Telangana's Drugs Control Administration (DCA) has inspected 12 units of major pharma firms, including Dr Reddy's and Natco, following complaints that a Chinese anti-cancer formulation used by them was of poor quality.

DCA received complaints that anti-cancer drug 'Vincristine' imported from China was of poor quality. Some companies were using this as an active pharmaceutical ingredient in their units, the agency said in a statement.

"Based on this information, checks were conducted on Wednesday and Thursday by 12 teams of regulators from DCA on the anti-cancer manufacturing firms including Hetero Labs, Dr Reddy's Labs, Natco Pharma, MSN Labs, Shilpa Medicare, Laurus Labs, SP Accura Labs, Celon Labs and Therdose Formulations," it said.

When contacted, a senior official of Natco confirmed that the searches were carried out by DCA.

Five samples of the drug have been picked up and these will be sent to Central Drug Laboratory, Kolkata, for analysis, DCA said.

However, the agency did not mention the names of the companies from where the samples were picked up.

During their checks, DCA officials also noted violations of norms.

Some manufacturing firms failed to stock bulk drugs as per label conditions, failed to conduct audit trials for HPLC (laboratory equipment) and purchased APIs from unapproved vendors, among others, it said.