One of India's largest pharma events, the IPC, assembled in Hyderabad this fortnight. Deepali Gupta presents some of the key highlights.

The Indian Pharmaceutical Congress (IPC) has existed since Independence, and every year it offers a forum to deliberate on the most topical issues for the Indian pharma industry. From inception the IPC has been a platform for students and members of the industry to come together and exchange ideas and experiences on big and small matters.

Spanning three days (December 2-4), the IPC was four times as productive with parallel sessions. Every slotted time for seminars had four parallel sessions that covered a host of topics from global opportunities for Indian pharma to mathematic modelling for pharmacokinetic data.

The event was predominantly student-focussed, but also drew middle and senior management from the industry in large numbers.

The Pharma Expo, a regular feature that runs alongside the conference, drew industry spectators in large numbers. With close to 170 exhibitors the scale and spread of the exhibition was intimidating. An area that could only be fully covered over multiple days, the exhibition comprised of everything related to pharma industry like equipment to cap bottles, churn pills and demos of new technology that pharmacos can adopt for increased production efficiency and quality. "I never knew the Indian pharma industry was this large, both as a market and as a supplier," said an exhibitor from UK, Denise M Wallworth, European Business Manager, Advanced Separation Technologies.

Some interesting sessions

While all the sessions were relevant, here's a selection of a few interesting ones:

Venkata Jayanti, Manager, Market Research, Abbott Laboratories presented his analysis of product lifecycles and how they have evolved over time. Substantiating his views with a number of case studies he said that over the years generic products have become bestsellers compared to patented ones. The prescription of generic drugs may soar to 60 percent by 2006 compared to a mere 40 in 2002.

Jayanti indicated that with the ever-increasing complexity of classification of patents and a tough race to become the "first to file" the process of obtaining patents and exclusive sales rights will prove expensive and risky in the long run. Besides, given the current trend of medical products being accepted as generics, companies will run out of pipeline drugs and therefore unique IPRs.

Jayanti recommended companies to diversify into branded generics to consolidate market apart from following the model GlaxoSmithkline used to maintain Paxil as a profit centre. According to him, the main tenets of this strategy are reformulations and strong marketing alliances.

During discussions on drug discovery, it is only too often acknowledged that the cost of research is high and the possibility of failure looms large. Dr Braj Lohray, Director, Zydus Cadila offered a possible solution to minimise the cost and probability of failure.

Toxicity, usually discovered in late stages of drug discovery, is a common cause of drug failures. Vioxx is an immediate example of such a failure. First Lohray denounced the way some researchers condemn a drug by publicly announcing adverse results of drugs under development based sometimes on unsubstantiated evidence. Apart from avoiding the adverse publicity, Lohray also recommended the use of tools such as biomarkers and miniaturisations to predict adverse drug results (ADRs). The important thing, he noted, is to use in-vitro methods, and perhaps a few animal models. The animal model however, is unreliable, because even a subtle difference in systems can make a world of difference in the end result.

An interesting point Lohray made, contradicting Jayanti, was that in the future there will not be blockbuster drugs. By finding specific targets that will broadly work on humans with similar gene structure, companies will have to identify "me too" drugs based on genetic morphology.

In the course of discussing the means to reduce cost of drug discovery, Dr A Shankarnarayanan, Head Biology, GVK BioSciences, said that while companies are still conservative about outsourcing clinical trials, the cost pressure of drug discovery is too high and the specialisation required too narrow. Companies therefore need to outsource some research work to CROs.

A trend that he observed among the 108 ANDAs filed was that 52 were patent challenges. The enormous opportunity for India in terms of clinical research may boost all activities in the pharma sector, but there are a few things that must be perennially on every pharma professional's mind like quality, timelines, creation of reputation and experience, familiarity with regulations and potential for long term partnerships.

Discussing Intellectual Property

The climax of the conference was to the panel discussion on the forthcoming IPR issues in the light of the TRIPS agreement. Three members shared the panel, Dr Ajan Reginald from Hoffman La Roche, Switzerland, Dr Ariana Greco, Senior Partner and Practice Leader, M+BioLaw and Dr Anand Charkraborty, from the University of Illinois.

While the session was supposed to focus on IPR, after Reginald's plea for audience participation, it digressed into more immediate concerns of students and the industry alike. Students raised the issue of the increasing distance between academia and the industry. The government, according to the students, was unable to finance the required equipment and upgrades in syllabi. Students also complained that the industry is not promoting an environment to sponsor student research in universities or even try to take it further.

The participants from the industry objected to this. They claimed that firstly they were attempting to create such a culture but students were unaware of it, and secondly students were not thinking beyond their immediate academic goals. A member in the audience also questioned some of the results obtained in universities, claiming that they were non-replicable.

This comment caused uproar in the academic community that formed the majority of the audience. Interrupting this discussion that had broken out among the members of the audience, Charkraborty said that the Indian universities and industry were not trying to work their way towards a common goal, and that is where the single point of failure lay. This he explained was also the reason he believes the boom in the Indian pharma industry is nothing but hype.

Clarifying his stand, he said that the capability, capacity and opportunity was all there, but for progress teamwork is required, which still seems to be missing in the Indian pharma equation. Reginald however, said that the onus to prove innovation will be rewarded lay on the industry.

If there were evidence that thinking beyond academics would yield returns, more students would surely try and several would find success.

The session came to an abrupt close as time ran out and everyone continued to argue their points-of-view.

On that inconclusive note, the participants departed the venue in anticipation of the next IPC to be conducted in India's economic capital — Mumbai.