Biotechnology in India is a growing sector with over 200 industries, market share of one billion dollars, investment to the tune of $137 million and exports being 59 percent of the revenue. The biotech sector recorded a growth of 39 percent during 2004. The projections for 2010 are $5 billion. To further promote industrial development in this sector a special emphasis is being laid on promoting capacity building, infrastructure strengthening and technology transfer.
Activities and programs of the Department of Biotechnology, government of India, are being pursued to fulfill the targets set out for the 10th plan and set the pace for development during the 11th plan. The thrust is on process and product development, impact of which would be felt at the grass root level, with low cost affordable technologies/products being made available in the health care, agriculture & environment sectors.
So far as research & development projects are concerned, during the recent years, the impetus has been on programs of national relevance with special emphasis on strengthening of infrastructure, creation of centers of excellence, capacity building and developing mission mode programs. Over 450 R&D projects have been supported during the recent year with approximately 200 universities and research laboratories being provided the necessary support in terms of both capacity building and infrastructure strengthening.
In the area of health care, new vaccines and diagnostics have been indigenously developed and are under clinical trials. For example the first pilot lot of vaccine for Rota virus has been prepared successfully by Bharat Biotech as per clinical studies. The vaccine for recombinant cholera has completed Phase II of clinical trial. GLP production of recombinant malaria vaccine has been successfully completed. A major initiative has also been taken to develop stem cell research in the country and 6 centers have received program support.
Programs have been implemented on liver, neural, haematopoitic, embryonic stem cells, trans differentiation of bone marrow stem cells into neuronal cells and stem cells for clinical application. A road map has been formulated and city clusters established to forge interdisciplinary collaboration, crucial to this sector. A Center for stem cell research is being established at CMC, Vellore and a stem cell research facility is being created at PGIMER, Chandigarh.
Clean room facilities for stem cell research are being supported at SGPGIMS, Lucknow; KEM Hospital, Mumbai; LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. A training center for embryonic and adult stem cells has been recommended jointly at NCBS & JNCSAR, Bangalore. Not only this, in the area of agriculture biotechnology the focus is on nutritional enhancement, increased productivity and development of crops resistant to biotic and abiotic stress.
Transgenic mustard has been developed for heterosis breeding and the hybrids developed through this technology have shown a yield advantage of 55 percent. Transgenic lines of cotton, rice, potato and tomato have been developed with nutritional enhancement and delayed fruit ripening. Demonstration programs on quality planting material of bamboo have been implemented in different states.
Demonstration of quality planting material of Jatropha has been launched. The main objective of the mission is selection of superior material based on fruit yields, oil content and production of superior quality material. To accelerate the pace of product development in this important sector there is an urgent need to bring about a transformational change through strengthening and re-engineering of the existing agricultural universities.
Translational research and technology and product development centers would be established to facilitate scale-up, validation and commercialization of potential leads. Different public/private partnership models would be explored to achieve this. Also, establishing Centers of Excellence has received special attention during the current year to achieve reengineering of certain institutes for greater innovation and focus.
The department would be supporting centers in identified thematic areas, which would be built around gifted individuals in existing universities/national laboratories with influx of new and young scientist. The response to this scheme has been very encouraging and 5 centers have already been supported out of 14 short listed full proposals in various areas such as infectious diseases, microbial technologies, plant transgenics, industrial biotechnology, system and genetic disorders, gene therapy, Seri biotechnology, biomedical technology and immuno proteomics during the current year.
Efforts would also be made to set up new Centers of Excellence in other areas such as on food biotechnology, herbal medicine, molecular medicine and bioinformatics. Human Resource Development activities have been supported and two new Post Graduate courses were initiated. Forty-five post-doctoral and 100 Junior Research Fellow have been selected.
The societal development program has received special attention and benefited more than 12,000 women and rural population during the year. The effort is to create enabling circumstances for increasing access of common people to new technologies and products and promoting the mass use of these technologies for health care, nutritional security, employment generation and environmental well being.
According to a report, a major success during the current year has been the launch of public/private partnership scheme — Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI), which promotes highly innovative early stage, pre proof-of-concept and late stage development research emphasizing on important national needs. Under SBIRI effort will be made for generating ideas by bringing users and producers of technology together for giving direct focus on producing product and process and a sense of urgency for producing defined results that only private sector engagement can produce.
New International Collaborations have been forged with Denmark, Netherlands, US, Finland, UK etc. Several of these are dedicated to tailored agricultural technologies for regional/local needs. Also, Biotech parks were supported at Karnataka, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. The focus of the parks would be on drugs and pharmaceutical development, agribusiness and certification of export goods, traditional medicines, medicinal and aromatic plants and horticulture.
During the current year, the department prepared a draft “Biotech Strategy” for the next five years. The draft is now ready after having wide ranging consultations over 2005 with a wide section of experts, planners, concerned sister ministries, industry, NGOs and farmer’s representatives. A number of new measures have been proposed with the vision of creating such tools and technology to address the problems of the largest section of the society, providing products and services at affordable prices and make India globally competitive in the emerging bioeconomy. The strategy aims at providing nearly one million jobs and a $ 5 billion annual turnover within four years.
