Dr Reddy`s to form JV for off-patent drugs

Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, the country’s third-biggest drugmaker, will form a joint venture with one of the world’s biggest biotech companies to make biosimilars or generic versions of patented biotech drugs to take on Ranbaxy Laboratories, Reliance Life Sciences, among other Indian companies. Several drugs are expected to come off patent in this segment in the next five years.

“The joint venture will be in place during the current fiscal year. The partner will have the technological expertise and global reach on developing biosimilars, which is a high reward-high risk business” G V Prasad, vice-chairman and chief executive of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories told Business Standard.

Dr Reddy’s plans to invest over Rs 175-200 crore for the development and manufacturing of biosimilars in the next one or two years. The partners would initailly focus on potential areas such as off-patent biotech cancer drugs and were planning to work initially on about eight potential products, said Prasad.

“It is too early to reveal more on the ongoing discussions and modalities of the proposed joint venture, he added.

Currently, about 10-15 per cent of the global plarmaceutical market consist of drugs of biotech origin and many of them are expected to go off-patent in the coming years.

The combined market for biosimilars, also known as follow on biologicals, is expected to touch $21 billion by 2015 in the US and Europe. Further, about 30 per cent of the new drug approvals by the drug regulatory authorities of the US and Europe in the last few years are of biotech origin, said industry experts.

Already Dr Reddy’s has set up a biologics development centre in Hyderabad, with a 250 member scientific team. Dr Reddy’s has already developed and launched a few biogenerics, including ‘Reditux,’ a generic version of Roche’s Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma drug.

Reditux, which generated a turnover of over Rs.15.4 crore from the domestic market, is regarded as the world’s first biosimilar monoclonal antibody used in the treatment of this kind of cancer.

Further, Dr Reddy’s is claimed to be the first company in India to fully develop an in-house biogeneric, ‘Grafeel,’ (generic of biotech cancer drug Filgrastim), right from the molecular biology phase upto commercial manufacturing, sources said.

While development of biosimilars such as biogeneric cancer drugs cost about $ 25-30 million, generics of pharmaceuticals could be developed within a shorter period of 1-2 years with an investment of about $10-12 million, said industry experts.