The Hyderabad-based Suven Pharma is embarking on a major scientific pool expansion programme as part of its added thrust on contract drug discovery in the years to come. The company, which has a pool of 108 scientists at present in the R&D team, would induct 52 more scientists by January 2004 and another 140 by 2005. The R&D team expansion is proposed mainly to cater to new projects in pre-clinical services and drug discovery, said Venkat Jasti, chairman and managing director, Suven Pharma, while speaking to Pharmabiz in Mumbai.

He said, "We are expanding our activities to APIs for the regulated markets and Drug Discovery. Under the drug discovery project, the patent would be held in the name of the company whereas the innovator company interested in the molecule would invest money. As part the process, the company has already filed 15 patents in CNS segment and some more patents are in the pipeline."

Focussing on the APIs for regulated markets, the company has set up a 100 per cent subsidiary-- Suven Synthesis. A new manufacturing facility has also been set up for APIs in Hyderabad for regulated markets. The project costs around Rs.400mn, the sources said. The first DMF for Gabapentin with US FDA has already been filed and eight more are in the pipeline, according to company sources.

Suven is currently engaged in CRAMS (Contract Research and Manufacturing Services) and supply of fine chemicals and intermediates to unregulated markets. In FY2003, the company generated sales of Rs.452mn. Under CRAMS, the company has more than 20 global pharma companies as their customers and it has 38 projects at various stages currently. In addition, two projects have already been commercialised.

As part of CRAMS, Suven provides Custom Chemical Synthesis (CCS) services for projects under clinical developments (Phase I, II, III), Manufacturing services for projects commercialised and Pre-clinical services for discovery projects. Among the projects under CRAMS, eight projects have reached in the Phase 1 trials, 18 in the Phase 2 and another eight in Phase 3 trials. The company sources said that four projects are yet to be started.

Suven has also been supplying intermediates for the two of the projects, which have already been commercialised. The market for both these products are US$ 500 million each and intermediates supplies are expected to restart for one of the products in the first quarter of 2005. In June 2003, the company entered into pre-clinical services. Under this, biological targets, patents are provided by the customers whereas Suven would do screening of their sample libraries against target, drug designing, pharmacokinetics study, In-vitro and In-vivo testing, toxicology etc. The company expects to generate revenues from this activity in 18 months time and typical contract size could be around US$ 1million.

According to Kirit Gogri, a pharma stock analyst, the company management in a recent analysts meet had indicated a 10-15% growth in profits for the financial year 2004 and a 50 per cent profits growth in FY2005 driven by materialisation of supply orders for commercialised projects. "This would translate into an EPS of Rs 14.7 for Suven stock for the year 2004, and Rs.22.1 for the year 2005," he hopes.