Bristol Myers Squibb’s India centre to augment global drug development: Samit Hirawat

Logo of global biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb is pictured at the headquarters in Le Passage, near Agen, France March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau - RC1D7D66FC10

American biopharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) has announced its first global science and technology innovation centre at Hyderabad, which it says will accelerate its global drug development programmes.

BMS said it will invest $100 million in the facility.

Samit Hirawat, Executive Vice-President and Chief Medical Officer for global drug development at BMS, told Moneycontrol that the new Indian centre will help the company develop capabilities in several areas associated with drug development, from regulatory, biostatistics and operations to clinical sciences.

“From a research perspective, we had collaborations with Biocon and Syngene, but we do not have a presence in India from a drug development and research and development perspective in terms of services,” he said.

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Dr Hirawat said BMS intends to augment drug development capabilities in India and accelerate the pace of developing drugs.

“A lot of talent exists in India; we can harness that talent. We can make use of the strength that India creates every year in terms of MBBS, MDs and doctoral fellows (PhDs) to help the overall ecosystem of healthcare and bring more medicines to the market,” he said.

Asked to comment on the regulatory delays in approvals in India, he said the innovation centre would support a global approach to patient treatment rather than a country-focused approach.

“The delay in regulatory approvals may impact drug arrivals in India but we don't see this centre as an India-serving centre. We see it as a part of a global ecosystem. It will help patients around the world, because they're supporting submissions, creation of data, contributing to the clinical trials,” he said.

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Hirawat said the centre will be the third largest development hub for the company outside the US and Switzerland.

Commenting on the drug pipeline and launches being planned by BMS, he said the company has brought in five new medicines in the last three years in the oncology, haematology, cell therapy, cardiovascular medicine and immunology segments.

“We brought out nine new medicines across these five therapeutic areas. Five of those nine medicines are absolutely first-in-class. Three of those new medicines were actually brought out only last year. So our productivity from that perspective is huge,” he added.

The BMS Vice-President also said that the pharma major has more than 50 medicines in development right now in phase one and phase two development.

“We will by the end of this year have six or nine new medicines in late-phase development. So if you think about what our future looks like, it's very promising,” he said.