Eli Lilly scouting for partner to market oncology drugs

Eli Lilly, the global pharma major, is scouting for a partner to promote and distribute its oncology products in India.

Though it has not finalised timeline to select the partner, it plans to bring its range of oncology products in India.

“We will bring our oncology products, too, to the Indian market. We will have a Lupin-like arrangement for launching our oncology products,” Aaron Schact, executive director - global external R&D, Eli Lilly and Co, told DNA.

Under a recent deal with Lupin for distributing human insulin products, Lupin would promote and distribute Lilly’s Huminsulin range of products, including Huminsulin R, Huminsulin NPH, Huminsulin 50/50, Huminsulin 30/70 and Humapen Ergo II.

However, he refused to put a timeline for finalising any such agreement. “We are yet to decide on that,” he said. Several of Eli Lilly’s oncology products have been recording significant sales in the developed markets.

Apart from marketing its products, the global major is also keen on evaluating options for partnering with Indian pharma and bio-pharma companies for new products.

“We are also keen on sourcing ideas and the Indian market has significant capability. There are thousands of ideas and hundreds of compounds that would make any company interested in them. However, not all would be available for scale-up. For instance, we have 70 compounds in pipeline and may be just seven of them will make it to the market. Even if we take a schedule of bringing two compounds to the market, we need a lot of ideas to be with us,” he said.

According to Schact, Eli Lilly would also be keen on partnering with Indian companies for extending the line of products that would go off-patent, such as its blockbuster Zyprex which is estimated to have a market of about $23 billion.

“There are several products that would go off-patent and we are working on them,” he said.

Eli Lilly has also consolidated its presence in the Indian pharma market and is targeting revenues of about `500-800 crore in the next five years, which is about three times growth over the existing revenue.