Turning research ideas into funded, published studies across Pakistan.
Clinicians have the questions and the patients. Industry sponsors and development funders have budgets and no local machinery to spend them well. NeuDrug develops the protocol, secures the funding, runs the study across provinces, and writes the paper.
How a project moves
- Idea submitted by an investigator
- Scored against a published rubric
- Developed into a protocol, budget and timeline
- Matched with an industry sponsor or funder
- Approved by the ethics committee
- Run and monitored across participating sites
- Analysed and written up
- Published — findings as found
You have the question. We find the funding.
- Submit your idea free — no cost at any stage to the investigator
- Written scientific feedback on every submission within 14 days
- Protocol, sample size, CRFs and ethics dossier prepared with you
- Biostatistics, manuscript drafting and journal submission included
- You remain the principal investigator and the lead author
A research budget, turned into evidence.
- A curated pipeline of investigator-led projects, already scored and costed
- Select from ready concepts instead of spending months searching for a PI
- Multi-province studies, not single-centre convenience samples
- One contract, one project manager, one invoice — through to publication
- Pakistani real-world evidence for products already on the market
A local implementation partner you can hold to account.
- Research delivery capability across all four provinces and both territories
- Investigator and site network mapped to national disease priorities
- Protocol, ethics, data, analysis, reporting and dissemination in one team
- Built to the governance and reporting standards donors require
- Available as prime, sub-award partner or delivery subcontractor
Ten stages, one accountable partner
The investigator owns the science and the clinical conduct. NeuDrug owns everything else — which is what makes a research budget travel further and finish.
Idea intake
Investigator submits through the form on this page.
Scientific assessment
Scored against the published rubric; written feedback either way.
Concept development
Synopsis, endpoints, sample size, budget and timeline.
Catalogue listing
Listed anonymously so sponsors and funders can find it.
Funding match
Detailed brief shared with registered sponsors and funders.
Contracting
Sponsor, institution and NeuDrug agreements executed.
Ethics & regulatory
ERC/IRB dossier prepared; DRAP and NBC where applicable.
Execution
Sites conduct; NeuDrug monitors and reports status.
Data & statistics
Database build, cleaning, SAP and statistical report.
Publication
Manuscript drafted, submitted and seen through review.
We build research around Pakistan's actual disease burden
Pakistan carries a double burden — infectious disease and maternal and child mortality that much of the region has moved past, alongside a rapidly rising non-communicable disease load. These are the areas where local evidence is thinnest and where both industry and development funders are looking for data.
Infectious disease & AMR
- Hepatitis B and C
- Tuberculosis, including drug-resistant TB
- Typhoid and enteric fever, including XDR strains
- Antimicrobial resistance and stewardship
- Dengue, malaria and vector-borne disease
- Pneumonia and diarrhoeal disease in children
- HIV
- Immunisation coverage and vaccine-preventable disease
Non-communicable disease
- Ischaemic heart disease and stroke
- Diabetes and metabolic syndrome
- Hypertension and its complications
- Chronic kidney disease and dialysis access
- COPD and asthma
- Breast, oral cavity and liver cancer
- Obesity and physical inactivity
- Mental health and depression
Maternal, newborn & child health
- Maternal mortality and quality of obstetric care
- Preterm birth and neonatal disorders
- Stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiency
- Anaemia in women and children
- Family planning and reproductive health
- Adolescent health
- Breastfeeding and infant nutrition
- Congenital and genetic disorders
Health systems & population health
- Thalassaemia and haemoglobinopathies
- Access to and quality of primary care
- Diagnostic capacity and laboratory quality
- Road traffic and occupational injury
- Water, sanitation and hygiene
- Climate, flooding and heat-related illness
- Health financing and out-of-pocket cost
- Health workforce and service delivery
Site network across all provinces and territories
Studies are designed and reported by province, not by single institution. Multi-province designs cost more and take longer — and they are the only way to produce findings that generalise to the country rather than to one hospital's catchment.
Full project management, or just the piece you're missing
Most sponsors take the managed model. Institutions, universities and independently funded investigators buy the services individually.
Managed research projects
End-to-end delivery of a funded study: development, contracting, ethics, conduct oversight, analysis and publication under one agreement.
Protocol development
Full protocol, case report forms, informed consent documents and study-specific procedures, built around an answerable question.
Ethics & regulatory support
ERC/IRB submission dossiers across multiple provinces, query responses, and coordination of DRAP and National Bioethics Committee requirements where they apply.
Biostatistics
Sample size justification, statistical analysis plan, analysis, and a statistical report with publication-ready tables and figures.
Data management
Database design, data entry, validation rules, query management and a clean, locked dataset with a documented audit trail.
Medical writing & publication
Manuscript drafting to journal standard, target journal selection, submission and support through peer review. Disclosed, never ghost-written.
Multi-province coordination
Site identification, initiation and monitoring across provinces, with a single coordinating centre and standardised documentation.
Grant and proposal development
Concept notes, full proposals, logframes, budgets and partner arrangements for institutional and development funding calls.
Donor reporting & dissemination
Interim and final technical reports, policy briefs, stakeholder dissemination and open-access publication of results.
Sponsor-ready projects seeking funding
Each listing is a research concept developed by NeuDrug into a costed, ethics-ready design with a defined question, endpoints, sample size and provincial site plan. The full brief — including investigator and institution — is released to registered sponsors and funders under confidentiality.
What a research budget buys
Indicative bands for industry-sponsored projects, to frame a conversation — not quotations. Every project is costed from its own protocol and the full budget is shown to the sponsor line by line. Institutionally funded work is budgeted to the funder's own template and rules.
Focused
Retrospective record-based study, registry, drug-utilisation or treatment-pattern study.
- Up to 2 provinces, 2–3 sites
- 300–600 patients or records
- Protocol and ethics submissions
- Analysis and statistical report
- One manuscript, submitted
National
Prospective multi-province observational study, disease registry, or comparative effectiveness study.
- 3–4 provinces, 5–8 sites
- 500–1,000 patients
- Everything in Focused
- Site initiation and monitoring visits
- Database build and data management
- Province-level subgroup reporting
Flagship
National multi-province study, prospective registry, burden-of-disease or health-economics programme.
- All four provinces plus territories where feasible
- 1,000+ patients or records
- Everything in National
- Investigator meeting and steering committee
- Health-economic or policy analysis
- Two manuscripts plus a policy brief
A local delivery partner built to donor standards
Multilateral agencies, international foundations, global health non-profits, bilateral programmes and national research councils all need the same thing in Pakistan: a local partner who can design a rigorous study, get it through provincial ethics committees, run it across sites, and report on time to the funder's own template. That is the work we do.
How we can be engaged
We work in whichever position the funding mechanism allows:
- Local implementing partner to an international prime recipient
- Sub-award or subcontract holder under an institutional grant
- Research delivery partner to a university or hospital holding the award
- Service provider under a competitively tendered contract
- Co-applicant on calls that permit a private research organisation
What we bring
- An investigator network mapped to national disease priorities
- Study design and biostatistics capability in-country
- Ethics submission experience across provincial committees
- Data management with documented audit trail and quality control
- Reporting, dissemination and open-access publication
- A documented quality system, not an ad hoc team
Governance
Written SOPs, conflict-of-interest register, research integrity policy, document control and defined study governance for every project.
Financial accountability
Registered company with statutory accounts, project-level fund segregation, itemised budgets, and pass-through costs billed at cost with documentation.
Data protection & ethics
Participant consent processes, de-identification, controlled data access, and ethics approval before any participant contact or record access.
Open dissemination
Findings published as found, results shared with participating sites and provincial stakeholders, and open-access publication where the funder requires it.
Local access commitment
Where a funder requires that outputs remain affordable and available in-country, we will contract to it — including knowledge sharing and access terms.
Reporting
Technical and financial reporting to the funder's template and schedule, with agreed indicators and milestone verification.
The difference between funding a study and completing one
You can approach an investigator directly. Most organisations that do end up with a protocol nobody finished, a dataset nobody analysed, and no paper.
| Going direct to an investigator | With NeuDrug |
|---|---|
| Months of relationship-building to find a credible PI, with uncertain results | A pre-screened investigator network with scored, costed concepts — you select rather than search |
| A single-centre study that does not generalise beyond one catchment | Multi-province design with province-level reporting built in from the protocol |
| An idea is not a protocol; someone still has to write one | Protocol, endpoints, sample size, CRFs, budget and timeline delivered as a package |
| No internal capacity for ethics submissions, monitoring, data cleaning or statistics | A single project manager doing all of it, with scheduled status reporting |
| Directly funded projects stall, and you have no leverage to restart them | Milestone-based delivery against a contracted, accountable counterparty |
| A study that never gets written up means the whole spend produced nothing | Medical writing and journal submission are contracted deliverables, not good intentions |
| Paying a prescriber directly invites the perception that the study was bought | An independent scientific assessment, a published scoring rubric and a written integrity policy |
| Five contracts, several ethics committees and three vendors to coordinate | One point of contact, one agreement, one invoice |
Funded, not steered
Industry and donor funding of investigator-led research only works if everyone can see where the boundaries are. Ours are in every contract we sign.
- The investigator retains scientific control of the protocol, analysis and interpretation
- Publication is committed in the contract before the study starts
- Funders get a defined review window for comment — never a right of approval
- Results are reported as found; no payment depends on the direction of a finding
- Authorship follows ICMJE criteria; writing support is disclosed, never ghost-written
- Funding source and every NeuDrug role are disclosed to the ethics committee and in the publication
- Ethics approval precedes any participant contact or record access, without exception
- Pass-through costs are billed at cost with documentation, never marked up
Submit your research idea
Free, and free of obligation. Every submission is scored against our published rubric and receives written feedback — whether or not we take it forward.
Register to receive project briefs
Registration gives you the full brief on any listed project — research question, investigator profile, synopsis, methodology, provincial coverage, timeline and budget — plus alerts when a project matching your priorities is listed. Institutional funders and primes can request our capability statement here.
Frequently asked
Does it cost an investigator anything to submit?
No. Submission, scientific assessment and written feedback are free. If a project is funded, NeuDrug's fees are paid by the sponsor or funder under a separate services agreement — never out of the investigator's or the site's research budget.
Why start at PKR 2 million?
Because studies below that are usually single-centre and do not generalise. The bands here are built around multi-province designs with enough sites and sample size to say something about Pakistan rather than about one hospital. Smaller focused work — a single-site record review or a systematic review — can still be discussed; it simply sits outside these tiers.
Why is coverage described by province rather than by city?
Because health service delivery, ethics review and disease patterns in Pakistan are organised provincially, and because funders and regulators read results that way. Designing and reporting by province also makes provincial variation visible instead of hiding it inside a national average.
Who owns the data, and who publishes?
Data ownership and the investigator's independent access to the full dataset are stated explicitly in the research agreement before the study starts. Publication is committed in advance. The funder gets a defined window to comment on a draft manuscript; they do not get a right of approval, and they cannot block publication of findings they dislike.
Who are the authors?
Authorship follows ICMJE criteria and is agreed in writing before the manuscript is drafted. The investigator leads. NeuDrug's medical writing support is disclosed in the acknowledgements. We do not ghost-write and we do not offer guest authorship.
Have you worked with international funders before?
We state our track record honestly during due diligence rather than implying relationships we do not have. What we offer today is delivery capability, a documented quality system and a local investigator network — and a willingness to be assessed directly, including as a sub-award partner where a funder prefers to start small.
Can you run an interventional clinical trial?
Not within these funding tiers. Interventional studies require regulatory authorisation, investigational product supply, insurance and trial-scale monitoring, and are scoped and quoted separately. Telling you that up front is more useful than discovering it in month four.
Why not just approach the investigator directly?
You can, and sometimes that is the right answer. What you would be doing yourself is the protocol, the budget, the ethics submissions across provinces, the monitoring, the data management, the statistics, the manuscript and the contracts. We charge for that work, not for the introduction.
What happens to a submission that is declined?
You receive the score and specific written feedback on what would need to change. Many declined submissions are resubmitted successfully. If the idea is fundable elsewhere, we will say so, and you are free to take our feedback and pursue it independently.
Research opportunities — admin
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Current listings
The full research brief — research question, investigator profile, study synopsis, rationale, endpoints, methodology, provincial site plan, timeline, detailed budget and expected deliverables — is released to registered sponsors and funders under confidentiality.
Register to request this brief