Veeda SEA is a collaborative arrangement between Veeda and the Ministry of Health (through the Clinical Research Center – CRC) to open a Phase I and Early Clinical Development Unit at the Ampang Hospital in Kuala Lumpur. The CRC functions as clinical research arm of the Ministry of Health. It serves as a clinical trial support services to both public and private clients. It has 14 clinical centers in hospitals across Malaysia.

Dr Maurice Cross, Group Medical Director of Veeda CR, also noted that this would be a huge first for Malaysia. This would contribute to the training of Malaysians, and has the potential of attracting many pharmaceutical companies to evaluate Malaysia as a base in SE Asia.

Veeda is the only Phase-I CRO in Malaysia, with the closest competitors being in Singapore. Veeda will be pioneering Phase-I studies in the country.

Veeda has attained the coveted Bio Nexus status for its operations in Malaysia.

The Bio Nexus status is granted by the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation. It is the primary governmental development agency for Malaysia’s biotech industry. Their key responsibilities include identifying value propositions in R&D and commerce and support these ventures via financial assistance (by means of tax exemptions, grants) and developmental services, while giving firms the freedom of ownership and the freedom to bring in knowledge workers.

The Biotechnology Corporation is also the one-stop agency for gaining access to shared laboratories, and also for linking with other companies and facilities such as universities and research institutes.

Malaysia is a modern Asian Country with a total population of approximately 27mn people. Malays and Indians amount to 63% of the population and pharmacogenetically they are similar to Europeans. Chinese provide about 35% of the population. It delivers a high standard of modern health care to its citizens through a number of large general hospitals in the major towns and cities through National Health Service. Treatment is free at the point of delivery.

The Clinical Research Network was established for a centralized function and to provide a direct route for sponsors to gain access to clinical trial populations. Each hospital has a CRC Office specifically to act as the center of communication and feed-back information on patient availability. Participating centers may be large general hospitals or academic institutions. A list of investigators, all fully trained to GCP is maintained by the registry staff. Trials are initiated and controlled through the CRC. Lists of current trials are kept so that true availability of subjects can be ascertained. The CRC coordinates the regulatory process which is very client friendly and transparent.

It would include the process from discovery to conception till implementation, application.

Malaysia has one of the most sophisticated registries of disease in the world. Access to this registry provides for rapid and well targeted recruitment into clinical trials. This is an area which we will utilize for our oncology studies. It will be a priority area for development as increasingly there is a drive on the part of Pharmaceutical Companies to bring patient studies early into proof-of-concept studies immediately after first-into-man studies rather than completing the whole Phase I program and then going into a Phase II program. We are also in talks about the possibility of opening a joint biomarker laboratory in Malaysia to provide biomarker studies in oncology which will subtend both the human and the primate and higher mammal species from one laboratory platform.