Over the last few decades India has reiterated its capabilities in providing dependable and cost effective chemistry services to big pharma through a multitude of outsourcing deals. A large percentage of these collaborations, however, are no longer limited to short-term outsourcing agreements but rather long-term milestone-based partnerships.

After two years of announcing the basic plan with medium-to-long-term strategies for business expansion to India, including those for a variety of functions such as sales and marketing, research, development, chemistry, manufacturing and control (CMC), manufacturing and IT, Takeda Pharmaceutical, took the plunge, with a three year drug discovery collaboration with Advinus Therapeutics in October this year. As a part of the deal, Advinus Therapeutics will receive a guaranteed payment of $36 million as well as a milestone based payment of $9 million, dependent on the targets achieved during candidates.

"The Takeda-Advinus deal seems to be a holistic deal which will help other internal programs and provide them good breathing space as well as provide an impetus to drug discovery in India", said Mr Siddharth Dhodi, manager, life sciences, Yes Bank.

Dr Rashmi Barbhaiya, CEO, Advinus Therapeutics, said that, "This deal will not be based on prior research carried out at Advinus. Instead we will involve entirely new projects in therapeutics areas such as inflammation, CNS, and metabolic diseases, all of which Advinus has developed an expertise in through its past projects."

Highlighting the sentiment Dr Ajay Kumar Sharma, associate director, pharma and biotech, healthcare practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East, said that, "Advinus has been focusing on developing it's own drug candidates for quite some time and now with the support of Takeda coming in there would be no surprise if the world sees some blockbuster drugs coming out of their arsenal in the next decade. This move will also increase the confidence for other big pharma's to re-think their strategies."