Wockhardt to pull plug on US generics biz, push antibiotics

Wockhardt Ltd that built its name as a maker of generic drugs is shifting its focus in the US market to developing new antibiotics, turning away from generics and entering a space largely vacated by Big Pharma in recent years.

- Jessica Jani & Ranjani Raghavan

The company is working on new antibiotics and has identified segments for a push into biosimilar drugs, chairman Habil Khorakiwala said, in the wake of promising results shown by Zaynich, an antibiotic it developed in-house.

Wockhardt is in the process of seeking approvals from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the drug, amid concerns of rising drug resistance and few new antibiotics.

The company is building a global business model for its drug discovery and research business, targeting a 10-year exclusivity in the regulated markets for its novel antibiotics, and new biosimilar drugs to treat diabetes and obesity, said Khorakiwala, 82, who founded the Mumbai-based drugmaker in 1967.

"I want to de-risk the organization fundamentally," Khorakiwala said in an interview. "You will see a (new) drug coming out of our portfolio every two years for the next five to seven years."

Most large pharma companies have exited antibiotic research.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, once a leader in antibiotics, exited infectious disease research in the 2000s. Eli Lilly followed in the early 2000s, while Sanofi left in the mid-2010s. GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer have curtailed antibiotic research.

Currently, the largest antibiotic is Pfizer's Zavicefta, which has annual sales of about $700 million, according to Vishal Manchanda, senior vice president of institutional research at Systematix Group.

Though the figure is meager for Big Pharma, for Wockhardt, the opportunity is big.

"What we have achieved is remarkable in drug discovery...we chose an area like antibiotics, where Big Pharma was vacating. And there, we envisaged that in the next 15-20 years, there will be resistance developed," he said, recalling the company's thinking back in the late 1990s, when it committed to this path.