Swedish Pharma Firm Partners GVK Bio for Drug Research

Hyderabad: Sweden-based pharmaceutical firm Medivir has entered into a partnership with GVK Biosciences for drug research.

This is the first pact the city-based clinical research the company has inked after it got involved in regulatory issues with European Medicines Agency a few months ago.

Medivir is a research-orientated pharma firm with focus on infectious diseases and oncology.

"Medivir has conducted a review of its discovery research operations. While committed to maintaining the current size of its discovery portfolio to deliver a constant flow of candidate drugs into its development pipeline, it has identified the opportunity to improve quality and efficiency through partnership with GVK Biosciences.

"The partnership will consolidate and strengthen all current outsourced synthetic chemistry in a single facility at GVK Bio's Integrated Discovery Research Campus, where scientific staff will further accelerate the synthesis and testing of compounds," a GVK Bio statement said here today.

Manni Kantipudi, chief executive of GVK Bio said: "We are excited about our partnership with Medivir. Medivir chose GVK Bio over several other CROs (contract research organisations) on the basis of its scientific strength."