Dabur India Ties Up With Us Firm For Cancer Drugs

This is the first joint venture of its kind, where the Indian company is providing the basic ingredient while the foreign firm will provide technology to convert the base drug, Dab-10, into Paclitaxel.

Dabur had announced the discovery of a natural process of producing Dab-10 from the leaves and needles of the Himalayan Yew tree in 1994.

Its method was superior to the then practice of extracting Dab-10 from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree by which the tree was destroyed.

Dabur's method led to the regeneration of the tree making it a perennial resource for the drug, it claimed. Through Dabur's process, one tonne of leaves yields one gram of the finished product, Paclitaxel.

 

The joint venture, called Innova Pharmaceuticals, will begin manufacturing Paclitaxel in Nova Scotia, Canada, from mid-1997. The $2-million project, in which both partners have a equal share, has plans to manufacture other cancer treatment drugs later.

Paclitaxel has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of ovarian and breast cancer.

Dabur makes the same drug in India markets it under the brandname, Intaxel.

The company claims that treatment with Intaxel in India cost about half of that of treatment with similar imported drugs.

Sepracor is a research-oriented company that uses its proprietary separation and synthesis technologies to develop purer, potentially safer and more effective forms of widely sold drugs.

The company specialises in minimising harmful side effects of popular drugs and to limit their chemical action to the intended medical purpose.

It will make Dabur's Paclitaxel more acceptable to the western market by reengineering the drug without disturbing its original properties.

Dabur says it has put in over 150 man-years of effort in the development of DAB-10 and Intaxel. It has spent over Rs 10 crore in development effort. This is a fraction of what it would cost a foreign company had it invested the same amount of man-hours.