The Hindu : Business : Kalam for relaxation of norms in animal experimentation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 17, 2005

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Kalam for relaxation of norms in animal experimentation

Special Correspondent

Pharma sector asked to gear itself to face competition in the new IPR regime

FOCUS ON NEW DRUG DEVELOPMENT: President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam wearing an overcoat before entering the laboratory at the inauguration of Ranbaxy Laboratories' Research and Development Centre-III at Gurgaon on Tuesday. The Executive Director of Ranbaxy Laboratories, Malvinder Mohan Singh (extreme right), looks on. — Photo: S. Subramanium

GURGAON: President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam has suggested relaxation of norms for granting clearance for animal experimentation to facilitate pharmaceutical research.

Speaking after inaugurating the third research and development centre of Ranbaxy Laboratories here on Tuesday, Dr. Kalam said he was aware of the delays caused in pharma researches due to highly stringent animal experimentation norms and lack of animal research laboratories. "I admit we need good animal laboratories to carry out advance research but we cannot be cruel to animals either,'' he said while asking the researchers to tie-up with good local animal laboratories to pursue their work.

Researchers had to follow stringent animal experimentation regulation regime for conducting serious research in pharmaceutical industry in India.

Ranbaxy's third centre

The new R&D centre is the third centre being established by Ranbaxy with focus on New Drug Development Research (NDDR) using New Chemical Entities (NCEs).

The centre will work in medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, infectious diseases, biotechnology, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics and herbal drug research.

It is reported that gene difference between humans and most animals are very nominal.

More than 90 per cent of our DNA is similar and this property is a boon to researchers since animal models can be subsequently used for curing human diseases based on trial data, Dr. Kalam said.

Calling upon the Indian pharmaceutical sector to gear itself to face the global competition in the wake a new Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime that is in place since January 1, 2005, Dr. Kalam said the Indian pharma industry faced a challenge of demanding indigenous design of drugs, which had a profound impact on global competitiveness and business viability. As India had come into compliance with the TRIPS protocol mandated by the WTO, the new product patent regime will affect a sea change in the way Indian pharma companies think and do business, he added.

Pointing out that India missed the great opportunity in partnering the human genome project and thereby lost the utility of right type of data, the President suggested the Indian biomedical community should to take the initiative to become a working partner in the proteomics project of gene characterisation. The national programme on proteomics has to be accelerated with partnership from industries and research laboratories.

The traditional system of medicine like Ayurveda, and Siddha have advocated and practiced preventive and curative medicinal recipes specific to individuals.

We need to create database of traditional medicinal plants for specific bioactivity and lead for development of new drugs, the President said while saying that India had tremendous opportunities for herbal farming and research. The traditional medicines are generally used within the country. International marketing will need the products to go through standardisation and series of tests prescribed by the relevant approving authority, Mr. Kalam said.

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