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In
the last couple of months, prior to the announcement by Ranbaxy Laboratories announcement
on hiving-off its R&D division, (See: Ranbaxy plans to spin off research arm
as Q3 net profit zooms 48 per cent) analysts had been predicting the move for
the past few weeks, reports CNBC-TV18. Analysts
say Ranbaxy happens to be the largest spender on research and has a couple of
products in advanced stages of clinical development. They point out that
the company''s anti-malarial drug is supposed to hit the market by 2010-11. According
to the company''s management, the product is good. However, the tie-up with Geneva-based
product company, MMV, was broken-off a couple of weeks back. >The
pharma major has a couple of good platform technologies and novel drug delivery
systems, which could be used on a lot of products may be for extended release
or meter dosages. This also happens to be a very good revenue driver if it is
taken forward in terms of clinical trials. So, it looks to be a good way to separate
the entire R&D, they added. >The
same philosophy works for Sun Pharma, analysts point out. Sun Pharma felt that
there were two types of shareholders - one which prefers a long-term view of R&D
pipelines and the other which looks at the operational efficiencies of the core
company, which could be Ranbaxy in this case. >So,
the two divisions will be separated. It will be a delisting and a complete listing
of their R&D, as reported yesterday. This is in contrast to what private equity
players have to say. So, they will go for a full-fledged listing of their R&D
entity. >Before
Sun Pharma''s SPARC was listed, the company was valued at about $400 million by
Merrill Lynch. It had a couple of products that were already available in the
market. The company also had novel drug delivery systems, analog of cetirizine
and gabapentin, and a couple of metered dosages. In the case of Ranbaxy,
apart from malarial products, all its research is focussed on chronic-disease
products. It has drugs for metabolic disorders and diabetes. It also has DPP-4
which was worked upon by Glenmark and was licensed to Merck a couple of months
ago, ie GRC 8200. According
to these analysts, it looks to be a strong pipeline but there are no certainties
with pipelines. A couple of products may collapse in phase-II or phase-III trials.
But to have a pipeline of about 8-10 products in all, works well for a company
to go ahead and do some licensing deals, they added.
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