The Chandigarh-based Venus Remedies’ manufacturing facilities at Baddi Campus has secured Good Manufacturing Practices certificate from the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran which will enable the Company to export its products to Iranian market.

Technical analysts believe that this is a major breakthrough for the Company as Iran holds a significant share in Middle Eastern Pharmaceutical market and would open door to other Middle Eastern Markets as well.

Syngene International, a unit of Indian biotechnology major BIOCON Group, has informed that it will offer fully integrated drug discovery services by partnering with Sapient Discovery, a US based Biotechnology Company.

Sapient Discovery uses integrated, proprietary computational and experimental laboratory technologies, and cellular biology and proprietary data mining to accelerate the drug discovery and optimization processes.

Leading pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy's Laboratories announced its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 08. The company posted net profit of
192.40-crore in the reporting period as compared to loss of Rs 121.30 crore in the same period last year.

Its revenue stood at Rs 1,840 crore in Q3 as compared to Rs 1,231 crore in the third quarter of financial year 2007-08.

Two multinational companies are developing memory-enhancing pill. AstraZeneca in collaboration with Targacept, an American company, is trying to develop milder form of a medicine which is originally used to treat Alzheimer's disease. Epix Pharmaceuticals, also from the US is also working on a memory enhancing pill.

An open offer was made by Daiichi Sankyo to Zenotech Laboratories' shareholders at Rs 113.62 per share. This comes after it revised its earlier open offer price of Rs 160 per share.

Jayaram Chigrupati, MD, Zenotech Laboratories reacted to the development, "The agreement on open offer price was reached in July 2008. The agreed price was reached after shareholders filed a case post the Ranbaxy-Daiichi deal. The suit was withdrawn after Daiichi agreed to open offer price of Rs 160 per share."

Ranbaxy Laboratories CEO Malvinder Singh said that due to an import ban by the US authorities, his firm may shift some generic drug production from India to the US.

"We will transfer (production of) some products from India to America. Also, we are looking at making some acquisitions of manufacturing assets," said Mr Singh, at a media reception held by Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo.