New Delhi Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma has mooted a new formula to the group of ministers (GoM) on pharma pricing to keep prices of essential medicines in check. Sharma recommended that the weighted average price of all drug brands that have more than 5% market share in a particular therapeutic segment should be fixed as the ceiling price of that particular drug.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals is set to enter the final stage of clinical trials for its new drug, Revamilast, across several countries this year. It is meant for treatment of inflammatory disorders like asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Glenmark may soon seek approval for Phase-III trials in the US, UK and India.

“Glenmark plans to file an IND (Investigational New Drug application) for Revamilast in the US in the third quarter of the current financial year. The company intends to initiate Phase-III trials for at least one indication by the end of FY13,” chairman and managing director Glenn Saldanha told Business Standard.

Who will now be held responsible? Whose negligence is all this? And will the guilty face the music?

At least 350 girls in Tezpur and 45 in Mangaldoi fell ill after they were given folic acid tablets under a National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme in Sonitpur and Darrang district on Wednesday. The Mangaldoi DC has ordered a magistrate-level inquiry into the incident. Condemning the incident, the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) has demanded of the State government to find out the manufacturers of the tablets and punish them.

A third of malaria drugs used around the world to keep the spread of the disease at bay are counterfeit, recent data has suggested. According to a study published in the reputed journal the Lancet, around 7 per cent of the drugs tested in India was found to be of poor quality with many being fake.

Researchers who looked at 1,500 samples of seven malaria drugs from seven countries in Southeast Asia said poor-quality and fake tablets are causing drug resistance and treatment failure. “Much of this morbidity and mortality could be avoided if drugs available to patients were efficacious, high quality, and used correctly,” said the Lancet.

Escalating costs of commonly used drugs across the country has consumers complaining about health care slowly but surely becoming unaffordable. With costs of drugs used by heart patients, diabetics and those used by persons with high blood pressure and cholesterol levels registering a upward trend, drug market watchers state that the Government will need to intervene fast to remedy the situation.

New Delhi Congress MP Jyoti Mirdha on Friday urged the group of ministers on pharma pricing, headed by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, to extend the regime of price control to all the drugs available in the retail market.

Mirdha argued that profits earned by pharma companies were primarily used in promotional expenses and for foray into other businesses. She claimed that top-50 pharma companies spend over R5,300 crore every year, while generating sales of slightly over R28,769 crore.

Less than 2 p.c. of global trials are conducted in India

With India being home to 16 per cent of global population and 20 per cent of global disease burden, it (country) is gradually transforming into a clinical research destination for pharmaceutical companies. But the biggest concern is whether the country is becoming a dumping ground for clinical trials?