Quest Life Sciences—Tie up with US based investor in pipeline

Established in 2004, Quest Life Sciences has number of firsts to its name. Apart from being the first clinical research organisation (CRO) in Chennai, it is also the only CRO in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in India. It is situated in Chennai, Tamil Nadu at the Madras Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) across a sprawling 22000 square feet centrally air-conditioned—on one floor facility that enables better supervision, control and working convenience. It is in compliance with good laboratory practices (GLP), good clinical practices (GCP) guidelines. Quest Life Sciences offers a full array of clinical trial services, having extensive experience in conducting pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) studies. It is audited by over 20 top leading companies in the world including some of the major companies from India, US and UK.

Building up a company is not an easy task specially when there is lot of competition in industry. Quest also had enormous task of getting highly trained, experienced clinical research associates and medical professionals. But this was overcome by continuous in-house training, and having external professionals on a regular basis. Explaining further, T S Jaishankar, Managing Director, Quest Life Sciences, says, "Along with this problem, there was also the hurdle of rising attrition rate in the beginning, which was however overcome with excellent inter-personal relations and providing excellent work culture and building systems."

Focus area

The major therapeutic segments which the company focuses on are hormonal drugs, oncology drugs, anti-cholesterol drugs. It has been constantly doing studies for both Indian and international companies. Jaishankar adds, "The company's ability to handle studies with post menopause women has brought in customers from far and wide." He also reveals that the company has done the maximum number of post menopausal women studies in India and has also done a large number of oncology bioequivalence (BE) studies on patients. The company is currently conducting approximately six to eight studies per month.

Quest has developed analytical methods and validated over 125 molecules. They have also submission studies for US, Belgium, Russia, South Africa, Philippines and Australia. The company has had a successful audit by US FDA with virtually nil observation on the clinical facility.

Future Plans

Speaking on the expansion plans, Jaishankar avers, "We plan to invest $ 3 to 5 million to expand our Phase I facility besides consolidating data management services. We are already in talks with a US based investor who can also add value to our business." The company has done clinical trials for almost all the top 10 Indian companies besides two large multinational companies and many small, medium biotech companies from US.

Sharing his views on the company's immediate future plans, he says that at present their main aim is to obtain accreditation from Europe, Brazil and Japan. In conclusion he says, "Having established credibility and with repeat orders from leading clients, we expect to be among the top three bioavailability (BA), bioequivalence (BE) centres in India."