The Hindu Business Line : Dr Reddy's diabetes molecule likely to enter phase-III soon

Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd, which has lined up seven new chemical entities in its drug discovery fold, is hopeful of its most promising diabetes molecule DRF-2593 (Balaglitazone) to enter the phase-III clinical trials soon.

According to Dr Suresh Kankanwadi, Senior Director, Clinical Development, the company's most advanced asset in clinical development, type-2 diabetes molecule, has successfully completed the two-year carcinogenicity studies and reached the end of phase-II clinical trials.

Talking to a group of visiting journalists at the company's Discovery Research and Custom Pharmaceutical Services Centre at Miyapur on the city outskirts on Wednesday, he said the company had entered into major co-development and commercialisation deal with Rheoscience for DRF-2593.

Referring to the carcinogenicity studies, he said the preliminary findings appear promising and should support its further development. The molecule is likely to complete the phase-II trials soon and enter the phase-III trials before the fiscal-end.

In terms of the arrangement, Rheoscience would fund all the costs associated with the phase-III clinical trials. Dr Reddy's would pay Rheoscience a pre-determined amount towards its share of the development costs. The arrangement allows Dr Reddy's to have full rights for North America, Japan and the rest of the world, except Europe (excluding Russia and CIS) and China.

The company is currently focussing broadly on metabolic disorders, cardiovascular indications, bacterial infections and cancer segments for its drug discovery research and of the seven NCEs, four are now in clinical development and three in pre-clinical stages. The other two molecules that entered the phase-II clinical trials include DRF-10945 (anti cholesterol) and DRF-1042 (anti-cancer).

According to Dr Suresh Kankanwadi, the strategy of Dr Reddy's is to continue expanding its discovery pipeline with increased focus on creating new discovery platforms in the two key therapeutic segments of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. The priority of the company is to accelerate the NCEs in the discovery pipeline up to phase-IIa trials and then go in for out-licensing or co-development or joint commercialisation.