The Hikal Limited has allocated Rs 2 crore for its ISO 9001-accredited research and development facility based in Bangalore on the Bannerghatta Road in 2004-'05. Out of this amount, Rs 60 lakh has been set aside for infrastructure and the remaining for purchase of equipment like LCMS and GCMS. The company has already installed NMR equipment at its laboratory.

The company would also increase its manpower for research and development from the current 50 people to 100 in the next six months, Dr. Iyer V Sankar, vice president, R&D Hikal Ltd. told Pharmabiz.com.
The company's strengths in research and development evolve around process development, custom synthesis and contract research. Some of its research projects include the Chemistry Services to Provid Research Inc, USA in their Drug Discovery platform in small molecule therapeutics.

Hikal also has a joint initiative with MBT, Pune and the Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) for New Drug Development in the central nervous system (CNS). The NCBS collaborative programme for basic research study is on the neuro-chemical changes during depression and anxiety disorders in rodents. The research findings are expected to provide possible drug design development targets in neuropsychiatry.

Although in-house research and development contributes 80 per cent of the division's activity, the remaining 20 per cent is for contract research jobs. "Contract research has been one of our focus areas and we are aggressively progressing in the field by projecting our capabilities in process development of active pharmaceutical ingredients, intermediates involving multi-step synthesis, chiral chemistry," stated Dr. Sankar.

He further said that while process development is an ongoing activity for our range of active pharmaceutical ingredients, custom synthesis has been a need-based activity for global contract research assignments.

In the wake of multinational companies' hunt for research labs with good expertise and supervision, Hikal has also firmed up its plans in the concept of Full Time Employees (FTE) for custom synthesis in chemical
compounds.

Hikal also intends to progress in New Chemical Entity (NCE) programme utilising its expertise in synthetic medicinal chemistry and the opportunity for collaboration with a national facility in biological sciences.

Future plans include setting up of the cGMP Kilo Lab at Jigani where it has API plants. The cGMP Kilo Lab is expected to give a fillip to its contract research programme as when MNCs develop compounds, they require kilograms of materials manufactured under cGMP standards which they now want to outsource, e.g. from Hikal, to avoid the huge cost they would incur in making them in-house. Hikal has gauged the business potential in the area to attract such contract research jobs, which generate substantial revenues,

The cGMP Kilo Lab is expected to give a fillip to its contract research programme which could generate substantial revenues. The company plans to be a dependable source to MNCs who develop compounds as they need kilograms of materials manufactured under cGMP standards. . Hikal has gauged the business potential with a cGMP Lab which could allow MNCs to outsource and bring down their in-house development costs.