNF) antagonist therapies. A preliminary review of the safety data revealed no new safety signals. The company and its collaborator Curis plan to initiate in the first half of 2008 a phase II trial of a systemic hedgehog antagonist molecule as a treatment of solid tumours.