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Nottingham-based pharma company eyes Indian deals
Pharmaceutical Profiles has been eyeing India for past two years and sees #400,000 deals over next year.
Two major Indian companies are close to agreeing to deals with British firm Pharmaceutical Profiles.
The Nottingham-based pharmaceuticals company has been targeting India as a potential growth area for the past two years. Now it expects to enter into deals worth £400,000 over the next six to nine months.
"It's very positive," said business development director Paul Clewlow.
"We have been talking seriously to a couple of companies and have done some quotations for one of them. If we get two projects with them, the value is about £400,000."
"Although a lot of the Indian companies produce copycat drugs, there are some who are looking to develop their own medicines.
"They want to use our new methods to put their potential new medicines through testing more quickly."
Reports say in particular, Indian pharmaceutical companies are keen to utilise the Pharmaceutical Profiles' human drug absorption (HDA), microdosing and gastrointestinal studies.
The HDA technology involves the use of a device called Enterion, known as a miniature cruise missile.
It is a radio-controlled capsule that is swallowed by volunteer patients and allows trial drugs to be released at a precise point in the digestive tract, vital for companies developing drugs.
Human microdosing - known as Screening ADME - allows pharmaceutical companies to determine, at a very early stage, which drugs are likely to pass the hurdles essential to become approved medications.
It involves putting microscopic amounts of drugs into test subjects, rather than just relying on tests on animals.
Clewlow, who made a presentation to more than 100 scientists at a drug delivery conference in Mumbai, said: "The Indian pharmaceutical industry has wide ranging capabilities. It is a highly organised sector, and is growing at about eight to nine per cent annually.
"It ranks very high in the world, in terms of technology, quality and range of medicines manufactured."
"In order to stay competitive, Indian companies are refocusing to the West and investing heavily in research and development and this is where an organisation with the expertise that we have can really help," added Clewlow.
This drive into India is the latest success for the firm, which began life as a spin-off project from the University of Nottingham in 1990 and now has a £10 million turnover.
