Govt keen to boost life sciences R&D: Amitabh Kant

Hyderabad: Government has been handholding the life sciences sector in boosting R&D, which is critical to the future. It is important to boost the pharma and medtech sectors. India has been a major importer of bulk drugs, but the nation needs to push the indigenous drug development. The government is pushing production-linked incentive scheme and […]

Hyderabad: Government has been handholding the life sciences sector in boosting R&D, which is critical to the future. It is important to boost the pharma and medtech sectors. India has been a major importer of bulk drugs, but the nation needs to push the indigenous drug development. The government is pushing production-linked incentive scheme and is supporting medical devices manufacturing, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog said.

“We have done a lot of structural reforms in clinical trials and regulatory processes. But we might have to be far more radical in a crisis by streamlining processes through digitisation and transparency in the application approval process. Government also needs to incentivise research in biopharma to help India transition from a low-volume, high value player to a high volume, high value player,” he said at a panel session on the first day of BioAsia titled ‘Two years into the pandemic – Challenges, successes and what next?

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The government is also examining the ways to strengthen the R&D system and push for greater industry-academic collaborations. There is a need to promote innovation, global partnerships, knowledge sharing amongst our scientific community.

He added, “We need to look at research in emerging areas such as complex generics, biosimilars, orphan drugs etc. We need to integrate in a bigger way with the global supply chain to achieve unprecedented synergies of scale and make us a global player. Focus on personalised care and speedy delivery through real-time data and analytics and speedy response is the future.”

Dr Rajesh S Gokhale, secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, said, “There is a new confidence that has been built in the effectiveness of Government in the life science sector. The life science industry requires a supporting system unlike the IT industry for it to wholesomely evolve and grow.”

Gokhale added, the important role that the DBT played in terms of self-sufficiency of diagnostic sector wherein DBT very early on started funding startups which came in very handy by enabling manufacture of a large number of kits and now most importantly do genome sequencing and tracking every variant.
All this has been possible due to the department’s years of investment in Human Resource Development and setting up a variety of infrastructure and institutions that allows to utilise them when you really need them.

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