AstraZeneca India will invest $10 million in setting up one more R&D facility near its centre of excellence at Bangalore, soon. This new R&D facility will be an additional arm to its existing centre, which was built to conduct research on TB, according to Lars Walan, managing director AstraZeneca India.
India accounts for 30 per cent of world's TB population. The centre is built for conducting discovery research for its parent AstraZeneca worldwide and has around 60 scientists, 50 of who are PhDs and 45 who have come back after extensive study and work in the US and Europe.
The conventional multi-drug anti-TB therapy has to be taken for a duration of 16 months. And if the patient takes the drugs only for two months, there is a 70 per cent chance of recurrence. If taken for four months, recurrence chances are 40 per cent and six per cent chance of recurrence if taken for six months. The current therapies have become resistant to the pathogens.
"Under such circumstances, AstraZeneca's efforts would be aimed towards developing a new therapy with a much shorter therapy duration. TB will grow proportionately with AIDS and we are working on drugs that AIDS patients having TB could take. We have begun working on three leads in the area in Bangalore. Our focus is to develop a single drug therapy," said Walan.
Although positive about the company's future in India, the snail-paced government policies pertaining to the implementation of strong IPR and data protection laws and infrastructure in the country has effectively pulled back Astra Zeneca's enthusiasm a bit, he cautioned.
"The Indian government has not yet notified specific guidelines on clinical trials. We will have to work out with organizations like WHO and Global anti-TB Alliance for these guidelines," he said. Walan also pointed out the need to increase the number of patent examiners in the country. "China has 10 times more patent examiners compared to India," he said.
"The coming 3-4 years are the ones to wait and watch. If the government does not act straight, MNCs would look at other alternatives. India can be benchmarked with China for several reasons, but the government policies on IPR and data protection only would prove its worth as an alternative destination for investment," said Walan.