Merck to up collaborative research in India

Merck & Co, Inc, a US-based research-driven global pharmaceutical company, is looking at entering more research collaborations with Indian companies in the next 12-18 months.

This is part of the company's strategy to reduce both costs and time involved with drug discovery, which is increasingly getting unviable owing to a meagre 7 per cent success rate.

Disclosing this here, Bharat M Chowrira, vice-president, Sirna Therapeutics, and executive director (licensing/ external research), Merck & Co, said the company was targeting research collaboration in India in the therapeutic diseases area including oncology, diabetics and neurological disorders.

He was addressing the three-day BioAsia-2008, a global bio business forum, which was inaugurated by Vice-President M Hamid Ansari.

Democratisation of research in terms of collaboration with other pharmaceutical research companies in countries like India would help offset both costs and time especially in phase one drug development and clinical trials, according to him.

Stating that there was just 1 per cent improvement in the phase 3 success rate in drug discovery programmes across the industry since 1997, Chowrira said drug discovery programmes became a tyranny with just 7 per cent probability in success rate and the decrease in pipeline.

Adding to this, approvals for new drugs were also becoming a problem in regulatory markets as the US FDA had approved just 19 new drugs last year, he added.