'India's big opportunity, contract research outsourcing'

China is the most important market for drugs and cannot be ignored because of its size though approval for a drug takes nine months and it is a much less developed generic market. In India, to secure approval for a drug it takes 12 weeks.

Even this has to be speeded up, said Nermeen Varawala, vice president "" business development, PRA International, UK. "India should be able to match countries like South Korea where approval takes only 30 days," Varawala added.

India today has 35 firms that are into contract research (CROs) with a combined business of $100 million. These have helped in a cost-saving of 50 per cent for firms that have outsourced their research to these firms.

CRO gives a firm access to a vast amount of resources and at the same time cuts costs. CRO has been increasing geometrically over the last few years and in 2005 it rose 45 per cent over the previous year. From 1998 to 2002 there had been a lull in clinical research among the US pharma firms. It picked up in 2003.

According to the Tufts Centre Study for the Drug Development 2006, there had been a 15 per cent increase in the R&D in the pharmaceuticals sector. From 2002-2004, there had also been a 6 per cent annual increase in the headcount among the firms that did drug R&D.

Outsourcing has become necessary as firms need to be nimble, keep costs down in an environment of rising costs. At the same time it also helps firms widen their reach in a population for study.

"CRO helps speed up drug development," said Naveen Rao, medical director, MSD Pharmaceuticals which is a subsidiary of Merck, the multinational pharma company.

For CROs, ethical committees are the biggest hurdles and the awareness among advocacy groups is very low.