Amgen and India’s Jubilant In Drug Discovery Partnership

MUMBAI - Jubilant Biosys, a subsidiary of Indian contract research and manufacturing services provider Jubilant Organosys, has entered into a drug discovery partnership with Amgen to develop a portfolio of new drugs across various therapeutic areas.

Amgen will provide leads from its early discovery efforts and Jubilant will work on developing early preclinical candidates. Jubilant's role will be to take potential molecules from hit to lead and then to lead optimization. Amgen will be responsible for the subsequent preclinical and clinical development. The California-based company will own all new drugs that are developed under the collaboration and will also have worldwide commercialization rights to them, Jubilant said.

The collaboration will initially go on for three years and may be extended to a longer time frame, a company official said. The two companies will decide on the focus therapeutic areas shortly.

"This collaboration leverages the innovation capabilities of Jubilant Biosys in pharmaceutical discovery and preclinical development, combining these strengths with Amgen, the world's largest research driven biotech company, to deliver cost-effective new products that will help patients around the world," Jubilant Organosys Managing Director Shyam Bhartia told PharmAsia News. "This partnership continues to demonstrate Jubilant's strategy to be India's largest innovation driven integrated pharmaceutical service provider supporting the global pharmaceutical Industry," he added.

Financial terms include a combination of research funding and success-based milestones paid to Jubilant during preclinical and clinical development for multiple projects undertaken by the collaboration. The total financial milestone value is subject to successful development and commercialization of the portfolio of novel drugs.

Jubilant's contract research arm has a dedicated facility in Bangalore with more than 500 scientists specializing in multi-disciplines including biology, chemistry, structural biology, pharmacology, molecular modeling, crystallography and information technology. The company has drug discovery collaborations with global pharma companies across the U.S., Europe and Japan. While Jubilant Biosys has worked on stand-alone projects for Amgen before, this is the first joint drug discovery collaboration between the two companies.

Eli Lilly and Forrest Laboratories are among Jubilant Biosys' other major clients. The company expects to have more such collaborations going forward.

With MNCs looking to cut research costs and beef up dwindling research pipelines, companies such as Jubilant Biosys are emerging as partners of choice.

In a recent study funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, researchers from Harvard and Duke Universities found that multinationals are increasingly relying on India and China as hubs for outsourcing research. The study found that the Indian industry has an edge over their Chinese counterparts with Indian companies involved in complex development work from the earliest stages of drug discovery, starting with identifying targets and then going on to designing molecules that can latch on to these targets (Also see "PharmAsia News Spotlight On India: Smaller R&D Units To Dominate India - Study" - Scrip, 23 Jun, 2008.).

During the past few years many leading global pharma companies have started collaborating with companies in India. Merck recently signed a drug-discovery alliance with Ranbaxy Laboratories. Merck has similar agreements with Advinus Therapeutics and Piramal Life Sciences. Wyeth recently entered into a collaboration with GVK Biosciences, a Hyderabad-based company that will identify drug candidates for the American drug maker. Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Forest Laboratories, and Bristol Myers Squibb also have partnerships with Indian companies to help bolster their research efforts (Also see "Indian CROs Move Up R&D Value Chain From Outsourcing Services To Partnering With MNCs" - Scrip, 25 Jul, 2008.).

For Indian contract research firms, the increase in outsourced research by global big pharma has resulted in drug discovery and development emerging as a fast-growing and lucrative business opportunity. Jubilant Organosys, for instance, said that drug discovery and development contributed to 6.2 percent of its 8.26 billion rupee revenue in the first quarter of this financial year. This segment has grown by 47 percent, the company said.

- Jeetha D'Silva ([email protected])