The Cabinet Minister for Science and Technology, Earth Sciences, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Harsh Vardhan, on 30 June 2017 launched a first ever Industry-Academia mission.
The National Biopharma Mission was launched to accelerate biopharmaceutical development in India. Under the Mission, the government launched a programme named Innovate in India (i3) that will witness an investment of USD 250 million with USD 125 million as a loan from World Bank.
The i3 aims to create an enabling ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship and indigenous manufacturing in the sector.
The aim of the Mission is to enable and nurture an ecosystem for preparing India’s technological and product development capabilities in biopharmaceuticals to a level that will be globally competitive over the next decade.
It also looks forward to transform the health standards of India’s population through affordable product development.
The Mission will provide a holistic and integrated approach to strengthen and support the entire product development value chain for accelerating the research leads to product development.
It will help not only in immediate product development addressing public health needs, but will also help to create an ecosystem which will facilitate development of a continuous pipeline of products.
The Mission will be implemented by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a Public Sector Undertaking of Department of Biotechnology.
The National Biopharma Mission will bring together expertise from national and international corridors to provide strategic guidance and direction to move promising solutions through the product development value chain.
As a flagship programme of the Government of India in collaboration with the World Bank, the mission promises to boost the growth curve for domestic biopharma in India by accelerating the translation of research concepts into viable products, supporting clinical validation, enabling sustainable networks for collaboration between industry and academia, and supporting entrepreneurial ecosystem amongst many others.
At present, India has only 2.8 per cent share in the global biopharmaceutical market. The programme program aims to increase this to 5 per cent resulting in an additional business opportunity of USD 16 billion.
National Biopharma Mission- The mission aims to enable and nurture an ecosystem for preparing India’s technological and product development capabilities in biopharmaceuticals to be globally competitive level over the next decade.
- It will also strive to transform the health standards of India’s population through affordable product development
- The mission will be implemented by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a PSU of Department of Biotechnology.
- It will bring together expertise from national and international corridors to provide strategic direction and guidance to move promising solutions through the product development value chain.
- It will provide a holistic and integrated approach to strengthen and support the entire product development value chain for accelerating the research leads to product development.
- This will help not only in immediate product development for addressing public health needs, but also help to create an ecosystem which will facilitate development of a continuous pipeline of products.
- The mission will concentrate on development of specific products such as vaccines, medical devices, biotherapeutics and diagnostics etc.
- Besides, it will also work on establishment of shared infrastructure and facilities.
- It will help in building and strengthening domain specific knowledge and management skills at the same time creating and enhancing technology transfer capabilities in public and private sector.
