Dr Urmish Chudgar, a practising haemato-oncologist who is passionate about biotechnological development for better human health, is the director, Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He is the man behind the biotech initiatives at Intas Pharmaceuticals. At Indus Biotherapeutics Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intas dedicated to biotech R&D, he plays a key role in strategic development, business growth and team building. He details out his company's interest in biotechnology and its future plans.

When did Intas initiate its biotech activities and what were the reasons for the same? 
We started planning our entry into biotechnology in 1999 and actually initiated the activities in the middle of 2000. Biotechnology is a growing area within pharmaceuticals internationally, as more than 50 percent of the products are in early stage of development today and will become marketed products over the next 10-15 years. And these are biotechnology based. We expect that entering biotechnology at this stage will put us in a position to be a part of this phenomenon. Biotechnology will be an important component of the company's growth in the coming years and fits in well with our strategy of increasing international operations and adding specialized capabilities within the organization.

You have biologicals (vaccines), contract research (Indus Biotherapeutics) and recombinant products in pipeline (besides Neukine)? What is your core area of focus? 
Currently our focus is on recombinant products. We launched Neukine, recombinant G-CSF a few months back and we have a rich pipeline of products that we expect to bring to the market at regular intervals. Two of our products, EPO and interferon alpha, are in advanced stages of development.

What is your marketing strategy for recombinant biologicals as companies are finding it difficult to market their products? 
We don't perceive any unique difficulty in marketing biopharmaceutical products per se. Every product has its own challenges. Intas has a strong presence amongst the speciality segments like oncology, cardiology, nephrology, neurology and gastroenterology, which are some of the high growth segments. All our major biotherapeutic offerings are for such speciality segments, wherein we will have a natural advantage due to our existing strengths. 
Biotechnology products are complex products and we are confident that our offering of well characterized, quality products will find acceptance. One particular feature of biotech products is that they are usually high priced and affordability is an issue. We keep this factor in mind and try to provide products at an acceptable price level. 

What is your R&D investment in biotechnology and turnover from these core areas? 
We have invested upwards of $10 million in our biotechnology venture. Since this is our year of entry into the market, we expect the revenues to cross $1 million this year, and grow at a CAGR of over 50 percent over the coming five-six years. We expect a major portion of the revenues to come through exports. 

When are you going to launch your biotechnology products in the regulated market outside India? 
We have a focused strategy of starting with the Indian market, expanding to non-regulated market and then moving to the regulated market. We plan to target the regulated markets by about 2007.

What are your current capabilities in vaccines and biologicals? 
We have in-house capability in the vaccines area but as of now we are not focusing on vaccines. 

Are there any major hurdles that you are concerned with in biotechnology? 
Developing biotechnology products is a slow and long process involving a number of scientific, financial and regulatory challenges, but there are no specific hurdles. We are quite happy about the recent initiatives taken by the government to rationalize regulatory procedures. We also hope that the government will ensure equally stringent scrutiny of imported biopharmaceutical products, as is applied to indigenously developed products, to provide a level field to research-based domestic manufacturers. 

What are your future plans?
We are going to build excellence in product development and manufacturing. We are committed to bringing to the market one product about every six months. Starting with generic products, we will gradually move towards innovative products and having our own intellectual property. We intend to build these capabilities by strengthening in-house R&D as well as working through a network of domestic and international collaborations.