Eisai Plans to Hire 100 People in India For First Asian Lab Outside Japan

Eisai Co. plans to hire about 100 people for a research and development center in India that will give the drugmaker its first laboratory in Asia outside Japan.

The facility, estimated to cost about $50 million, will be located in the eastern city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state, said Kozo Akasaka, a spokesman for Tokyo-based Eisai, in a telephone interview today. It will employ about 20 scientists, he said.

Eisai, maker of Aricept, the world’s best-selling Alzheimer’s disease treatment, aims to speed the development of medications for the Indian market as well as produce new ones for the global market, Akasaka said. Plans to open an R&D center were reported June 26 in India’s Financial Express newspaper.

India’s domestic pharmaceutical industry, worth about $11 billion in the year ended March 2009, will expand to about $30 billion by 2020, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in an April report.

Eisai gained 1.2 percent to 3,035 yen on the Tokyo stock exchange, the highest close since June 3, while the benchmark Topix index fell 0.8 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Mukai in Tokyo at ?2083 or amukai1@bloomberg.net

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