Wertheimer, Albert

Albert I. Wertheimer / School of Pharmacy, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 

The biggest investment, requiring the most confidence, is the captive R D center model. Here they still keep it in-house, but they ll have a house over in Bangalore or Mumbai, in the words of Dr Albert Wertheimer, Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at Temple University in Philadelphia. In this model, the pharma company establishes its own research center in the other country, a good example of this being Roche s R D facility in Shanghai. 

I think it will temper the trend, says Dr Albert Wertheimer, but they re not going to stop it or reverse it as long as it s less expensive and you can get equivalent quality work done abroad. ... 

Dr Albert Wertheimer of Temple University believes that the economics involved make it likely that this will happen. Ranbaxy started out by doing joint ventures with Lilly and doing subcontracting with Lilly, and now they re on their own more and more, he says. If, hypothetically, they discover a product in India, what they would have done before is license it to their partner, Lilly, and Lilly would give them, let s just arbitrarily say, 7% royalties on it. 

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