Time for India to be innovator nation in bio-pharma: expert

India has a "strong potential" to become a hub for biopharmaceutical innovation and the time has come for it to emerge as an innovator nation in this sector, a top industry leader has said.
Observing India's potential, Michael Rosenblatt, executive vice president of Merck & Co, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, said yesterday that India can play a "leading role" in collaborative research in biopharmaceutics.
"India has a strong potential to become a hub for bio-pharma innovation and play a leading role in collaborative research for the same," Rosenblatt said.
"Now is the time for India to emerge as an innovator nation in the biopharmaceutical domain," said Rosenblatt ahead of the 10th annual India-US BioPharma & Healthcare Summit to be held in Boston later this week.

He said there was a need for enhanced partnerships between Indian innovators, government and academia as well as their American counterparts in order to realise India's true potential as a bio-pharma hub.
"We have been talking about 'Ecosystem', 'Innovation' and 'Startups' for the last ten years at our annual summit. It is heartening to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi actively trying to make this a reality in India," said Karun Rishi, president of USA India Chamber of Commerce, which is organising the summit.

"This will have a huge economic impact creating high paying jobs, intellectual property and the real possibility for India to play a leading role in innovative drug discovery and development," he added.

Rishi noted that Indian and global patients will be the real beneficiaries of these "pragmatic policies".
"Connecting India's evolving innovation ecosystem with global networks will be key to its success. Access and affordability are the two pivotal points around which health economics revolves today," said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CMD, Biocon and USAIC Advisory Board member.
"Given their complementary strengths, India and the US have an unencumbered opportunity to partner in building a sustainable and affordable global healthcare paradigm. This summit is an ideal platform for catalysing collaborative innovation that can accelerate the delivery of affordable drugs to patients the world over," she said.

Prominent pharma leaders from India, Sun Pharma managing director Dilip Shanghvi and top regulators from Ministry of Health, Drug Controller General of India, Department of Pharmaceuticals, AIIMS, Directors of NIPER Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Guwahatiare scheduled to participate in the day-long conference in Boston tomorrow.
Among those participating from the US are Griffin Rodgers, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of National Institutes of Health, Senior leadership top BioPharma companies- Merck & Co, Sanofi, Takeda, Janssen, Biogen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck KGaA.