Indian CROs making global moves

M&A activity in the pharma industry involving Indian players has been recently becoming more commonplace as the country´s large firms begin to push hard for a more global presence in a bid to capitalise on what is a growing opportunity within clinical outsourcing.

The global clinical trials industry is estimated at about $15bn and India's domestic CRO market, with over 100 players, currently represents only a fraction of this, with a turnover of $300-350m a year.

This figure is projected to grow to $2bn by 2010, however, as Indian CROs continue to spread their wings beyond their domestic borders to bring in new business.

Asian Clinical Trials forms links with China ACT, which is a CRO subsidiary of Suven Life Sciences, has formed an alliance with VPSCRO, a Beijing-based CRO - said to be China's largest in term of numbers of ongoing trials - under which the pair will run clinical trial services in both India and China.

Venkatraman Sunder, vice president of Operations for ACT said that the collaboration aims at providing " high quality, cost effective clinical research services with greater speed in patient recruitment from the [Asia] region ".

" Given the fact that 50 per cent of global population is living in India and China and the global pharmaceutical industry's ever increasing demand to reach out to diversified patient populations, the strategic collaboration between ACT and VPSCRO provides a platform offering fully-fledged clinical research solutions in the Asian region to global sponsors ", said Sunder.

Dr Charlie Xu, Director of Global Business Development of VPSCRO added: " Together we will partner to build a world class CRO platform to conduct clinical trials in Asia Region ".

Veeda Clinical Research launches global oncology arm Meanwhile, Veeda Clinical Ressearch has just announced the launch of a global oncology CRO subsidiary, called Veeda Oncology, through which the firm will offer oncology clinical research services to biopharmaceutical firms.

Veeda Clinical Research' group managing director Binoy Gardi said: " Since July 1, 2007 we have been establishing the infrastructure for a global oncology CRO and today we are pleased to announce that both the personnel and technical infrastructure are in place, validated and tested. "

Matt Bowman, president and CEO of the Oncology division said that through the subsidiary the firm is aiming to provide clients with "world class" oncology expertise, along with " rapid and cost effective access " to oncology and haematology patients around the globe, using its existing facilities in the US, Europe and India to " meet both the regional and global needs of its sponsors ". "

In addition, we expect to create additional global capacity through targeted acquisitions that we anticipate completing during the next quarter ," he said.

Apurva Shah, Veeda Clinical Research' co-group managing director said that a key strategy that the company will be relying upon is gaining access to large oncology patient populations is through " unique, exclusive " relationships that it has in place with oncology hospitals in India, as well as in Eastern Europe. "

In addition, our US organisation has worked with virtually every major oncology investigational site.

With these relationships and the rapid ability to open sites, we will be able to meet the critical accrual requirements that our sponsors are establishing to accelerate the rate of drug development ," he said.

Siro Clinpharm enters Europe

In other Indian CRO news this week, Siro Clinpharm has planted itself in Europe for the first time with the acquisition of mid-size German CRO Omega Mediation Group, for an undisclosed amount of cash.

In addition to its headquarters in Offenbach in Germany, Omega has operations in Athens, Greece, Talinn, Estonia and Tel Aviv, Israel, and a staff of 120, all of whom will remain employed by the new owners.

Siro Clinpharm said the business will continue to function independantly.

Mumbai-based Siro Clinpharm already has 400 employees between its operation in India and the US, which it acquired in July last year with the purchase of US CRO Global Client Partners.

The company said that the latest European acquisition would " add to the geographical spread " of the services that Siro can offer clients.

The firm also indicated it is expecting to double its business turnover by 2010, and these plans involve shortly entering South East Asia, namely Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as South America, via further acquisitions.