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The Route To...

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[ROAD BLOCKS: UP had held up highway projects citing environmental reasons (Pic by Tribhuwan Sharma) As part of the strategy to fast-track the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP), undertaken by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the Centre plans to link the release of Central Road Funds (CRF) to states to the cooperation extended towards the highway development programme. Active participation of state governments in getting all clearances in place is crucial for getting road construction works to be executed on time. Here factors such as land acquisition are important hurdles where state governments have a crucial role to play. Road transport and highways minister Kamal Nath says that the Centre plans to release funds from the CRF on the basis of the proactive role states play in expediting state-level clearances as well as getting bottlenecks removed on time. CRF is a dedicated fund created from the cess on petrol and diesel. These funds are to be used for the development and maintenance of national highways, state and rural roads as well as for building road overbridges and underbridges. Fifty per cent of funds collected through cess on diesel go towards rural roads. The rest and the entire cess on petrol is distributed among national highways, state roads and towards the requirement of railways. While the new CRF norm is not aimed at any particular “non-cooperative” state, in the past Uttar Pradesh had stalled the NHDP for four years insisting that NHAI should provide a 10-metre strip of land along the national highway to plant trees. This was to compensate for the trees that needed to be cut to build the road. But NHAI was unable to meet this demand as it was not always possible to get land along the proposed national highway. PHARMACEUTICALS Spotting Potential Nycomed’s Daxas could beat a path for Glenmark’s oglemilast LUNG POWER: As a tablet, Daxas is more convenient than standard inhalers Swiss drug maker Nycomed has applied for marketing approval for Daxas, a once-a-day tablet for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), with the US Food and Drug Administration. This is seen as good news by Mumbai’s Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, whose oglemilast — a drug in the same class known as PDE4 inhibitors — is in advanced trials. No drug in the class has found the right balance between safety and efficacy yet. “Progress of roflumilast to pre-registration augurs well for the class since this is the first one crossing the hurdles of clinical development after initial failures,” says Glenn Saldanha, managing director of Glenmark. “Any improvement in efficacy or safety of the second-in-class drug can build on the base established by the first entrant.” Glenmark, whose oglemilast is licensed to US firm Forest Laboratories, says Daxas is the only PDE4 inhibitor ahead of oglemilast. Daxas has had a chequered history. Pfizer, which had tied up with Altana (the company that Nycomed bought) for taking it through trials, walked out some years ago. This is its second attempt to seek marketing approval in a western country. Daxas’s potential has yet to be proven beyond doubt. A recent note by research firm Datamonitor expressed “cautious optimism” about its commercial potential, but observed that it did not address the greatest unmet medical need in COPD, which is halting the progressive loss of lung function or reversing the course of the disease. Glenmark’s oglemilast has also fallen behind original schedules for crossing certain milestones that made it eligible to receive bullet payments from Forest Laboratories. Gauri Kamath (Businessworld Issue Dated 11-17 Aug 2009)