Piramal, DBT renew drug research venture for 3 yrs

The government’s department of biotechnology (DBT) and Piramal Life Sciences (PLS) have renewed their joint drug discovery research project for another three years.

The public-private partnership, initiated in February 2008, was aimed at screening thousands of bio-molecules extracted from the country’s microbial diversity spread across varied geographies for medicinal properties.

“Over the last three years, we were able to identify 14,000 bioactive molecules from a total of 2, 45,000 living organisms found in extremely varied climatic conditions across the country. Extracts from these microbes were screened for biological activities across four different therapeutic areas namely cancer, diabetes, inflammation and infectious diseases. The objective is to evaluate 1000 extracts out of the 14,000 within the next one and half years to obtain lead molecules,” Swati Piramal, director, Piramal Group said.

In addition to PLSL and DBT, nine public sector research institutions are also part of this research net work.

Piramal had committed 50 per cent of the project cost, i.e Rs 15 crore, in the first phase. It will shoulder a similar cost burden in the second phase as well, and its contribution is expected to be close to Rs 30 crore, Piramal said.