The Manipal Group and Quintiles Research (India) Pvt Ltd, the local arm of the world’s leading CRO Quintiles Transnational, have signed an agreement where the Manipal Group will be the preferred research partner for Quintiles in India, Nepal and South East Asia for clinical trials.

Quintiles will have access to Manipal’s integrated platform of clinical material across its six campus network in these geographies, while Manipal will leverage Quintiles’ professional expertise to create a highly skilled and compliant clinical research system within its network.

Apart from supporting effective drug discovery and launch, the alliance also envisages joint publications, seminars and collaboration in the emerging high tech area of pharmacogenomic research, an official release said.

D A Prasanna, chief executive officer, Manipal Group said, “Quintiles and Manipal are linked by common objectives in clinical research to establish internationally compliant, efficient and cost-effective clinical trial programmes. Through this alliance we hope to build our research capacity within Kasturba Medical College (KMC) and our other medical institutions”.

Dr. Ferzaan Engineer, chief executive officer, Quintiles India said, “Manipal is the largest teaching hospital network in the country and the volume of clinical material available is rich and diverse. Five international-level clinical studies are ongoing at the teaching hospitals of the Manipal Group and three more will be initiated shortly”.

Quintiles will provide training and assistance to set up Ethics Committees in the system as per ICH-GCP and ICMR requirements. In addition, Quintiles and Manipal shall jointly form a Steering Committee of senior members to review, manage and collaborate on clinical trials and research projects, the release stated.