— Photo: Vivek Bendre

ADVANTAGE INDIA: (From left): Vijay Moza, Vice Chairman, ICRI, Ian Smith, Medical Director, Synexus, and Shivraman Dugal, Chairman, ICRI, at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.

MUMBAI: IRL (ICRI Research Pvt. Ltd.), an associate of Institute of Clinical Research (India) (ICRI), has entered into a strategic alliance with the U.K.-based Synexus Clinical Research plc, the largest patient recruitment organisation in Europe.

The alliance will undertake clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies and CROs (contract research organisations).

Through this collaboration, IRL-Synexus will establish India's first-ever patient recruitment SMO (Site Management Organisation) with dedicated investigator sites to undertake Phase II-Phase IV global clinical trials. These trials are conducted on patients and not on healthy individuals.

IRL-Synexus will offer a chain of exclusive, fully owned Good Clinical Practice (GCP)-compliant investigator sites (IRL-Synexus Clinical Research Centres) across India for fast and effective patient recruitment and to deliver reliable, high quality data on schedule. Each centre will be equipped with GCP trained research staff consisting of qualified doctors, nurses, data co-ordinators and administrators. IRL is setting up three campuses in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. In its first year of operations, it has already trained 1000 professionals through MSc, MBA and diploma courses.

``India possesses tremendous potential to become a preferred location for research and development for the global biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.

According to a McKinsey report, the global clinical trial outsourcing opportunity in India in the pharmaceutical industry is estimated to be around Rs. 5,000 crore by the year 2010 and there will be requirement of about 50,000 clinical research professionals,'' said Shivraman Dugal, Chairman, IRL.

IRL has invested Rs. 5 crore to date and this will go up to Rs. 10-15 crore over the next year. The company is expecting business revenues of $1 million in its first year. It has a staff strength of 15 and this will go up soon.

Vijay Moza, Vice Chairman and CEO, IRL said the global clinical trial market was $45 billion and estimated to reach $60 billion by 2007. "India has several advantages including a diverse gene pool, wide spectrum of diseases, treatment-naïve patients and a significant cost advantage.'' The cost of staff in India is significantly lower than Europe, said Ian Smith, Medical Director, Synexus.

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