India takes aim at biotech sector
having already emerged as a dynamic new player in the global market
for chemical-based pharmaceuticals, reports Phil Taylor.
The Indian government has just published a draft National Biotechnology Development Strategy in which it details plans to set up a National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority 'with separate divisions for transgenic crops, recombinant drugs and industrial products, transgenic food and feed, transgenic animals and aquaculture'.
The country's biotechnology sector clocked up 39 per cent growth last year to reach a value of $705 million, according to a report in India's Financial Express newspaper, with biopharmaceuticals accounting for more than three quarters of the total.
And India's fledgling biotech industry is expected to grow still further to reach a value of $5 billion in 2010, with biopharmaceuticals continuing to capture the lion's share of the growing market and the sector as a whole employing 1 million people by that time.
The development of the biopharma sector in India comes at a time when regulatory routes are opening up in Europe and the US for generic versions of biologic drugs, suggesting that Indian companies may attempt to achieve in the biopharmaceutical sector what they have accomplished in the market for supplying traditional active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
The Financial Express, citing industry sources, reports that the market for generic versions of biologic drugs in India is expected to see a 43 per cent jump from 3,085 million rupees (€55m) in 2001 to 13,057 million rupees in 2005 and 18,643 million rupees by 2007, a growth of 19 per cent.
Other elements in the new draft strategy include that all biotechnology industries be made exempt from the requirement of compulsory licensing and that direct foreign investment of up to 100 per cent would be allowed. It also proposes the continuation of all existing fiscal incentives for biotech industries up to 2010.
Bio R&D also a priority
Meanwhile, India's Ministry of Science and Technology has also said that priority be given to research in molecular and cellular biology, neuroscience, molecular genetics, transplantation biology, genomics, proteomics, system biology, RNA interference and stem cell research.
The strategy also calls for building new centres of excellence in the biotechnology field and the establishment of a national task force to develop undergraduate and post-graduate curricula in life sciences and biotechnology.
The strategy is now subject to a six-week public comment period.
