The company that makes the drug Erbitux, which treats colorectal, head and neck cancer, has decided to sell the drug in Canada after a two-year wrangle over price.

"We looked at this and we realized that we needed to make it more available to Canadians. That's really what fuelled our decision," Marc Osborne, director of public affairs and government relations for Bristol-Myers Squibb, the manufacturer of Erbitux (cetuximab), told CBC News Monday.

Erbitux is primarily used to treat colorectal cancer that has metastasized when other drugs have failed.

It was approved by Health Canada in September 2005. But Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), a quasi-judicial body that protects consumers by ensuring that the manufacturers' prices of patented medicines are not excessive, could not agree on a price.

That price, which is confidential for competitive reasons, has now been agreed to by the company.

"They set the price," Osborne says of the board. "We think it did not recognize the value of innovation that Erbitux represents but with the overall survival data, we decided it's time to market this drug at the price set by the PMPRB."

It's been estimated that a standard course of therapy costs $56,000, according to the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada.

Osborne said that Bristol-Myers Squibb felt the drug's effect on the survival time of patients necessitated its sale.

He said that Health Canada now has to approve the drug and issue a notice of compliance, which involves a careful analysis of the manufacturing process and the product monograph. Osborne said he doesn't know how long the process will take.

Once approved, it will be up to the provinces as to whether they will cover Erbitux.

"We hope they put this cancer drugs on their formularies," said Osborne.

Ontario pays to send colorectal patients to the U.S. for treatment.

In 2008, an estimated 21,500 Canadians will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and 8,900 will die of it, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.