Nicholas Piramal India Ltd has put on hold the development programme of its current CVS and antifungal leads. Instead, the company would try new leads against these diseases for bringing its NCE programme on these diseases back on track, said senior officials of the company.

Following the strategy to pursue the drug pathways which have been established as less riskier by innovator companies, NPIL was developing the above two molecules. However, these molecules suffered an unexpected setback during the later stages of trials. This led NPIL to put on hold their plans on these molecules.

"As the NCE research is hugely expensive, costing millions, NPIL's policy has been to conduct research on a successful and proven pathways already established by MNCs. We have put our CVS and anti-fungal molecules on the backburner. But still we keep our options open. If something positive emerges in future, we may go ahead with our studies on these. In the meantime, we are evaluating various potential leads to address these diseases," said sources.

Similarly, NPIL, which was working on a diabetes molecule based on ppar-gamma gene, has decided to change the target due to strong regulatory requirements put forth by the US FDA. The company is in the process of identifying new lead molecules for the disease.

Nevertheless, NPIL's research on its anti-cancer and anti-inflammation molecules are showing promising results and are developing as per the strategy planned.