Nicholas Piramal of India joins IFPMA

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations has announced its newest member company, Indian drugmaker Nicholas Piramal.

Welcoming the firm, Harvey Bale, director general of the IFPMA, said: "not only as our newest member, but also as our first pharmaceutical company member from India. Piramal's membership of the IFPMA underlines that, in the future, research-based pharmaceutical leadership will not be the exclusive preserve of companies from Europe, Japan or the USA."

Nicholas Piramal has novel lead compounds in the fields of oncology, inflammation, infectious diseases and diabetes. Its comprehensive R&D organization covers a wide range of activities, including natural products (microbial and plant extracts), herbs (Indian traditional medicinal plants), medicinal and synthetic chemistry, special projects (looking at medicine combinations), cheminformatics (compound libraries, software tools and modeling), process development, pharmacology, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, molecular biology, biomarkers and clinical research, the IFPMA notes. In July, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the Indian firm's Investigational New Drug application for its lead cancer compound P 276-00 for multiple myeloma.