“The whole of Pfizer’s portfolio and therapeutic areas can be supported from Chennai,” commented Andrew McKillop, vice president, PharmaSci Small Molecules at Pfizer, when the firm opened its drug development center in the southern Indian city in May 2022. The center, which is located at the IIT Madras Research Park in Chennai, is considered Pfizer’s first drug development center in Asia. Occupying 61,000 square feet, the facility will develop small molecules and innovative formulations for the global market.

Once fully operational, with about 250 employees involved in R&D, the facility is expected to have capabilities to develop APIs and finished dosage forms of differentiated products such as complex and value-added formulations, controlled-release dosage forms, device-combination products, lyophilized injections, powder-fill products, and ready-to-use formulations.

Pfizer is the latest among top pharma that are flocking to the Indian shores to either expand their existing operations or set up new bases for drug development R&D.

In October 2022, Roche inaugurated the company’s second state-of-the-art Global Analytics and Technology Center of Excellence (GATE) in Hyderabad, in south India. The Swiss drug maker is developing data science and advanced analytics-related capabilities at GATE Center in Hyderabad and plans to expand its offerings to include forecasting, data management, DevOps etc., in the future, according to V Simpson Emmanuel, managing director and CEO of Roche Pharma India.

Roche’s first GATE center is based out of Chennai and was established to provide innovative data-driven solutions to the global affiliates of Roche working on multiple therapeutic areas including ophthalmology, metabolic diseases, neurosciences, oncology, immunology and infectious diseases.

AstraZeneca has also made it clear that the company plans to further scale up the activities of its Clinical Data and Insights (CDI) division in Bangalore.

Launched last October, the CDI division is responsible for the management of data-related aspects of AstraZeneca’s clinical trials, excluding analysis and reporting. The center supports early and late-stage clinical programs from phase 1 to phase 3 with an integrated end-to-end approach for clinical data, analytics, insights and risk management, working across therapy areas and portfolios, AstraZeneca said.

The global CDI division of AstraZeneca has over 1,300 employees and vendor partner resources that closely collaborate, according to Natalie Fishburn, vice president, and global head of CDI. With over 100 staff, the Bangalore center is playing a key role in managing clinical data at exponential volume. The British-Swedish drug maker is looking to transform Bangalore into a center of data excellence for the company, making use of the abundant niche talent in India.Specifically, India provides the advantage of highly qualified R&D personnel.

The ready availability of a huge resource base of IT talent is perhaps the reason behind Merck KGaA too to start an R&D Excellence Center in Bangalore, India’s tech hub, in September 2022. The Merck India R&D Excellence Center manages different functions which include monitoring the safety of Merck’s medicines throughout their use in healthcare practice and managing scientific exchange to enhance patient care by improving efficiency and ensuring quality and consistency.

While supporting Merck Group’s global efforts in drug discovery, the center in Bangalore aims to deliver “critical responsibilities in the drug development journey as well as develop a valuable talent pool” in part because labor costs are much lower than in developed countries.

In line with Merck, quite a few big pharmaceutical companies are farming out safety monitoring of their medicines these days, mostly to cut costs.

Offshoring parts of clinical trial management can bring up to 40% of savings from the current cost of capturing data from clinical trials, estimates show.

Baxter Pharma’s R&D center in Ahmedabad, which was inaugurated in October, provides yet another example of the trend that illustrates the importance MNCs give to having a development support base in India.

The focus of Baxter’s 20,500-square-foot R&D center will be on pharmaceutical product development and capabilities in therapeutic areas such as critical care, analgesic, renal, cardiovascular, anesthesia, anti-infective and antipyretic.

The center will support Baxter’s global manufacturing facilities, including those in Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the U.S., among others. This pharmaceutical R&D center is part of Baxter’s network of more than 25 global R&D centers, including four in the APAC region.

Clearly, large pharma companies are increasingly supporting global shared services and expanding their R&D activities to new geographies looking at cost advantages and process improvement.

Analysts aver that the globalization of contract drug discovery is advancing at a rapid pace owing to the undisputed fact that outsourcing can accelerate the drug discovery process.