Advantage Karolinska Institute
R. PRASAD
FOLLOWING THE signing of the agreement by India and Sweden for cooperation in Science and Technology in December last year, the Karolinska Institute (KI), based in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, has already signed an agreement of cooperation with the IISc, based in Bangalore, last month.
"The cooperation with IISc is in the area of basic sciences," said C.B. Sanjeevi, who is KI's Scientific Coordinator for India and also an Associate Professor at the Institute.
The Institute had agreed to cooperate with the Bangalore based Biocon Limited last May in areas of research, research education and academy-industry initiatives.
Three areas
The Indo-Swedish agreement will cover three areas for cooperation — infectious medicine including HIV, TB and malaria; cardiovascular diseases; and metabolic diseases including diabetes.
According to the agreement, both countries will put in money and jointly share the intellectual property (IP) that comes out of such cooperation.
Dr. Sanjeevi was in Chennai recently to attend the Indo-Sweden Symposium on Genomics and Proteomics of Diabetes organised jointly by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation and the Karolinska Institute.
Dr. Sanjeevi sees great potential for Indian pharmaceutical companies, which per force have to get into drug discovery and development for growth, to benefit by conducting clinical trials at the Karolinska Institute. per compared with France and Germany," he said. "We already have many trials going on now at our Institute and some Indian pharmaceutical companies are looking at KI for clinical trials."
He also cited the many advantages of collaborating with KI. "We have 585 research groups at KI with a research budget of $500 million per year with less than half the amount coming from the government," he said.
Drugs developed in India have to necessarily be tested in both Europe and the U.S. for approvals from respective approval agencies prior to marketing. And Sweden is capitalising on this compulsion to attract more collaborations with Indian pharmaceutical companies.
It may be noted that the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine and is the largest medical university in Europe and is rated number four in the world in terms of excellence.
According to Invest in Sweden Agency (www.isa.se) , more than 30 largest drug companies are currently conducting clinical trials in Sweden. "... All of the world's best-selling drugs have been tested on Swedish patients during clinical development," underlines ISA, "[this] is a testimony to Sweden's leadership in this field."
Many registries
Sweden is also well known for its many registries. The registry on twins helps it to study the effects of various factors including genes concerning medicine and disease.
Sweden and in particular KI is becoming more interested in increasing its partnership with China and India as science is expected to grow in tandem with economic growth in these two countries.
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