Abstract

The caselet examines the various problems faced by the pharma majors in the developed countries, especially in terms of high drug discovery and development costs. This led to pharma majors outsourcing certain tasks in the drug discovery process to Asian countries, especially India. The latter portion of the case looks into the Indian perspective and focuses on the advantages and disadvantages faced by the Indian drug discovery services industry.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• The importance of drug discovery services
• Types of drug discovery services and their respective roles
• Reducing cost of operations in developed nations
• The importance of outsourcing some tasks of the pharma value chain
• and The benefits reaped and the problems faced by the Indian drug discovery service companies

Keywords

Biocon, Syngene, Ranbaxy, Cipla, Dr.Reddy's, Drug discovery services, Pharma value chain, External service providers, Clinical research organizations, Integrated service providers, Blockbuster drug, Intellectual Property Rights, Patents, Multiyear agreement, Lead optimization project, Market potential, Middlemen, Lipitor, Atorvastatin, Chemists, Pfizer, biomedical research