The country’s drug regulator has given conditional market approval for Ranbaxy Laboratories’ anti-malaria drug, paving the way for the launch of the country’s first privately-developed medicine and ending more than a decade of failures or near misses for India’s drug makers. While the domestic drug industry has been successful in making generic versions of drugs as well as new drug delivery systems, this is the first time that a new molecule discovered and patented by a home grown company will be sold commercially, plugging a big hole in the R&D credentials of the country.
