Indian pharma companies that are operating R&D department can now take a breath of relief with this news. The share of drugs would now experience a rise in the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs must be categorized into the group of those that were already licensed into the portfolios of leading global pharmaceutical companies. This would eventually result into a lot more licensing opportunities for companies that are developing new drugs but need partners to take them through to the market. The Tufts Center for the study of Drug Development has come to a conclusion that the number of in-licensed products in the portfolio of leading drug companies grew from one in seven in 1993-97, to one in four in 2003-05.

This clearly indicates that 25% of drugs sent into clinical testing in 2003-05 for the top 10-pharma companies were licensed in as compared to a lower percentage of just 15% in 1993-97.

Around 879 investigational molecules were analyzed. These molecules were with phase I start dates during 1993 and 2005 and the firms selected were Astrazenec, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Smith Kine, Johnson & Johnson, Merch, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis & Wyeth.

This must go well for a couple of Indian-based pharmaceutical companies that are striving towards developing their own new drugs or new drug delivery systems. These companies include Ranbaxy, Dr. Reddy’s & Sun pharma, Wockhardt, Glenmark, Torrent, Lupin, Orchid pharma & Claris. Most of these companies will at some point seek to out-license the molecules coming out of their research labs as no domestic pharma company today has the capacity to bring alone a new molecule to the market.

Companies such as Dr. Reddy’s labs, Ranbaxy labs, Tottent & Glenmark, have out-licensed some of their molecules to global pharma players.

However, the news is that none of the Indian pharma companies have been successful in developing a single new molecule till date. The reason is that most of the molecules didn’t make it through the clinical trails & some of the companies such as Glenmark’s oglemilast & Dr. Reddy’s Balaglitazone are still under clinical development.

Indian companies, however, are still having great hopes. They are focusing on R&D, for both introduction of new drugs & novel drug delivery systems.

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