Biopharmaceutical major Pfizer India on Monday announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Father Muller Research to give fellowship opportunities to young researchers for gathering real-world evidence on drug efficacy and proven therapies from existing Electronic Patient records.
According to the company’s press statement, this evidence generation will focus on the prevention, treatment, and management of diseases that are of public health priority in India, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, the bespoke fellowships will be a form of recognition and will enable young clinicians who want to pursue medical research to do so with clear goals in place, the company claims.
“Advancing towards delivering on our purpose: Breakthroughs that Change Patients’ Lives, we have now partnered with one of India’s leading research institutes Father Muller Research. This partnership will focus on capacity-building initiatives including educational initiatives for healthcare practitioners and clinical research team in several therapy areas, such as oncology, cardiology, anti-infectives, women’s health, dermatology, and vaccines. We are certain that this partnership will be another important milestone in our collective journey to improve our collective understanding of disease conditions and overcome the myriad health challenges of India. This is one of the many partnerships Pfizer is exploring to apply science and our resources to improve people’s lives,” Dr. Sonali Dighe, Senior Director Medical Affairs at Pfizer, said in a statement.
The company claims that it sees this as a long-term, academic collaboration to promote high-quality medical research in the country. Additionally, through this collaboration, Pfizer and Father Muller Research Center plan to build centers of excellence in rare diseases, it stated.
Meanwhile, the Father Muller Research will be COE for placing various RWE studies, capability-building workshops, and fellowship programmes in rare disease areas to start with. This may get extended to other therapy areas going forward, it claimed.
“We are happy to collaborate with Pfizer India for all Research initiatives. Industry Institutional interaction is the order of the day which will immensely help the medical field and also helps us to develop new modalities of treatment development of drug and devices and so on. This will help early diagnosis and better patient outcome. I am sure this collaboration will last for some years and long-term goals may be achieved. Let us strengthen our bonding and relationship for years to come,” Rev.Fr. Richard Aloysius Coelho, Director, Father Muller Charitable Institutions said in a statement.
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