TCS bags clinical trial data contract from Novo Nordisk
Business Standard — December 19, 2005

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has bagged a clinical trial data management contract from Danish pharmaceutical major, Novo Nordisk, even as it has initiated discussion for similar contracts from global pharma majors. Under the agreement, the Tata group company will conduct offshore clinical operation services for Novo Nordisk in India and offer a slew of data management services. The size of the deal could not be ascertained.

Industry sources said this could be a multi-million dollar deal over a period of time, as the global outsourcing of clinical trial management is estimated at around $1 billion over the next five-year period. Confirming the news, executive vice-president and head (Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Practice) J Rajgopal said, "This could be one of the first outsourcing deals, in the clinical trial-data management space, for an Indian company".

He added: "The deal is strategic in nature, as it gives our company an opportunity to leverage our domain capability and provide our products, solutions and services across the pharma value chain." He, however, did not divulge the size of the deal. TCS plans to implement offshore clinical operations services from its Mumbai centre and offer a slew of data management services, such as designing, capturing and coding of trial-data, gathered by Novo Nordisk from across the world.

Earlier this year, TCS had entered into an agreement with Congenia, a biotechnology start-up promoted by Italy's Genextra SpA group, to provide advanced fragment-based lead optimisation solutions for drug discovery. TCS will work on "P66" - a target protein identified by Congenia as a key protein involved in several age-related diseases - and develop optimised drug leads based on this. TCS is focussing on the life-science sector, as an engine of growth and is expecting to post revenues of 50 per cent growth over the next few years.

TCS is also close to tying-up with other pharma majors across the world for similar kind of deals. However, Rajgopal did not divulge the name of the companies, the company was in talks with.