A dubious diabetes drug, regulatory confusion, and a potential PIL

It’s a barely a five-minute walk from New Delhi’s Patel Nagar metro station. The lane, bristling with commercial activity, stands out by itself. Sweet shops, bakeries, juice shops, spy camera vendors, or even a small outlet selling Ayurvedic medicines for in-vitro fertility treatment. South Patel Nagar has it all. Amidst all this chaos, in a building with a juice outlet to the front and up a narrow flight of stairs, is Aimil Pharmaceuticals, a little-known company which is kicking up some chaos in the medical world too.

Exactly a year ago, Aimil launched Ayurvedic pills called BGR-34 for diabetes.

AUTHOR

Seema Singh

Seema has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote “Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech”, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, and before that she wrote for Mint. Seema has written for numerous international publications like IEEE-Spectrum, New Scientist, Cell and Newsweek. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

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