Glenmark's drug discovery vision
Glenn Saldanha does not believe that Glenmark
has fallen silent on the licensing front.
The next 12 to 18 months will see the company
venture into out-licensing pacts with global partners to develop prospective
drugs from the Glenmark stable, says Saldanha, Chairman and Managing Director.
Only this time, the pacts will be approached with more “maturity”, as opposed
to “doing deals for the next big cheque,” he says, reflecting on the company’s
evolving strategy.
“It’s
more a timing issue. We’ve not slowed down in terms of work ….it’s just that
we’ve been building up the pipeline,” he says, optimistic about their BEAT antibody technology
platform. (The technology facilitates efficient development and
manufacture of antibodies with dual specificities.) “To build a platform
technology, to build capabilities, it has taken us some time to get there. But
now we are at a very different place as far as research goes,” he says,
explaining the perceived silence from a company that was once seen as being
ahead of the pack in out licensing products.
“If I
look back at our evolution, up to 2011 we were very aggressive in out licensing.
We cut seven licensing deals up to 2008…then 2010 and 11 also we did these two
deals with Sanofi,” he recalls. More recently Glenmark said its contract
with Sanofi (who was testing Glenmark’s GBR 900 for treating multiple sclerosis) had been
terminated and Glenmark was now open to scout for new partners to relicense GBR 500,
a monoclonal antibody. Without getting into details on products expected to be
first off the out-licensing block, he points to oncology and immunology as
sought after segments.
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