BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Piramal's second helping

December 3, 2007 8:00 AM UTC

When Nicholas Piramal India Ltd. established its discovery business two years ago, it set itself the goal of bringing a novel drug to the global market by 2010-11. The company thinks its recent deal with Merck & Co. Inc. is likely to get it the rest of the way to the five to eight clinical compounds it figures it needs to reach that goal.

Nicholas Piramal (NSE:Nicolaspir; BSE:500302, Mumbai, India), which has profitable businesses in generics and custom manufacturing of APIs, now has four internally discovered compounds in clinical development for cancer, endocrine and infectious indications. Previously, the company had hoped to do deals for about three more compounds to fill out its pipeline. The deal with Merck (MRK, Whitehouse Station, N.J.) could accomplish this goal...