The Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila, one of India's leading healthcare companies, announced that the Zydus Research Centre in Ahmedabad has received full accreditation from AAALAC (Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care) International. Zydus is the second company in the country to receive this accreditation, informed company officials.

AAALAC is an international body of renowned experts comprising 33 council members and over 170 consultants, which assesses and recognises the complete animal care and use programme of biomedical research or academic institutions that use animals in research, teaching or testing. This is the ultimate standard, which is recognised world over for certifying the best of the animal care and use programme. The accreditation follows an extensive for the care of laboratory animals.

In its official approval letter, AAALAC noted, "The management and staff are commended for providing good facilities and programmes for the care and use of laboratory animals…. The council is pleased to inform that the programme conforms to the AAALAC International standards." The association also commented that the centre is especially noteworthy were the integrated, well documented occupational health and safety programme, the authoritative Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC), supported by an active sub-committee. The centre also have an excellent programme for the sourcing, transport and care of dogs, including the re-homing programme the competent and motivated veterinary staff.

Zydus Research Centre has established state-of-the-art animal facilities and a world class non-human primary facility is now in the final stages of completion. The research facility also has a clinical centre that can perform fist-in-man regulatory clinical trials of new molecular entities. This has given a distinctive advantage to the Zydus Research Centre to conduct drug discovery and development from concept to preclinical development to human proof-of-concept of new medicines.

Zydus Research Centre had earlier received GLP accreditation from National GLP (Good Laboratory Practices) compliance monitoring authority of Govt of India in May 2006 following OECD principles of GLP. The primary objective of the OECD principles of GLP is to ensure the generation of high quality and reliable test data related to the non-clinical safety and toxicity safety of drug substances and test preparations.