A plea to the Union Government to formulate a strategy to revamp the existing regulatory system in the biotechnology industry and make it single window, efficient, transparent, scientific and evidence-based was made by Ashok Pandey, Chief Scientist and Head, Biofuels and Biotechnology Division, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-National Institute for Inter-disciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), Thiruvananthapuram.
Delivering the keynote address at the National Symposium on ‘Recent Advances in Bio-Medical Technology’ organised by the Department of Biotechnology of Thiruvalluvar University at the University campus in Serkadu near here on Thursday, Dr. Pandey said that the Indian biotechnology sector had grown at the rate of 21.5 per cent in 2010-11, reaching a revenue of Rs. 17,400 crore. The biopharma sector continued to be dominant, followed by bio-industrial segment and bio-agri segment. While the growth rate in the biotechnology sector was 22 per cent from 2003-2011, a growth rate of 25-30 per cent was expected by 2025. The Indian bio-economy has focused on food security, health care and energy security.
The CSIR scientist said that the guiding principles recommended for the Indian bio-economy include the creation of a strong, streamlined and transparent regulatory foundation to foster innovation, reshaping and building the government infrastructure to build capacity for research and development, facilitating translation into commercial potential, facilitating technology access and market access for innovative products, promoting biotechnology entrepreneurship and providing the channel to access risk capital for all stages of biotechnology product life cycle.
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P. Gunasekaran, Vice-Chancellor of Thiruvalluvar University who inaugurated the symposium said that bio-informatics was going to be a potential market not only for biotechnologists but also for information scientists. But the bio-informatics courses in colleges were being closed due to non-availability of experienced teachers. The current focus areas in medical biotechnology include the study of the micro biome of the human body, stem cell regenerative medicine, finger print, sequencing, cloning and molecular techniques, he said.
Ernest David, Professor and Head of the Department of Biotechnology, Thiruvalluvar University said that basic scientific research provides the foundation for technological change. Biomedical technology is a multidisciplinary field encompassing physical, chemical, mathematical and computational sciences in combination with engineering. R. Babujanarthanam, Associate Professor of Biotechnology, Thiruvalluvar University proposed a vote of thanks.
To make it single window, efficient, transparent and scientific