How Contract Research is Fuelling Healthcare Advancement

Real World Evidence (RWE) is the data collected from sources outside clinical trials, including the monitoring of social media, mobile and wearable health tracking devices and electronic medical records. These insights from patients can better help CROs tailor clinical protocols to apply to real world circumstances.

Other factors that are favouring the market are efforts by the regulatory authorities such as Director Controller General of India (DCGI), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to create an amenable climate for research in India.

Increasing Number of Non-Profit Organizations
The demand for CROs has been increasing ever since healthcare institutions have unlocked various benefits of contract research organizations in business operations. With the inflating demand for CROs, investors have identified huge growth potential within establishing CROs. The rise in the number of investors involved in developing contract research organizations has contributed to the growth of the global CRO services market. Besides non-profit organizations, the market continues to witness newer CRO launches from leading companies across the country.

Impeding Factors
The stringent and differing pharmaceutical industry regulations in India have restricted the growth of the CRO market. Majority of the clinical trials and other research processes are outsourced simultaneously. In India, there are different guidelines and regulatory processes related to drugs, filing and clinical trials, which can cause issues and act as a restraint on the market.

Multi-location trials of a single drug in different procedures pose a challenge to pharmaceutical companies as they have to follow a completely different procedure. This is observed as one of the major challenges for research outsourcing in India and so, a company prefers to restrict outsourcing which restrains the research outsourcing market. For instance, clinical trials, regulatory filings and approval of drugs in India and China have variations. “The year FY21 has been a challenge for CROs, as a lot of Research & Development companies, reduced their spent on research due to COVID-19”, says Dr Chaitra Harsha, Co-founder and Managing Director of Vipragen Biosciences.

Concern for security
Another factor hindering the market over the forecast period is the increasing concern for security, especially data security and patient security. The market threat is the growth of the China market and the compromise on ethics and standards done by certain CROs. There are CROs who lack adequate infrastructure and knowledge. It has been observed that many clinical research institutions in India have an inadequate representation of the non-technical personnel in Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC).

Without adequate representation of persons from a non-functional background, the opinion of the IEC is likely to be unfair and biased in favour of the clinical study. Some institutes have IEC but do not have a regular schedule of committee meetings, lack of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or do not have a proper member representation according to the ICMR guidelines.

The quality of the overall data and clinical trial, including various aspects such as GCP compliance, manpower training and development, patient retention and awareness building, needs to be stepped up. Another threat is lack of collaboration between universities and industry which affects the market negatively.

What does the future hold?
The wide application areas for toxicology and drug screening, along with growing technological advancements, are leading to the development of novel screening products as well as an increase in the availability of high end drug screening instruments, reagent and kits. Simultaneously, many companies are adapting advanced technologies to reduce, refine and replace the use of animals in pre-clinical research. These factors combined are helping support preclinical testing and are ultimately driving the growth of the Indian pre-clinical CRO market.