Introduction:The market for drug discovery outsourcing is estimated to be billions of dollars.This market has experienced double digit growth in recent years; this robust growth is expected to continue unabated.A number of contract research organizations (CROs) have sprouted up in Asia and Eastern Europe within the last ten years to take advantage of the abundant supply of well-educated domestically trained scientists and western trained "returnees".This growth was initially driven by Western pharmaceutical companies strategy to shift production of chemical reagents,intermediates and chemical libraries to lower cost regions.The business model had evolved from pure chemistry to integrated research including chemistry,in vitro and in vivo biology.We organized this symposium to highlight the leading CROs from Russia,India and China.