Piramal Life Sciences may become the first company to successfully develop a tuberculosis drug whose leads isolated from the living organisms found in ice brought from the Antarctica region. "(Our) scientists have identified additional leads that will help develop drugs to treat tuberculosis and other infections," revealed Swati Piramal, director, Nicholas Piramal.
With America's fourth largest investment bank Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy protection and Merrill Lynch being bought over by the Bank of America, placements at the Indian Institutes of Management will be affected.
ABRPL is working on developing drugs for anaemia, cancer and arthritis, said Bruce Murdoch, chief business officer, Avesthagen. "We are targeting high-end products that are going off-patent and are not working on popular soon-to-be off-patent biotech molecules. We should be able to bring a couple of molecules into the commercialisation stage next year," he said.
The hotel giant is looking at having an exclusive arrangement with Pune-based Mulshi Springs -- a company that bottles natural spring water. The brand will be called Oberoi Spring Water and a formal announcement is expected soon. The packaged spring water will be available in 200 ml, 500 ml, 1 litre and 1.5 litre pet bottles priced between Rs 50 and Rs 200 respectively. "Water will be sourced from a rain forest near the Sahara Amby Valley," added the official.
The Rs 1,027-crore (Rs 10.27 billion) company has filed 13 abbreviated new drug applications and 22 drug master files with the US Food and Drug Administration and regulatory agencies in Europe for supply of formulations and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Some of the ANDAs challenge innovator patents and the company's strategy will be to partner with established companies in the US and Europe for marketing formulations, said Pranav Amin, director, Alembic.
Fertiliser, power plants plan expansion in anticipation
Terming the report as a 'rehash' of an earlier JAMA article by the same author in 2004, the ministry said it discloses 'a strong bias against Ayurvedic medicines.' The earlier JAMA report, also by Robert B Saper of Boston Medical Centre, had prompted drug regulatory agencies of the US and European countries to repeatedly warn against the use of Indian Ayurvedic products and ban some of them in 2004.
WHRL was founded in 1990 by Nobel laureate Sir John Vane to fund the research works at William Harvey Research Institute, one of the leading centres in the world for pharmacological research.
Had plans to invest $250 mn in the US polyester manufacturer's facility.
Sun Pharmaceutical may face legal battles in New York courts in its attempt to take over the Israeli drug major Taro Pharmaceuticals, unless its chairman Barrie Levitt and family give up in a few weeks. This is despite the green signal given by an Israel court to proceed with the tender offer.
Dr Reddy's Laboratories plans to brand its speciality drugs sold in the US. It will begin selling branded skin care products by year-end. The venture will be spearheaded by Promius Pharma, a wholly owned subsidiary of its US arm
Nutraceuticals, consisting of dietary supplements and functional foods with curative or nutritional benefits, are estimated to have a sales of $190 billion globally by 2010. India's food supplement and health food market is estimated currently at about $400 million. The country already has a clutch of established players focussing in this segment such as Avesthagen, Himalaya and Sami Labs.
Property developers are setting up their own mini-power plants to meet captive requirements of the malls or residential complexes they are building. Electricity generated from these power plants, which will use compressed natural gas (CNG) as fuel, will be 40 per cent cheaper than state electricity board supplies, making it an attractive investment option rather than a perceived additional cost.
The regulator has also cancelled the licences of three packagers providing services to Subhiksha for violating the packaging rules. The warehouses are based in Bhiwandi, which is on the outskirts of Mumbai.
HCL's founder and chairman Shiv Nadar is making a second foray into university education having sought 300 acres of land in Noida, near New Delhi, to set up a Rs 300-crore (Rs 3 billion) multi-disciplinary university.
Only one out of every 175 students who take the Common Admission Test will make it to the Indian Institutes of Management this year. The logic, note experts, is simple. Around 300,000 students are slated to appear for CAT this November. Despite such slim chances, industry players believe more students will try to crack CAT as the job situation is not at its best. The increase in the number of students taking the CAT exam this year will be around 20 per cent.
The recent pullout by ICICI Venture and Citigroup Venture from a three-year-old drug discovery partnership with Dr Reddy's Laboratories points to angel investors' growing aversion to risk in pharma and biotech firms, say experts.
Pharmaceutical majors like Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's Lab, Wockhardt, Glenmark and Sun Pharma are now treading a careful patent litigation path in the US market to expand their generic business instead of the aggressive patent challenges they pursued until a few years ago.
The premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) do not appear to be perturbed, but other prominent B-schools anticipate a 25-30 per cent drop in placements this academic year. They are concerned that several regular companies may drop out of the placements and others may recruit fewer numbers than usual.
Global crude oil prices have dropped 14 per cent in less than a fortnight, but the three public sector oil marketing companies could still end up borrowing more in the domestic market and put further pressure on liquidity. With the three OMCs still saddled with under-recoveries, estimated at Rs 820 crore (Rs 8.2 billion) a day, they have no option but to use bank credit lines in the coming days as they have run out of their stock of oil bonds.
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