UK seeks to create healthy business environment with India

UK and India’s business ties within the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors continue to grow, with 13 British pharma, life sciences and research organisations visiting India this September. The delegation’s first engagement was in Mumbai on September 2. As part of their engagement in Mumbai, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) Mumbai, hosted a panel discussion on ‘International collaboration in drug delivery science’ aimed to create an opportunity for Indian and UK business delegates to meet and interact to explore trade links in Western and Southern India.

The panel discussion brought together major pharma MNCs, CROs, oncologists, hospitals, scientists, intellectual property experts and other healthcare professionals to provide areas of opportunities for UK companies as well as to deliberate on issues related to drug delivery systems that need urgent attention. Express Pharma and Express Healthcare were the media partners for this discussion.

Kumar Iyer, British Deputy High Commissioner, Western India & Director General, UKTI inaugurated the event and explained the reason for their visit to India. It was followed with a small welcome note by Mahesh Zagade, Commissioner Food & Drugs Administration, Commissioner of Food Safety, Maharashtra state who spoke about increasing UK and India business ties within the healthcare sector. He stated, “I believe this kind of interaction will further developments within the Indian pharma and healthcare industry and will also help in research and development (R&D) which will ultimately be beneficial to the end consumer i.e. patients.” He also pointed out the need for an efficient drug delivery system in India, and issues such as over use of antibiotic drugs in India. Raising a valid point, he said that excess prescription of antibiotic drugs leads to drug resistance which is a bigger threat in India. He left it to the audience and the panelists to ponder on these important points.

This was followed by the panel discussion. The panelists were Sangeeta Topiwala, Director-Market Access, Sanofi, Nidhi Saxena, CEO, Karmic Life Sciences, Ranga Iyer, Promoter, Salus Lifecare, Dr Tselepi, Founder Director, Cavendish NanoTherapeutics and Inbaraj Baskara, Mirada Medical . The discussion was moderated by Viveka Roychowdhury, Editor, Express Healthcare and Express Pharma, The Indian Express Group. Topics discussed included opportunities and challenges in Indian pharma and healthcare sector, need for advance drug delivery systems,opportunities in NDDS in India, etc.

The discussion started off with Topiwala speaking on the need for advanced drug delivery system for medicine in India. She stress upon topics such as chemotherapy and toxicity which is one of the biggest challenges in today’s time. Additionally, she spoke about the advancements in targeted therapy in the fields of oncology and diabetes. Introducing one of their latest products, AllStar insulin pen, she spoke about how the company as part of their CSR activity contributes Rs 10 from each pen towards creating better healthcare networks.

Dr Tselepi spoke about her company which offers advanced medical systems aimed at increasing the efficacy of chemotherapy or radiotherapy by targeting solid cancer tumours. She further drew notice towards the various business opportunities in this segment.

Moving on, Iyer brought in a different perspective on drug delivery. “Any drug delivery system has to be patient centric rather than business,” he stated. Further on, he suggested that India pharma needs to focus on fixed dose combination systems. Pointing out another of India’s biggest challenges, he said that the country lacks in logistic and compliance ratio. “Compliance to medicine in India is horrible,’ he claimed. Citing an example of the ‘goli ke humjoli campaign’- an initiative based on providing free oral contraceptives to women in the rural areas of India, he went on to say that inspite of distributing contraceptive pills free of cost, these women skipped their medicine doses. “Drugs should be developed in such a way that the patients would not require to take them on a daily basis. This will make chances of skipping the dose less likely,” On these lines, he urged the industry to look at the compliance factor while developing a drug delivery system.“ Drug delivery to patients must be done efficiently without worrying about the compliance factor,” he added.

Further, Saxena highlighted the opportunities within the new drug delivery system (NDDS) market in India. “Today 17 per cent of the global NDDS market is present in India which is a $100 billion market”. She emphasised, “Indian companies should join hands with partners from the US, Europe and other developed countries and conduct clinical trials. Through such partnerships they can bring products to market in less than or within 24 months. This kind of synergy will help in bringing new technologies at much affordable costs in India and will be beneficial to the patients.” Despite having one of the largest pharma industries in the world India hasn’t yet managed to produced a single new chemical entity (NCE) and Saxena touched resons for this lapse like the lack of proactive support from the government and the huge investment required to develop NCEs, hampering the growth of this area of research. Moreover, there was a common consensus among the speakers over the fact that while developing new NCEs, efforts should be taken to reduce their side effects as well. Baskara also spoke on the role of IT in facilitating efficient drug delivery system.

While concluding the panel discussion, speakers also felt that the Government needs to play a bigger role in making healthcare affordable. The speakers pointed out that India’s healthcare spend as a percentage of its GDP is very less. Also Indian pharma companies, namely Cipla, Piramal Enterprises, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Sun Pharma are currently working on various NDDS projects and results are likely to be seen in the near future.

The Government of India has started a national immunisation programme but thanks to issues like non-maintenance of cold chain etc, only 65 per cent of babies are benefited from the programme according to Iyer. “The Government of India has launched the food security bill in the Parliament, it also needs to look into the access of medicines at affordable costs,” he commented.

The delegation proceeded to Bangalore where UKTI and the Association of Biotech Led Enterprise (ABLE) signed an MoU to encourage and develop collaborative opportunities between Indian life sciences organisations and the UK. Rounding off the tour, UKTI hosted a two- day Oncology Summit in Chennai.

EP News Bureau – Mumbai