MNCs target India for pharma clinical trials

Wednesday, 31 March 2004, 20:30 IST
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LONDON: India may be the next destination for large-scale clinical trials by multinational pharmaceutical companies, a research by a British consultancy suggests. The shifts in India's legal and patent policies, together with emerging Indian pharmaceutical companies, could increase the proportion of global clinical trials done in India from one percent to 10 percent, says Sunil Shah at Oxygen Healthcare. "The opportunities in India for the drug development industry in the next five years are comparable to the impact on the technology industry over the last five," he said here. Already, a number of multinational drug companies have invested in India. AstraZeneca has opened a $10 million research facility in Bangalore, while Pfizer has moved into Mumbai. Glaxo Smithkline has entered an innovative partnership with Indian major Ranbaxy to develop drugs. Shah estimates that the cost of conducting clinical trial on a drug in India is less than half that in the UK. Another factor for its popularity is the large number of medical graduates fluent in English coming out of India's 162 medical colleges every year.
Source: IANS
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