Scores high on enforcing intellectual property, cost-effectiveness
May 26 2009 2210 hrs IST , Chennai
By Sangeetha G.
From $70 million pumped in by just a few pharmaceutical companies to India in 2002, the revenue from clinical research outsourcing has leaped to $800 million now, according to industry insiders.
“In the past two to three years the growth in the sector has been more than 300 per cent. In the past 18 months we found doubling of outsourcing revenue,” said Mahesh Malneedi, CEO and managing director of Makrocare, a Hyderabad-based clinical research organisation.
With a huge population and a plethora of diseases ranging from tropical to nutrition-related and lifestyle diseases,
Indian Council of Medical Research has been authorised to oversee the trials and there is a Central Ethical Committee as well as local ethical committees to keep a tab on the researches.
With international standards in place, the industry has come to a level of maturity, said Malneedi.
Further, the cost factor makes CRO to
Globally, there is a pressure on pharma companies to reduce costs on drugs from government agencies. Very few new drugs are coming out and the patents on many of the blockbuster drugs are nearing expiry. “This is pressuring the pharma companies to push as many compounds as possible to the market despite the stringent FDA and regulatory authority demands,” he said.