India to Conduct 5% Global Clinical Trials by 2012

A few weeks ago we discussed the report released by RNCOs that discussed India's prominence in the global clinical trails arena. Today, another aspect of the report came in that claims India will be conducting 5% of global clinical trials by 2012. This claim is partly due to India's large patient pool, the recruitment of these patients is also among the fastest in the world. As most of the healthcare costs in India are paid “out of pocket”, a large patient population continues to have unmet medical needs. As a result, they readily volunteer to participate in clinical trials to get free treatment. So we ask you again, what do you think? Are other nations going to rise above India's prominence?

Drug Industry's Rush to Outsource

India has now become the prime destination for drug companies looking to make a buck overseas with the plethora of brainpower and ability to save millions--maybe billions--of dollars for the company's research.

According to Business Week, "five Western companies have formed drug discovery partnerships with Jubilant, including Eli Lilly, Amgen, and Forest Laboratories. Lilly is also partnering with Piramal, as is Merck. Every month deals are signed with India's elite pharmaceutical companies. The goal is to take promising compounds discovered by the multinationals, run tests to weed out the weakest candidates, and develop some of the others into marketable drugs. Eventually the Indian partners also hope to rack up scientific breakthroughs that lead to entirely new medicines for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, or diabetes."

So can this work? With American businesses happy to cut jobs in the USA for cheaper labor East; will there be another hit on the American economy? Alternatively, the positive effects of using cheap labor could build up the pharmaceutical industry allowing businesses to save money and, perhaps, expand their Western workforce.

Your thoughts?

Update: Indian Institute and the death of babies in clinical trials

Last month, we informed you of the controversy including deaths of children in India that are though to be the result of drugs used in clinical trials.

The FDA News has updates to this story. The AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) is claiming that the 49 infants who died were already ill when they came to the experiment. Daiich Sankyo and Novartis, two of the sponsors who were conducting studies, claimed none of their patients died as a result of the trial. The deaths occurred in the Institutes Department of Pediatrics beginning in 2006. There were 4142 subjects in the trials, and the children who died, as stated earlier, were already suffering from sever diseases. The foundation has not released how many children died in the treatment arms and control arms of the trial. The trial was for hypertension drugs.