The country's medical diagnostics major Dr Lal Path Labs (LPL) is entering the US market in a big way. The company is planning to acquire 100 per cent stake in US based major Labs. The deal is in an advance stage and is likely to be completed within next 2-3 months. LPL has not disclosed acquiring company name.

In an interaction with Pharmabiz, Dr Arvind Lal, chairman and managing director, said, "We are in the early stages of finalisation of the deal. The US has huge potential and we are expecting good business in the coming years. If we want to take one test from here it will take nearly 18 hours but after the acquisition test can be done within a few hours".

LPL has planned to set up its new state of the art facility lab for all disciplines of laboratory medicine at Rohini in New Delhi. It is investing approximately Rs 30 crore and the new lab will start its operations early 2008.

"We are setting up biggest lab in Asia, on a 85,000 sq ft area. This new lab will have the state of the art facilities for all disciplines of laboratory medicine viz, anatomic, pathology or histopathology, biochemistry haematology clinical pathology, microbiology, electrophoresis, HPLC, tandem mass spectrometry, flowcytometry, molecular diagnostics including RT PCR for qualitative and quantitative tests, cytogenetics, atomic absorption spectrometry, FTIR and others. We are also setting up 50 new centres across the country," Lal further said.

Few months back, the company has set up its state-of-the-art clinical trial laboratory at its headquarters in Gurgaon as part of its wider plan to cash in on the growing clinical trial market in the country. LPL is working with a number of Indian and foreign pharmaceutical companies and contract research organisations (CROs) for the last few years. LPL has already finalised an elaborate blueprint for making it a key player in the clinical trial business in the country.

LPL has accreditations from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL). The laboratory has a well documented Quality Assurance (QA) programme based on good laboratory practices (GLP). The company runs about 30 laboratories and have an extensive specimen collection network of more than 550 collection centres covering the entire India and extending into neighbouring countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This wide network is supported by a strong logistics support system. The laboratory uses a state-of-the-art laboratory information management system "Ultra" from GE Medical Systems, which enables bar-coded bi-directional interfacing between server and analytical instrument.