Reliance takes up clinical research services

Tuesday, 11 May 2004, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: With costs of clinical trials skyrocketing in the US and Europe, India's largest private conglomerate Reliance Industries is now providing a range of services to overseas companies. "The Reliance Clinical Research Services (RCRS) is now addressing the clinical research services market in the US and Europe," the company said Monday. A component of the life sciences initiative of Reliance, "RCRS is currently conducting several studies for clients based in the US, Britain and the Middle East. RCRS is working for indications in oncology, burn wounds, cardiovascular, endocrinology, nephrology, gastroenterology, infectious diseases and vaccines," the company said in a statement. RCRS bridges science with the market place by performing, assisting and managing pharmaceutical, biotechnology product and medical device development through pre-clinical and clinical (Phase I to Phase IV) studies. "Reliance Clinical Research Services initiative is one aspect of Reliance's transformation from a manufacturing organisation to a knowledge and services driven enterprise," said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited, in the statement. "The value proposition of RCRS is built around a strong knowledge base and network in the medical domain, full service project planning, conduct and management of trials throughout India, in-house molecular diagnostic support and in-house Phase I and pre-clinical toxicity ability," said Rajat Goyal, vice president of RCRS. According to Reliance, "costs of clinical trials in the US and Europe have skyrocketed, and recruiting qualified patients, who have not received any prior treatment, can be extremely time consuming and delay completion of these trials for months or even years. Many health care companies, both large and small, find doing clinical trials in India an attractive option." Undertaking clinical drug trials and product development in India could be up to 75 percent faster. As per consultants Rabo India Finance, in India the cost of phase I/II/III trials is just 50-60 percent of that in the US. In recent years, India has created a favourable environment for clinical trials by resolving issues related to protection of intellectual property. Many major pharmaceutical companies have already successfully used clinical trials' data from India for US Federal Drug Authority's New Drug Application submissions. The broadly developed information technology infrastructure in India also provides added advantage to ensure speedy conduct of studies and flow of information/data from the sites to the sponsor's databases. "RCRS expects to leverage the India advantage with its value proposition to deliver world-class clinical research services to global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device and nutraceutical organisations," said K.V. Subramaniam, senior executive vice president, Reliance Industries Limited.
Source: IANS