NIPER looks to bridge academia-industry gap

M Somasekha

Says collaborative research is the way forward

Hyderabad, Aug 25

Big innovations come from simple ideas, not just infrastructure facilities, said GN Singh, Secretary-cum-Scientific Director, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.

He was speaking at Synergy 2018, a NIPER-Pharma Industry meet here on ‘Role of academia in strengthening of the Indian Pharma and Intellectual Property’ workshop.

Industry representatives felt that technology reproducibility was important in the Indian context. Multi-disciplinary research and studies should be encouraged and sustenance of such research can be enhanced by having industrial collaborations. It was also important to maintain the purity and health of experimental animals, quality training programmes, good maintenance of labs and animal houses that can lead to and ensure good collaborative research.

The Director of NIPER, Shashi Bala Singh, in her address said the institute was trying to drive basic research and translational research by bringing together academia and industry on the same platform.

Rakesh Mishra, Director, CSIR-CCMB, said cell therapy and immunotherapy are ideas that can now replace existing small molecule therapy.

The panellists also felt that the industry could change tremendously in the coming decade with a strong influence of regulatory aspect on its growth. The Indian industry should rise to the expectations of the US FDA ( US Food & Drug Authority) as far as manufacturing units were concerned.

Similarly, speakers felt that investment-oriented thinking of industries and basic research-oriented thinking of academics should resonate in the same frequency in order to bridge the gap and strengthen collaborations.

Published on August 25, 2018

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