Swiss pharma giant Novartis will evaluate India to scale up its manufacturing capabilities and technology advancements, in future, if needed, said Vas Narasimhan, global Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Novartis.
Novartis has invested over $300 million in the last 5 years in India. In India, portfolio of Novartis has both innovative and established medicines in the segments of cardiovascular, eye care, immunology, metabolic, neuroscience, oncology, respiratory and organ transplant.
“When we do need more manufacturing capacity or in any technology area, we would certainly evaluate Hyderabad, India on par with any other place in the world to do this work,” said Narasimhan on the sidelines of BioAsia 2023, the 20th edition of Telangana's annual flagship life sciences and healthcare event.
India is amongst a handful of countries in the world that have a broad Novartis footprint covering early research, drug development, technical operations, business services and commercial operations.
Narasimhan said that India is gradually refining its policies on clinical trials and it streamlining the Intellectual property rights, however he called for regulatory data protection in India. “Novartis is currently conducting over 100 clinical trials involving over 3000-4000 patients in India. Earlier, it used to be very difficult to get clinical trial approvals in India now that new policy allows for a much more streamlined approach, that's actually speeding up clinical trials,” said Narasimhan.
Having a site in Hyderabad, the company is also adopting technology and data science approach. “We are taking a global data science approach. The real fundamental capability would be led and built of our Hyderabad teams with of course global network, we continue to also aspire to build a kind of robust global network of talent within data science, with the idea of being a pure play innovative medicines company, we have to be a leader in data science, R&D for the future,” said Narasimhan, adding that Novartis is also looking at how to use generative Artificial intelligence (AI) in its Research & Development (R&D).