Spotlight

Truly Panacea

When everyone had set eyes on chemistry, Panacea Biotech was one company, which saw gold in biology. Today, Panacea Biotech is the third largest biotech company in India. Sonal Shukla explores the interesting journey of the company so far and the road ahead

A different approach towards business, highlights the journey of Panacea Biotech. Even though Panacea Biotech penetrated the biotech industry in 1983, its roots go long back in 1947. This company very quickly identified the need for developing vaccines for polio and measles and to produce albumin antiimmunologin and collaborated with the company Sclava (now known as Novartis) in Sienna, Italy, for the same.

Rajesh Jain Joint Managing Director Panacea Biotech

Further consolidating its presence in the healthcare management arena, Panacea moved on to the other technology driven areas of pharma, like drug delivery in 1993, when the wind was moving towards generics. Today, the company has firmly positioned itself as one of India's leading health management company. "Under the ambit of health management, whatever the consumer requires, or whatever it takes to deliver him healthcare we shall do that. Currently, it is through pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and vaccines. Tomorrow if the form and shape changes, we will adapt to that," opines Rajesh Jain, Joint Managing Director, Panacea Biotech.

In early 2005, Panacea also migrated into biopharma research, which is at the high end of biotechnology research. Panacea had inherent strength in biology, which could be leveraged by getting into the high tech arena. Panacea's recent collaboration with National Research Develop-ment Corporation (NRDC) for in-licensing of technology to produce and market the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccine developed by Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) further expects to consolidate its presence in biotech.

In 1989, the company set up its first vaccine production plant. In 1995, the whole company went public. Just before going public, they changed the name to Panacea Biotech.

Clear cut vision

Panacea Biotech has carved for itself three clear cut areas to grow, namely, vaccines, biopharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals. The overall base of science is increasing so much that tomorrow pharmaceuticals may not be relevant, is the logic that the company believes in. All the three areas have underlined reason of being into research. "Whatever we shall do, we feel that to be innovative and yet disciplined is a niche and we are strong in this area and probably others are not," beams Jain.

The company has established brand equity in pain management, diabetes and organ transplantation, and Panacea's Glizet and Nimolet are among the top 200 brands in India. It was the first Indian company to launch innovative branded combination vaccines through joint venture with Chiron Corporation UK, Chiron Panacea Vaccines. These branded vaccines are Easyfour, Easyfive, Ecovac and Enivac HB.

The company has demonstrated capability of working in collaborations with international companies, universities and government organisations demonstrating a uniform approach to growth with in- licensing of technology transfers, product developments and marketing. Effective alliances and collaborations are vital for accelerating innovation and growth. Panacea has thus recently entered into a joint venture with Chiron Corporation, UK to market new and innovative breakthrough combination vaccines in India. Its collaboration with Cambridge Biostability, UK for developing thermo stable vaccines applying patented ‘stable liquid technology’ and in-licensing arrangements with Biotechnology Consortium of India Ltd (BCIL) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA are some of its vital strategic alliance done by Panacea Biotec. In order to capitalise on its biotech in a true sense, Panacea has now set its eyes on the global organ transplantation market and plans to exploit this one with a strong product portfolio like Panimun Bioral, Mycept, PanGraf and FOSBAIT in markets like Latin America, French speaking Africa and South-East Asia.

"The company has made massive sales marketing and distribution plans to be a global leader there. Once this leadership is established then the other product portfolio in the company will piggyback on them. That is pain management and paediatric vaccines", explains Jain. Panacea also has strong presence in gastrointestinal segment with OD-PEP, Livoluk and in anti-tubercular segment with Xceed, Myobid and Myser.

Research strategy

'A patent a day' explains the R&D strategy of Panacea. With the help of platform of technologies Panacea has in its kitty, ten global drug delivery patents and plans to bring in more. The company has four research and development centres with 300 scientists focusing on diabetes, infectious disease, arthritis and cardiology. Different centres with different heads, teams, vision and mandate meet each other in a scientific committee meeting. "There is an exchange of capabilities and technologies that have been built over the years through a scientific committee," says Jain. The research centres constitutes drug delivery, that is, new chemical entity, drug delivery for formulation development and only technology driven patent, biopharmaceutical R&D, which is focusing on peptides, proteins and monoclonal antibodies, and vaccine research.

In pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical research, one needs access to GLP Level animal house facility, as all biological research and drug discovery require to establish early concept in safety and efficacy. Panacea set up a new animal house as per the guidelines of CPCSEA. Having established these facilities, Jain believes that Panacea has developed a lot of strength in biology which has made drug discovery research for small and large molecules much easier. With all the attempts to increase capacity, Panacea intends to fasten the pace of international collaborations to gain more market share and topline growth.

Strategic marketing

Panacea Biotech entered into the business by design. "We knew that we have to evolve as a company uniformly and in all capabilities. If you just innovate and don't have the execution capability to take the product to the market then you don't draw the right value for it. Therefore as a young and growing company it becomes quite essential for us to take to the market what we have invented," opines Jain.

The company believes that both collaboration, as well as competition is necessary for growth and has carved out aggressive sales, marketing and distribution plan for developing countries by being present in itself and through distributors. For the developed world, Panacea is willing to take its novel drug delivery systems based products through collaborations in those markets. "We continue to develop our marketing muscle in developing countries and brand building capability. In western world we are going to collaborate," says Jain.

According to him, developed markets have a different system of healthcare where once the product goes off patent then the company has to follow a different route. Panacea's product portfolio for developed markets would be much thinner but much more in terms of value and returns, he adds. The company calls itself a research based company and believes in brand building. Now the company is set to tap markets like North America and the European Union. "Since we don't do any generic business and do business protected only by IPR, these markets become much more lucrative in size and value for us, "opines Jain. High value markets because of their large size and value automatically become more lucrative for innovative companies who have spent large amount of money in research and development for the introduction of product which are protected by intellectual property. Panacea wants to grab this opportunity.

Smart management

With a whole gamut of healthcare to explore smart management is the key for Panacea’s success. Getting organised the whole marketing infrastructure into different strategic business units, for different therapeutic areas namely Pro Care (pain management), Grow Care (gastrointestinal), Diacar (diabetes and cardio-vascular), Critical Care (renal transplant), Vaccines and 1000 strong field force to promote has enabled the company to focus on the needs of its customer. Specialised fields like diabetes and dermatology require a different skill set at field staff level to cater to the health care specialists needs, opines Jain.

The company has an online portal which gives very easy to understand information to patients about a disease and its management. They can store there entire electronic medical records in that particular portal. Patients can even pose queries from there to the panel to seek expert opinion. Continual medical workshops for medical professionals is another area which comes under the territory of services provided by Panacea. They have also established lot of post-marketing surveillance by which one can see how patients are fairing on products and providing feedback to doctors. They also conduct patient health awareness programmes.

Moving forward

In the year 2007, the company plans to enter new markets through collaborations, setting up new R&D centres and more production plants.

To finance such expansions Panacea needed higher capital base. To meet this need Panacea has generated funds through FCCB. These funds will be utilised for establishing marketing and distribution infrastructure internationally, in obtaining registrations worldwide, establishing more R&D and production centres. Last year, the company enlarged its field force, re-augmented it brand portfolio and introduced many new products in the market. Panaecea is now making plans to enter global developing markets for transplantation with focus on specific therapeutic fields like diabetes, pain management and organ transplantation.

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