The Hindu Business Line : Metropolis plans clinical trial centres, seeks pvt investment

METROPOLIS Health Services, a Rs 45-crore company that runs a chain of diagnostic laboratories across the country, plans to set up facilities for conducting clinical trials. `Clinical trials' are tests done of new drugs on animals and human beings.

Two such facilities have been planned. The first one, coming up at the M.S. Ramaiah Hospital in Bangalore, is expected to be ready by June. The second will follow after six months at Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute in Chennai.

The company will be spending about Rs 30 crore on both these facilities, Dr Sushil Shah, Chairman, Metropolis Health Services, told Business Line.To fund these and as well as other initiatives, Metropolis is in talks with a few private equity investors to raise Rs 20 crore, Dr Shah said.

The facilities for conducting clinical trials assume significance in the light of the possibilities of developed countries outsourcing the trials. Metropolis' trial centres would be capable of handling even Phase-I trials. (The US FDA Web site describes Phase-I clinical trials as "the initial introduction of an investigational new drug into humans. These studies, which are closely monitored, are designed to determine the metabolic and pharmacologic actions of the drug in humans, the side effects associated with increasing doses, and, if possible, to gain early evidence on effectiveness.")

Today, India is not a big player in clinical trial outsourcing because of lack of facilities, Dr Shah noted. The few facilities that are coming up are being put up by pharmaceutical companies but the need of the hour is independent, stand-alone trial facilities, he said. Globally, the facilities are either attached to hospitals or with universities, he observed.

Metropolis has been expanding through joint ventures and strategic partnerships. The company started with one diagnostic centre in Mumbai in 1981. In 2001, it acquired a 50 per cent stake in Lister Laboratories in Chennai and today, Lister Metropolis Laboratory and Research Centre Pvt Ltd has one main and five satellite centres in Chennai. The main centre is undergoing a Rs 30-crore expansion.

In 2003, Metropolis acquired an 80 per cent stake in Sudharma in Kerala, which runs diagnostic facilities in Thrissur and Kochi.

Asked about the impact of the `Fringe Benefit Tax' on the revenues of diagnostic centres, Dr G.S.K. Velu, Managing Director, Metropolis Health Services, said that there was "no way that corporate health check-up programmes could be called a `perk'."

Dr P. Srinivasan, Managing Director, Lister Metropolis, said that revenues from `corporate health check-up' constituted less than 10 per cent of the company's turnover.

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