March 2010

 Piramal Healthcare and Cipla signed a definitive agreement for purchase of all intellectual property rights in India related to i-pill brand of Cipla. The deal was sealed for an aggregate consideration of Rs 95 crore. i-pill brand features in the top-300 pharmaceutical products and had sales of Rs 30.92 crore as per ORG IMS for the last twelve months.

Even as the dust is yet to settle down over the HPV vaccine trial and death of three tribal girls in Andhra Pradesh, records showed that the total number of deaths among the clinical trial subjects, though not officially termed as part of the trials, are on the increase in India.

 Bangalore, Mar, 23, 2010: Syngene International, a subsidiary of Biocon has entered into a discovery and development collaboration with Endo Pharmaceuticals, USA to develop novel biological therapeutic molecules against cancer.

Under the agreement Endo will retain all rights to the molecules developed, while Syngene International will receive research fees, milestone payments and success fees from Endo.

In some areas of the world, one in four people with tuberculosis (TB) becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs regimens, a World Health Organization (WHO) report says.

 India’s clinical research organizations (CROs) are set for exponential growth going by the number of assignments which are coming in here. The global economic slowdown which has seriously impacted western world has benefited the Indian clinical research industry. Scores of assignments are pouring in to conduct clinical trials, pharmacovigilance studies and data management works.

March 22, 2010 — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today viral contamination of GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix vaccine. The agency is recommending that doctors stop using the vaccine until further investigations are complete.

An independent academic research team testing the product recently identified porcine circovirus 1 in the vaccine and notified regulators.