The Hindu : National : Good news for drug firms

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 13, 2004

National

National

Good news for drug firms

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 12. Here is some good news for the pharmaceutical industry. The United States-based investment firm, The Chatterjee Group, has tied up with the Ministry of Science and Technology to set up a state-of-the-art facility to facilitate the discovery of new drug molecules.

Speaking to reporters at the launch of the Rs. 25-crore specialised centre equipped with top of the line tools in the area of genetic research, the CSIR Director-General, R.A. Mashelkar, said the facility should help in giving the Indian pharma sector an edge in the global market since it would enable it to discover new drug molecules at much lower costs compared to drug firms in the West. On an average, drug firms in the West spend about $ 1.25 billion to find a new drug molecule. The new facility would be able to do the same thing at a much lower cost.

The Director of the CSIR's Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Samir K. Brahmachari, who is the brain behind the facility, said it would initially undertake genotyping and sequencing for medical genetics, offering services such as protein sequencing, fingerprinting, primer design and synthesis, gene expression profiling using micro-arrays and incubation laboratory for start-up biotech companies.

Apart from the industry, the centre would be open to scientists working in academic institutions and public funded research centres. It would also take up work from scientists abroad.

V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, said that advanced genomic research was critical in nature and much in demand worldwide. In India, the demand was expected to grow at 30 per cent every year for the next five years, from the current size of Rs. 100 crores.

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