First black drug-trials firm gets R12m lift

Science and Health Editor CAPE TOWN SAs first black-owned clinical research organisation was launched last week, backed by a R12m investment from the science and technology department.

Clinical research organisations help manage clinical trials. which are conducted to test the safety and efficacy of medicines.

The African Clinical Research Organisation (ACRO) is a joint venture between black-owned Batswadi Pharmaceuticals and LIFEIab, one of three biotechnology regional innovation centres established by the government to support the local biotech industry.

The local clinical research industry is worth about R2bn and is dominated by multinational firms such as Parexel, Quintiles, Kendle, PPD Development and Icon. Local players include Triclinium, Clindev and Virtus Clinical Development.

The governments drive to get multinational health-care companies to do more business with black-owned local firms presented opportunities for ACRO, said CEO Mary-Ann Richardson.

The draft health-care charter says that multinational firms, which cannot as easily sell a stake to local black investors as South African firms, should look for alternative ways to bring in black players.

SA is considered an attractive environment for conducting clinical trials because it has a good laboratory infrastructure and a large drug-naive population.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies generally conduct their early phase one clinical trials in Europe and the US.

Developing countries, such as SA, are included only in the later phase two and phase three trials, which are often run in several countries.

Richardson said ACRO would support the range of clinical trials from phase one early safety trials to phase four post-market research, once products were approved by regulatory authorities.

A lot of work gets done in research institutions and just sits on the shelf, either because people did not know how to commercialise it or because the cost of trials was too high, she told Business Day In a telephone interview from Johannesburg.

The firm aimed to take promising biotechnology research to market, she said.

Richardson said ACRO had yet to secure clients, but planned to focus its efforts on clinical trials related to HIVIAIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the diseases that hit African nations hardest.

Source: BUSINESS DAY (Final) 06 Aug 2007 Page 4