| Policy highlights
BIPP (Biotechnology Industry Partnership
Program)
Fuelling innovation and entering new
territories to build IPR
The program caters the need to generate
IPR in advanced technology areas. Early product development is not
expected in these areas because these will be radically new fields like
stem cell therapy and nanoscience. "The idea is to enter the advanced
technology area when its potential is uncertain rather than when the
potential is established'" explained Dr Bhan.
BIRAC
Funding innovation
Promotion of R&D is another priority
under the strategy for which the government is investing in a new
organization, BIRAC. According to Dr Bhan, "The Biotechnology
Industry Research Assistance council (BIRAC) will manage SBIRI and BIPP.
In addition to that it will provide patenting services, technology
transfer services and in turn fund innovation. This is just like every
country has a science organization and an innovation organization where
the latter funds the former to generate interesting innovation projects.
Hence BIRAC will serve as the funding agency for the industry and charge
some royalty for the investment." BIRAC as an organization will be
available to service the industry with analysis, technology forecasting,
IPR generation.
Exploring shared facilities
Creating joint research chairs
This will help the DBT to explore the
space of shared facilities more so in the area of expensive shared
facilities-toxicology centers, animal facilities, transgenics, jointly
managed technology incubators amongst others. "We have been working
on a scheme for joint chairs, where such not for profit research
foundations can take more risks and we would fund them as if they were
public sector. However, the research foundation and the industry should
have a relationship wherein if the foundation produces some technology
which is transferred to the main company, some royalty is also given to
the foundation to mobilize its research goal," added Dr Bhan.
Public-private partnership
Need to come up with novel ideas to work upon
BIRAC aims at creating more novel and
interesting public private partnership models. The DBT has joined hands
with FICCI on the lines of the European technology program called the
industry partnership platform as a part of it commitment to public-private
partnership, which according to the policy would attract an investment of
30 percent of the DBT's budget. Dr Bhan believes that for this to be a
successful industry, it will have to come up with novel ideas on the areas
where they need help to be able to do more innovation.
Nurturing human capital
Increase in the density of scientist pool
1. Reversing brain drain
In light of the small pool of scientists
in India as compared to the country's population, the policy takes into
account the expansion of PhDs by the introduction of a new partnership
scheme with Wellcome Trust under the NBDS.
2. Fillip to university life science
departments
The policy aims to give grants to life
sciences departments of key universities to scale up their capacity in
terms of faculty size, labs, representation in disciplines to run a hugely
expanded PhD program. The scheme will select 20 best universities in the
country and give a major lift to their life sciences department.
3.Setting up of new universities
Eight DBT institutes are to come up that
will produce a faculty of 400, that in turn will produce four times the
number of Phds, i.e. 1,600. These institutes will not be pure biology
institutes but inter-disciplinary units and will have strong translation
potential while preserving basic science capacity.
4.Multidisciplinary novel education
programs
It proposes to start integrated programs
in drug discovery science, bioengineering, etc. As many as 13 such novel
education programs are expected to start this year.
5.Star colleges and centers of
excellence
Every city will have a star life sciences college.
Facilities for training technicians and teachers will also be created
through 50 centers of excellence (CoEs) to enable people to upgrade their
skills and understanding. |
