The Hindu Business Line : Nektar India launches R&D centre to boost drug discovery

NEKTAR Therapeutics (India), a subsidiary of the US-based drug discovery company, has announced the commissioning of its research and development centre in Hyderabad. This would be its second overseas centre after its UK branch. The Chief Executive Officer of Nektar, Mr Ajit Gill, said, "Indian pharmaceutical sector is at a stage where the software industry was a decade ago. More companies would take to this area given the large talent pool here."

"However, instead of leveraging the infrastructure and the skills only in the area of outsourcing, Nektar would like to lead the effort in fully integrating Indian operations into our main stream R&D and help accelerate product development," he said.

"It is well established that the drug discovery and development are a long-drawn processes and highly investment-intensive. Typically, companies in the US take to serial drug development process, which takes much longer to work on. With a centre in Hyderabad, Nektar plans to take to parallel development work and expects to cut short on time," Mr Gill added. Nektar is amongst the early companies to locate an R&D centre in this sector. Drug discovery involves applications in biology, engineering and chemistry.

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Dr Y. S. Rajashekhara Reddy, unveiled the R&D centre late on Saturday and promised the necessary Government support for the company's endeavours.

Inhalation insulin awaiting nod: Citing examples of the breakthrough products that used Nektar's drug delivery technologies, Mr Gill said the company has worked on PEG-Inteferon Alpha-2A (Pegasys-Roche) and PEG-filgrastim (Neulasta, Amgen). .

Nektar has also co-developed the technology that has been used to manufacture inhaled insulin (Exubera) by the company's corporate partner Pfizer. Exubera is currently awaiting regulatory approval from the European Union and the US Food and Drug Administration, he said.

Nektar develops its own products by applying its drug delivery technologies for existing medicines to enhance performance, and improve safety and compliance. Nektar's drug delivery technologies include particle engineering that uses spray drying and supercritical fluids, and a range of pulmonary devices.

The R&D centre located in the ICICI Knowledge Park will support the pre-clinical and bio-analytical development of proprietary and partner products. .

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