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THE MAIN FOCUS
Panel Discussion: The wayforward in FDD
(L-R) Seetaraju Gembali, Managing Director, GSR Pharma Research; Vinod Arora, Principal Advisor, IGMPI (Moderator); Dr Girish Jain, President, Research & Development, Alkem Laboratories and Pramod Pimplikar, Managing Director, Shalina Laboratories
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he last panel discussion of the FDD Conclave 2017 ensured a befitting finale to the two-day event which saw attendance from leading formulation scientists and R&D heads of renowned pharma companies. Titled, 'The Way Forward in FDD', it saw an interesting exchange of views on the paths that professionals in FDD need to tread to encourage and drive innovation in the formulation development and drug delivery sector of India. The session comprised an eminent panel of Vinod Arora, Principal Advisor, IGMPI (Moderator), Dr Girish Jain, President, Research & Development, Alkem Laboratories, Seetaraju Gembali, Managing Director, GSR Pharma Re-
search and Pramod Pimplikar, Managing Director, Shalina Laboratories. Arora, the moderator of the session, set the stage by giving an overview on the current scenario in FDD and said that India is at crossroads. Now, it has to take some crucial decisions and choose between continuing with vanilla generics or moving to super generics or super super generics. He also pointed out the opportunities for growth in these emerging areas and explained that they can help meet India's huge unmet medical needs. Arora also opined that this move would be more affordable than getting into new chemical entities (NCEs) which require huge investments. Dr Jain reiterated these
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views and said that NCEs don't always guarantee returns on investment. It might be a better bet for India to go the complex generics route to sustain its growth momentum in the pharma industry. He urged the industry to encourage innovation in formulation development of super generics or complex generics and administer them through novel drug delivery systems to gain profits and emerge as a leader in the pharma industry. Gembali offered a counterview and said that India should not completely disregard development of NCEs. On the contrary, India should look at developing NCEs in a big way as it would usher more innovation in the sector and if successful, reap huge financial returns.
However, he also admitted that there are bottlenecks that need to be cleared before India can grow as a major hub for NCE development. He said that this would take our achievements to the next level and help us gain more recognition in the global arena while making the industry more profitable as well. Nevertheless, he agreed that super generics and complex generics offer great growth avenues as well. Pimplikar gave a rundown of the opportunities and challenges in the formulation development and drug delivery sector of India in the current scenario. He said that while India has sufficient talent and brain power to become a pharma powerhouse, challenges like funding, data secu-
rity, etc are hampering the industry's progress. He also spoke on the need to be more capable to deal with competition from countries like China. He also urged India to focus more on innovation to drive growth. Pimplikar was also of the opinion that getting into NCEs would require more deeper pockets and at this point of time, India might not be equipped to engage in these activities. But, with the right measures, soon India can look at extending its focus areas and leveraging opportunities which has not been tapped yet. The panelists also interacted with the audience and there was knowledgesharing galore at the second panel discussion of FDD Conclave 2017.
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July 1-15, 2017