Adoption of the ‘networked business’ model by pharmaceutical industry about 2 decades ago initiated the growth of the ‘Contract Research Organization’ (CRO) industry. From a market size of $ 2 billion in 1993 the CRO industry grew to $ 15 billion in 2005 and is envisaged to grow annually at a rate of 16% in years to come. What started as outsourcing of routine activities, such as synthetic chemistry in drug discovery, later stage clinical trial management and low cost manufacturing, has evolved into strategic outsourcing with focus on innovation and risk sharing. The extensive challenges brought on by escalating drug development costs, and late stage failures, are further strengthening the networked business model, wherein the pharmaceutical giants are looking for capacity and capabilities in a CRO not only for supplementing their in-house resources, but also for collaborative integrated discovery projects. While the growth & partnering opportunities for CROs are evident, the CRO industry having transcended from growth to maturation phase is besieged with its own challenges of slowing revenue growth, reduction in the number of CROs and fewer new clients. In these set of circumstances it becomes pertinent for the CROs to ensure that they are ready for the emerging high value opportunities and work out strategies to gain new expertise, find a niche either in a technology platform or therapeutic specialty, enter new growth markets or a combination of them, in order to effectively partner and help the pharmaceutical industry in meeting the challenges being faced by it.
Ashis K Saha
Vice President, Discovery Research
TCG Lifesciences Limited,
Kolkata, India
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Dr. Ashis K Saha joined TCG Lifesciences over 2 years ago with more than 18 years of experience in drug discovery. As a Vice President, Discovery Research, Dr. Saha is involved in providing leadership in integrated discovery services. Additionally, he serves as a key participant in the leadership of all strategic alliances and overseeing business development activities in the US.
Prior to joining TCG Lifesciences, Dr. Saha served in discovery research roles of increasing responsibility at several biotech and major pharmaceutical companies. During his tenure as Head in Medicinal Chemistry at Predix Pharmaceuticals, he directed company's discovery efforts against several CNS and inflammation targets. Such efforts led to the discovery of a novel selective agonist for the S1P receptor, which was the subject of Predix’s first ever out-licensing of an internal discovery candidate in a deal valued at 300M USD. At Viropharma, his team was responsible for discovery of HCV-796, an inhibitor of Hepatitis-C viral polymerase which was the first non-nucleoside to achieve clinical proof of concept. At Janssen, part of Johnson & Johnson, he was instrumental in setting up and leading the parallel medicinal chemistry team, which led to the discovery of several novel leads against cancer, RSV, CNS and fungal infections. A pre-clinical lead was identified from such efforts as back up to Zarnestra, J&J’s clinical candidate against K-Ras oncogenic tumors. Dr. Saha also worked at Sterling Winthrop during the time it was Eastman Kodak subsidiary, where he worked on anti-sense DNA, as well as traditional medicinal chemistry areas.
Dr. Saha received his Masters in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He earned a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Michigan and performed postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley. His 40+ patents and publications include over ten publications/patents as first and principal authors and/or inventor.
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