The Hindu Business Line : AstraZeneca's new lab to host key research work

Bangalore March 22 AstraZeneca's newly commissioned process R&D laboratory in Bangalore will play a key role in the development of its new drug portfolio, in particular the tuberculosis drug coming out of India, according to its top officials.

The PR&D lab built at $ 15 million was launched by the company CEO, Mr David Brennan, on Wednesday; it is the fourth such for the company and the first outside Europe; two are in the UK and one in Sweden.

It will grow from the current 40 to 75 scientists soon.

Dr Jan Lundberg, Executive Vice-President, Discovery Research, said, "This investment is not the end."

Dr David Haywood, Global Vice-President, Global Process R&D, said the Bangalore group could later develop outsourcing capabilities for large-scale laboratory work in India. According to Dr Sudhir Nambiar, Director of the new lab, it will train pharma-biotech students in process safety.

Overall target

The Anglo-Swedish drug major has an overall target of developing over 20 candidate drugs this year. The four PR&D centres work in tandem and share their resources and work. The Bangalore centre - set up at nearly 25 per cent of the Western cost but of the same quality - has handled work related to oncology and anti-infectives from other centres and it will move on to the tuberculosis drug candidate once it is arrived at, according to Dr Lundberg.

The Indian research subsidiary, AstraZeneca India P Ltd, which includes the PR&D centre, is doing AstraZeneca's "largest drug-hunting mission" - to discover a novel, short-duration drug for tuberculosis. It expects to reach the potential drug stage by 2009.

The process PR&D centre will have the capability to produce 3-5 kg of active drug ingredients.

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