Chairman of Manipal Education and Medical Group Ranjan R. Pai said on Friday that globally biotherapeutics is growing fast in the pharma industry today. If the country needs to compete with those developed, there is a need to get deeper in the area of innovative cell therapies for regeneration and cancer treatment, gene therapy, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines.
He was speaking at the inauguration of Manipal Centre for Biotherapeutics Research (MCBR) at Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in Manipal.
Dr. Pai said that although biologics produced in the developed countries provide hope for many unmet medical needs, their high costs pose an entry barrier to the developing markets. “I call upon pharma/biopharma companies to reduce the load on their in-house R&D units and focus more on strategic partnerships with high-ranking institutions to manage time and money more efficiently,” he said.
Chairman and CEO of Kemwell Biopharma, Bengaluru, Anurag Bagaria, who inaugurated the centre, said that biotherapeutics research continues to gain momentum in the universities of the developed countries. In the last 40 years, biotherapeutics have become an important part of modern medicine with a great focus on the areas of cell therapy, gene therapy, protein therapy and biomaterials.
“With advances in biotherapeutics research, especially cell and gene therapy, we are starting to see cures for certain diseases, for example, CAR-T products for leukaemia and gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy. Without academia-industry collaboration, none of these would have been possible,” he said.
Vasanti R. Pai launched the webpage of the new centre.
Pro Chancellor of MAHE H.S. Ballal said that the new centre is expected to create novel intellectual property and innovative products.
Vice-Chancellor of MAHE M.D. Venkatesh spoke.
