India's biotech industry is reporting a surge of new drug development collaborations as Big Pharma companies remodel their R&D strategies and look to cut costs and share risk. And the Indian developers are brokering lower research costs for an inside track on some early-stage programs.
"Partnerships now range from discovery to early clinical development, which have significant upsides even for the partnering firms," said Dr. CSN Murthy, the CEO of Aurigene Discovery Technologies, in an address to an industry group in Bangalore.
Indian biotech companies are moving away from a straight fee-for-service approach to development work, a model that dominated the industry just a few years ago. AstraZeneca, for example, inked a collaboration deal with Jubilant Biosys last year.
"We have elevated our expectations on the externalization of R&D to 40% of our products from 25 percent," said Jit Patel, director-strategic planning, business & development at AstraZeneca R&D, USA.
- here's the story from the Economic Times