Quintiles has officially opened its Phase I research facility in Hyderabad, India at Apollo Health City.Constructed in partnership with Apollo Hospitals Group, the new facility will complement Quintiles existing worldwide Phase I facilities. It will provide biopharma customers additional options to complete integrated Phase I programs across multiple geographies at this pivotal stage in medical research, according to a Quintiles statement.

Eddie Caffrey, senior vice president and head of Quintiles Phase I globally, commented, “Sponsors, are under intense pressure to speed delivery of results, ethically, and without compromising patient safety or quality of data. With this new, state of the art, Phase I facility in Hyderabad, India, we will be better able to ally with customers by providing access to large numbers of healthy volunteers for simple studies, in parallel to more complex studies conducted by scientific experts in Europe and the U.S.”

Said Shobana Kamineni, executive director, Apollo Hospitals Group, “We are excited to be working with Quintiles to deliver high quality Phase I studies for international customers in India. Apollo has pioneered the provision of many medical and surgical procedures in India and our mission is to bring healthcare of international standards to within the reach of every individual.”

The team in Hyderabad, under the leadership of executive director Ashish Jain, will work to global standards and procedures and will be connected to sites in London, Uppsala and Kansas through Quintiles’ global data network to simplify study management for sponsors and provide integrated information and perspective as early as possible in the development process.

The 86-bed unit will evaluate compounds developed both in India and in other countries. Data capture will be linked electronically to Quintiles other Phase I units in UK, US, and Sweden. Thirty-two beds are equipped with diagnostic cardiology equipment for TQT studies.