Cadila Healthcare trades higher on inking agreement with IDRI

Cadila Healthcare is currently trading at Rs. 750.00, up by 13.70 points or 1.86% from its previous closing of Rs. 736.30 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 736.00 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 757.80 and Rs. 735.20 respectively. So far 2630 shares were traded on the counter.

The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 5 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 964.00 on 12-Sep-2012 and a 52 week low of Rs. 714.20 on 22-Mar-2013.

Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 787.00 and Rs. 735.00 respectively. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 15352.04 crore.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 74.79% while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 15.34% and 9.87% respectively.

In a unique partnership, Zydus Cadila, India's fourth largest healthcare Group and an innovation-led global healthcare provider and IDRI a Seattle-based non-profit research and product development organization has collaborated on the production and clinical development of IDRl ‘s visceral leishmaniasis (VL) vaccine candidate, designed to prevent the deadly parasitic disease.

Known as Kala-Azar in India, VL is transmitted by the bite of an infected sand fly. There are over 500,000 new VL cases and 50.000 associated deaths each year. VL is the most, severe form of leishmaniasis, affecting vital organs, and, if left untreated, the disease can be fatal. A vaccine is considered essential to control and eliminate the disease. Currently, leishmaniasis occurs in four continents and is considered to be endemic in 88 countries; 72 of those arc developing countries, with the disease being most common in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sudan and Brazil, While there are drugs to treat the disease, they are expensive and often toxic. To date, a safe and efficacious vaccine to prevent this disease does not exist.

Zydus & IDRI will collaborate to conduct clinical development activities in India with the goal of developing, registering and marketing this vaccine candidate for the prevention of VL, which will achieve the objective of global access - that is, ensuring the vaccine is affordable to and accessible by all people in need. Conducting trials in India, where there are real-life situations of disease exposure, is critical to determining the effectiveness of IDRI's VI vaccine candidate and ensuring it is approved and available within endemic countries.

IDRI's VL vaccine candidate, LEISH-F3+GLA-SE, is the product of more than 20 years of research and development supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The defined purified, recombinant vaccine comprises two fused Leishmania parasite proteins and an adjuvant to stimulate a protective immune response against the parasite. After completion of a Phase 1 clinical trial of 36 U.S. adult volunteers to test safety and immunogenicity, the vaccine was shown to be safe and to induce potent immune responses in healthy volunteers.