Veeda Clinical Research, the Anglo-Indian CRO based in Ahmedabad, Germany and the UK, announced today that it has formally commenced a number of initiatives resulting in the formation of an Experimental Medicine Group within the infrastructure of the CRO. Traditionally, Indian Phase I Units have concentrated on BioEquivalence and BioAvailability work and most recently, Veeda has led the way in establishing First-into-Man facilities and formal Phase I and Human Clinical Pharmacology across the group and especially in India.

As a result of plans formed with a number of multi-national Pharma companies, Veeda established within the Phase I group, a small multi-functional team working on experimental medicine studies. Recently the group, working in Plymouth completed a very sophisticated first-into-man study of a novel intravenous anaesthetic. At the same time, in India, the team developed methods for the study of the microcirculation in the leg muscles of diabetics and normal subjects in advance of a new drug being developed by a major Indian Pharmaceutical Company for whom the Veeda Group is conducting all the early clinical development studies from First-into-Man onwards. The studies are being conducted across the group sites, utilising the best facilities irrespective of the geography

Now, in a new initiative, the Veeda group has announced the expansion of the concept to form three distinct experimental medicine teams within the Veeda umbrella. The first team to function is the Neuropsychiatric Experimental Medicine group, chaired by Dr Maurice Cross, Veeda’s Group Medical Director and comprising Prof. Robin Eastwood and Dr Andrew Montgomery, the Group will have the oversight and supervision of all the neuroscience programmes in Alzheimers Disease and Schizophrenia being developed across the group. A first priority of the neuropsychiatric experimental medicine group is the scientific exploration of the various drug-induced models of Alzheimers disease in the Phase 1 population. This work will be extended into the clinical population, across the cultures and ultimately into the evaluation of some drugs with novel mechanisms of action. The Neuropsychiatric Experimental medicine team will also draw from Veeda’s biomarker group in the oxford Science Park and the Data Management and Statistics Group in Brussels and Mumbai.

Other experimental medicine groups being formed in the Veeda Group include a Metabolic Diseases group to be Ahmedabad based and a small female health group.

Announcing the commencement of Experimental Medicine Groups, Binoy Gardi, Group Managing Director, Veeda Clinical Research, said "This is the first time in India that an Early Clinical Development CRO has been approached by Major Global Pharmaceutical companies for is scientific expertise and not just for costs. For India to be a major player in the global CRO space, CROs need to move up the value chain. These contracts clearly position Veeda as a pioneer in the field of Contract Research in India."

Dr Maurice Cross, Group Medical Director of Veeda and the leader of the Experimental Medicine Initiative said ”One of the big differences between normal CRO work and Experimental Medicine is that the latter means whole programmes of work lasting several years to complete as compared with short term contracts to perform specific protocols characteristic of the normal Phase I world. In addition, our Biomarker facility in the Oxford Science Park has set new standards for our ability to set up specific methods for new markers of disease and explore their significance. Another big difference between Experimental Medicine work and normal CRO work is the close involvement of academic units from Universities in shaping the methods and whose members are integral parts of the team.”

Dr Cross further added that increasingly, the very largest Pharma companies are looking towards the formation of true partnerships with groups such as Veeda not only to test drugs but also to set up models of disease states and surrogates so that a programme of drug candidate screening and optimisation of drug function can be carried out. At the moment, the teams are just preparing to conduct some studies in diabetology which takes the established method of glucose clamping to a new level, clamping other metabolic compounds such as lactate and pyruvate. Plans within the group are afoot to open a pharmacogenetics laboratory at the Ahmedabad facility in collaboration with the University of Singapore. In a quite different area, the Ahmedabad teams are preparing to work with a US-based team to examine some basic science relating to Alzheimers disease and models of this condition which can be simulated in normal individuals.

Apurva Shah, Group Managing Director, Veeda Clinical Research commented, “The recent developments in Veeda move the company to a quite different plane from the level of the normal CRO - for staff, the excitement of ground-breaking work will provide much more stimulation and job satisfaction than the day-to-day grind of the process-driven CRO environment.”

Veeda Clinical Research is a vibrant Anglo/India CRO which brings together 20 years of clinical research expertise with the intellectual ability and tireless work ethic of the East. From First-in-Man studies to large scale Bioequivalence/Bioavailability comparator studies Veeda Clinical Research offers a fully integrated package to meet your early clinical development needs.

With state-of-the-art phase I facilities in Plymouth in the UK, Ahmedabad in India and Görlitz in Germany, fully accredited GLP laboratories, an established biometrics team in Belgium and India and a respected pre-clinical partner, Veeda CR can take your compound from pre-clinical development to proof of concept in the most timely, cost effective manner. For those clients unfamiliar with the benefits of outsourcing to India, or for those who choose to strategically spread their programmes of work between two continents, Veeda CR can deliver significant cost savings combined with the complete reassurance of a UK project management service.