National Bio-Pharma Mission
Minister for Science and Technology, Earth Sciences, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Dr. Harsh Vardhan has launched the country’s first ever Industry-Academia mission called Innovate in India (i3) i.e. the National Biopharma Mission on 30th June 2017.
The mission has been launched to accelerate biopharmaceutical development in India. The Mission aims to create an enabling ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship and indigenous manufacturing in the sector.
Need
Though, India has been an active player in the pharmaceutical industry and has come up with many life saving drugs and low cost pharmaceutical products like Rotavirus vaccine, heart valve prosthesis or affordable insulin, still Indian biopharmaceutical industry is considered to be 0-15 years behind their counterparts and faces a very stiff competition from countries like China, Korea and others. This is primarily due to disconnected centres of excellence, inadequate focus on translational research and staggered funding. So, a mission like i3 is needed to consolidate efforts for promoting product discovery, translational research and early stage manufacturing to achieve inclusive innovation. The mission is expected to help India design and develop novel, affordable and effective biopharmaceutical products and solutions.
Features
The mission will receive an investment of USD 250 million with USD 125 million as a loan from World Bank.
As a flagship program, the mission is expected to accelerate translation of research concepts into viable products, support clinical validation, enable sustainable networks for collaboration between industry and academia, and support entrepreneurial ecosystem among others.
The mission aims to elevate India’s share in the global biopharmaceutical market from the present 2.8% to 5% resulting in an additional business opportunity of 16 Billion USD.
The Mission is expected to be implemented by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) which is a Public Sector Undertaking of Department of Biotechnology.
