Indian Pharma is third largest in terms of bulk production: Dr Gupta

Rajkot, Jul 25 (UNI) Indian Pharma companies are the third largest in terms of bulk producers, the Director of Central Drug Research Institute Dr C M Gupta said.

In a seminar on 'Emerging Trends in New Drug Discovery and Development,' organised by science faculty of Saurashtra university yesterday, Dr Gupta said Indian Pharma companies are very competitive and once they enter in development, results would be more better. so many Indian Pharma companies have their own Research and Development Department.

Dr Gupta further said so far thing forgeting in terms of investments, ''We are not as large as Pyzer and other International Pharma companies.

When asked about prices of drugs are increasing by leaps and bounds, he categarically denied and said the Indian medicines are the cheapest in terms of the International prices of drugs.

Earlier, in his speech, he has said major problems faced by Pharmaceutical Industry is High attrition rates from the stage 'first-in-man' to registration, the success rate being only eleven per cent during 1991-2000, highly reduced R and D productivity, Rising costs of new Drug R and D. He said only the top ten per cent of newly marketed drugs account for half of pharma industry's net returns. Only one-third of new drugs generate earnings that exceed average R and D costs.

Dr Gupta said in his speech that In silico Approaches to drug discovery for prediction of probable lead structures, lead selection and therapeutic outcome.

Dr Gupta further said that expected gains out of use of In silico Approaches that reduction in cost of development by atleast US0 million per medicine and also reduction in development time by atlest two years.

He said drug discovery process is continuously being transformed by availability of new tools and new knowledge in biological, chemical and computational sciences and added it is advisable to use both the conventional and modern approaches together to achieve higher sucess rate in new drug discovery research and development.

UNI