Healthcare firm Novartis India announced on Thursday that its Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Sanjay Murdeshwar, has resigned. The healthcare company’s board accepted Murdeshwar’s resignation at its meeting on Thursday, the drug manufacturing firm said in a regulatory filing.
In a letter "dated January 25, 2024, Murdeshwar has tendered his resignation as director and employee of the company with effect from the close of business hours of April 2, 2024." "My personal and professional aspirations have evolved over time, and I believe this is the right time to pursue a new direction for myself," Murdeshwar wrote in his letter to the board.
On Thursday, Novartis India reported a net profit of Rs 26.5 crore for its third quarter, which ended on December 2023. The pharmaceutical firm reported a net profit of Rs 7.6 crore in the third quarter of the 2022-23 fiscal. Revenue from operations stood at Rs 84.5 crore, while the same stood at Rs 80.1 crore in the October-December quarter of the last fiscal.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the pharma major announced that its drug Lutathera had shown significantly improved patient outcomes for gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours.
According to the company’s statement, the company presented data from the Phase III NETTER-2 trial that shows Lutathera plus long-acting release (LAR) octreotide reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 72 per cent as first-line therapy in patients. This data from the trials was presented at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Gastrointestinal (GI) Cancers Symposium.
“These positive results for Lutathera are practice-changing and offer new first-line treatment data for patients who have a significant unmet need. This study confirms the clinical benefit of first-line radioligand therapy for newly diagnosed patients living with these types of advanced GEP-NETs,” said Dr Simron Singh, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and co-founder of the Susan Leslie Clinic for Neuroendocrine Tumours at the Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Ontario, Canada.
Shares of the company ended 2.66 per cent up at Rs 938.65 apiece on the BSE.