The cost of drug discovery is a key issue for industry to address but price is not the only consideration when outsourcing such core activities. As Indian companies look to expand their offerings in discovery, Meredith Williams at Sai Life Sciences, argues that Indian CROs have evolved better to meet key customer needs.
The woes of the drug discovery sector have been extensively documented and discussed over recent years. With ever fewer New Drug Applications making headlines and soaring research and development costs, the industry has been forced to search out new strategies to improve the process.
With an accelerating shift of preclinical research away from the traditional Big Pharma setting, a large proportion of drug discovery is now taking place in small biotechs, virtual organisations and pseudo-academic institutes. The outsourcing of certain aspects, and in some cases the entire process, has become commonplace for today’s drug hunters. As the nature of the drug discovery process becomes more fragmented and involves a more complex network of relationships, Contract Research Organisations (CROs) are now playing a critical role.
Outsourced drug discovery services were estimated to be worth US$10.1bn in 2011 and this is predicted to increase to more than $16bn by 2014. In a recent survey carried out by Ernst & Young on behalf of Indian CRO Sai Life Sciences, it was estimated that 64% of discovery phase activities are now taking place externally.
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