Glenmark’s novel onco, immuno drugs to hit Indian market in next 5-7 years

Glenmark pharmaceuticals’ late clinical trial stage drugs in the oncology and immunology segments may hit the Indian market in the next 5-7 years, Glenn Saldanha, Chairman and Managing Director at Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, told BT while speaking on the sidelines of BioAsia - the 20th edition of Telangana's annual flagship life sciences and healthcare event.

“We spun out our biologics company called Ichnos sciences. We work in monoclonal, bispecific, and multispecific antibodies in Ichnos. In Glenmark, we do small molecule research. We don't have a drug in the market yet but we have several late-stage assets, both in oncology and immunology. We have had successes in terms of discovery, inventions, licensing, except for having a drug in the market,” said Saldanha.

“And we are hoping this next decade will be the decade where we could actually bring something to market, which is truly novel and world-class,” he said.

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Glenmark has been in this space for over 22 years. Through the years, the company has done 7 licensing deals worth $300 million of cash by licensing its intellectual property.

Saldanha noted that the ecosystem of innovation is critical and India is now starting to build that ecosystem, whether it's at the government level through research and incentive schemes, or getting its regulatory systems together.

Citing the Chinese government’s initiatives to promote local innovation by reimbursing expensive products through the system, Saldanha recommended the Indian government play an important role in reimbursing expensive products coming out of India that will help create an ecosystem.

“There has to be some reimbursement system for Indian-developed innovative products, which will be compared to the world benchmarks and will be at a premium to the generic or the branded generic drugs available in India,” said Saldanha.

He said that India is a powerhouse in terms of the pharmaceutical industry. The country has a lot of excellence developed in a big part of the value chain. "Right from active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), finished formulations, small molecule research, contract development manufacturing organisation (CDMO), outsourcing services in the industry, etc. There are multiple areas where we have built many capabilities. The one missing piece is the higher end of the spectrum, which is innovation, particularly on the biologics and biological side, whether it is CAR-T technologies, or, bispecific, multi-specific, mRNA, etc,” he said.

“Many of these high-end technologies, which the rest of the world is pursuing aggressively, we have a long way to go as a country. These are some of the areas we need to look at as we go forward to operate across the value chain and truly dominate the global stage,” he said.