Here’s one to watch. The FDA, presumably, will give the nod tomorrow to a new breast-cancer treatmentl called Tykerb. A study shows it helps women fight breast cancer when they don’t respond to Herceptin, the Roche and Genetech drug that generated $3.2 billion in sales last year.

One securities analyst see this as a “significant milestone” for Glaxo, which could use a new drug as patents expire and its pipeline remains otherwise rather slim. And since Tykerb is likely to cost $40,000 per patient each year, its easy to see why there’s excitement, beyond the medical benefits.

“We certainly didn’t understand when we started how powerful it would be,” former Glaxo chemist Stuart Cockerill tells Bloomberg News. He led the initial research into Tykerb a decade ago, and championed the project through scientific setbacks and a merger in which the project was almost dropped. Take a peek to learn the rest.

[tags]Breast Cancer, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Herception, Roche, Tykerb[/tags]