beyondbrics

By Girija Shivakumar and Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

Indian pharmaceutical companies are often touting their potential for innovative drug discovery.

Piramal, the Mumbai-based drug company which sold its generics drug business to Abbott for $3.7bn, recently said it expects to unveil India’s first domestically developed drug by 2012.

But not everyone is convinced India is ready for ground-breaking research.

At a conference this month, Dr VM Katoch, the director general for Indian Council of Medical Research, said that India had “great dreams but no pathway for reality.”

Thanks to generics, India does have the world’s third largest pharmaceutical industry, by drug production volume, and the largest number of manufacturing facilities approved by the Federal Drug Administration outside the US. The country has also become popular for clinical trials of drugs in development.

Now, as well as Piramal, other companies like Jubilant Organosys, Aurigene and Syngene are also chasing the holy grail of a new blockbuster drug.

However, the transition to cutting-edge research and development is problematic, say many industry experts. In developed countries, universities are crucial in drug research. Yet in India, university science departments have abysmal infrastructure and limited research facilities. Even where facilities do exist, there’s little cooperation between academic researchers and corporate-run laboratories.

“If India has to be at the core of this Industry there needs to be trust between Indian academia and private institutions,” said Mukta Arora, director for India of Eli Lilly, a pharma company.

Otherwise, India is likely to be seen simply as a location for contract research work – meaning Indian companies may not share the upside of drug discovery.

“Let’s move from mere talks to the level of realistic achievements,” Dr Katoch said. But he did at least add that the government is willing to help the industry overcome its shortcomings.

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