Business OpportunitiesBayer in talks to ink drug research deal
Bayer Schering Pharma — a group company of German multinational Bayer — has joined the list of multinational drug majors attempting to tap India’s capabilities in drug research.
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The ¤10.7 billion (Rs 75,000 crore), Berlin-based company is in preliminary discussions with India’s leading drug discovery specialists. These include Piramal Lifesciences, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories’s drug discovery arm, Aurigene, and contract research specialist GVK Biosciences for new drug discovery collaborations, Hanno Wild, the company’s senior vice-president, global discovery, told Business Standard.
“We consider India a major destination for our growth and research and we are currently looking at collaborative research approach with the Indian companies,” he said, on the sidelines of a pharma summit in Mumbai on Monday.
He said the discussions are for drug development in focus areas of Bayer Schering such as oncology. These drug discovery collaborations will be a first for it in India. Two weeks earlier, Bayer CropScience AG, another subsidiary of Bayer AG with annual sales of about ¤6.4 billion (Rs 44,700 crore), had entered into a major discovery deal with the Hyderabad-based GVK Biosciences to develop active ingredients for innovative crop protection products. Under the agreement, Bayer CropScience will integrate GVK’s capacities in the early part of its discovery chemistry process.
Piramal Life Sciences has drug discovery collaborations with leading drug majors such as Merck & Co, Eli Lilly and Pierre Fabre Laboratories of France for research in oncology and multiple therapeutic areas. Bangalore-based Aurigene, a drug discovery biotech, has about 10 such partnerships globally.