The Hindu Business Line : Glenmark to begin clinical trials in UK for asthma drugs in July

GLENMARK Pharmaceuticals Ltd said on Tuesday that it has discovered a drug candidate, GRC 3886, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and asthma. The company is currently completing its pre-clinical studies for the compound and is expected to enter Phase I clinical trials in the UK in July 2004.

Phase I clinical trials involve testing the drug on 50-100 healthy human volunteers, to evaluate the safety profile and the safe dosage range.

In this case, the Phase I clinical studies will be conducted by Quintiles, a global contract research organisation.

The first phase of trials is expected to be completed in six months.

Mr Glenn Saldanha, Managing Director and CEO of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, said the company would look at partnerships, though he was unsure about whether the company would licence out the compound to other pharma companies for further development.

Glenmark has been working on the compound for four years and given the latest development, the company has decided to move GRC-3886 ahead of its previous candidate GRC-3015, which was a back-up candidate, besides GRC-3566, Mr Saldhana said.

He indicated that part of the clinical trials could be brought to India in the third stage, he said.

Meanwhile, the company has scaled up its spend on research and development to about 6-8 per cent of total sales in the current fiscal, as opposed to 5.7 per cent in the previous fiscal.

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