Quintiles exploring pharma-bio biz in India

Quintiles Transnational Corp, a contract research major serving the pharmaceutical industry, is exploring collaboration or tieup opportunities to set up a separate business to handle work for the bio-pharma industry. Such a business format will enable it to get started immediately.

It has set aside $1 billion to set up centres for such work in the United States, followed by Europe and Japan.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Dennis Gillings, chairman and CEO, Quintiles, said the company was trying to choose between Singapore and India for the location of its second Asian centre (after Japan) for the bio-pharma business.

"Seeing the number of qualified professionals in India, we are exploring the collaboration or tieup model for India and we are in talks with a few companies," he added.

"Quintiles, through the cost arbritage principle is working on modalities to take Indian companies abroad, like the way we are bringing foreign companies into India," said Ferzaan Engineer, CEO, Quintiles India.

For this, the company is in talks with half a dozen companies, where major development work will be done in India and clinical data collected around the world.

"In addition to data collection and management, the company plans to offer drug registration and also help in sales," added Engineer.

Quintiles Transnational Corp, which has offices in 50 countries, on Monday announced the opening of the Quintiles Data Management Centre at Bangalore. It will handle global clinical data managment, have robust connectivity, a capacity to seat 400 professionals and will be scalable.

According to Engineer, the company has tapped Indian IT expertise to assemble a well-trained data managment team.

"We currently have a staff strength of 200 in data managment, mainly pharmacologists, medically qualified professionals and bio-science post-graduates," he said.

"With the establishment of our data management centre in Bangalore, we will continue to leverage that expertise using both traditional tools and the internet to deliver locked databases, which will be cleaner, more efficently," he added.

Speaking on the Indian operations, Suresh Ramu, senior director-data management, Quintiles Technologies, said the company has 15 of the top 20 global pharma companies among its clients.

"We work six days a week and 16 hours a day over two shifts to cover the global time zones from Australia to the US," he added.