Pfizer India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Father Muller Research to strengthen evidence generation and encourage young researchers to gather real-world evidence (RWE) on drug efficacy and proven therapies from existing Electronic Patient records.

This evidence generation will focus on prevention, treatment and management of diseases that are of public health priority in India, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. 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.

Commenting on the MoU, Dr Sonali Dighe, Senior Director Medical Affairs at Pfizer, said, “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."

Pfizer 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 (CoEs) in rare diseases.

The Father Muller Research will be CoE for placing various RWE studies, capability building workshops, fellowship programs in rare disease area to start with. This may get extended to other therapy areas going forward.

Rev.Fr. Richard Aloysius Coelho, Director, Father Muller Charitable Institutions said, “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."