MS Swaminathan becomes Parliament member

President APJ Abdul Kalam has nominated renowned agricultural scientist, Dr MS Swaminathan to the Rajya Sabha. Membership to the Rajya Sabha is limited to 250 members, 12 of whom are chosen by the President of India for their expertise in specific fields of art, literature, science, and social services. He was sworn in as Rajya Sabha member in the last week of April.

Dr Swaminathan, has been a recipient of various awards, including the World Food prize in 1987, the Tyler-Honda prize in 1991 and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Sasakawa award in 1994. He has been Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the International Rice Research Institute. He was also the BioSpectrum Life Time Achievement Award winner in 2003.

Meet on healthcare biotechnology focuses on personalized medicine

The Innovative Center for Biosciences organized a national conference on healthcare biotechnology on April 20-21, 2007 at IISc, Bangalore. The conference was meant for exchange of knowledge among the professional fraternity for mutual interaction and sharing of knowledge among the fellow members for overall betterment of healthcare industry.

Distinguished guests from the industry and professional fraternity from the country including Dr Padmanabhan, former director, IISc, Bangalore and Vidyashankar, secretary, IT and BT, participated in the two-day conference. The conference highlighted the important characteristics of Indian healthcare biotech firms including biomedical systems, biopharmaceuticals, bioinformatics, nanotechnology, IPR and attention was paid towards the need for development and application of personalized medicine.

The advent of personalized medicine will benefit all the healthcare players, pharma companies, diagnostic companies, patients and physicians, the speakers noted. This would result in making better medication choices.

Dr SK Mitra, Himalaya Healthcare, drew attention towards the draining of students specialized in biotechnology into the BPO sector, resulting in a shortage of skilled manpower.

The conference also discussed new developments, new materials and their contribution to the healthcare biotech industry. "Healthcare industry needs new investments. It needs new productivity enhancing measures and a new wave of entrepreneurship" said Dr Padmanabhan.

Vidyashankar said, "India has been successful to catch up with the rest of the world and the Bangalore biotech park, with an investment of Rs 450 crore, makes it ahead of the rest of the country."

Wockhardt signs in licensing pact with Advanced Biotech

Wockhardt has signed an in-licensing agreement with US-based Advanced Biotechnologies to market a patent-protected product, Kelocote, a unique silicone gel to treat scars. And it plans to launch Kelocote in the domestic market in the third quarter of 2007.

Habil Khorakiwala, chairman, Wockhardt, said, "Wockhardt is committed to cater to the unmet medical needs of Indian patients. We will soon introduce a patented gel Kelocote to treat scars and keloids arising from accidents, burns, surgery and acne.

Kelocote is currently marketed in North America, Europe, Australia and South-East Asia. In India clinical trials are in progress. The clinical data from various countries has already proven its efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

Kelocote is a unique silicone gel for scars arising from accidents, burns, surgery and acne as well as skin disorders such as dermatitis and varicella. It is also useful in treating keloids, which are fibrous growths formed over healed wounds. Kelocote is available as an easy-to-apply gel form with self-drying action.

Indo-Australian Biotech Fund set up to support joint research activities

India and Australia have signed a MoU to foster cooperation between the two countries in the field of biotechnology. Under the MoU signed between the DBT and the Department of Education Science &Training, Government of Australia, an Indo-Australian Biotechnology Fund has been set up. The fund consists of A $6 million from the Australian government with a matching Indian grant over five years.

The objective of the fund is to develop and support collaborative research activities, which draw upon complementary science and technology strengths in India and Australia. It will support Indian and Australian scientists, from both the public and private sector, for collaborative and leading edge science and technology in order to contribute to the economic, social and environmental well being of both countries.

In the first round, the following priority areas have been identified: biomedical devices and implants, stem cells, vaccines/medical diagnostics, transgenic crops, nutraceuticals and functional foods; and bioremediation.
Meanwhile Kapil Sibal, the Union minister of science and technology and earth sciences, has announced seven new projects and two workshops that will facilitate and support biotechnology research collaboration between India and Australia. The successful proposals are from the research areas of transgenic crops, vaccines, biomedical devices and implants, bioremediation and nutraceuticals.

EGOM lifts current freeze on SEZs

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) decided, inter-alia, to lift the current freeze on SEZs, with tighter rules and prescribed a ceiling on the size of SEZs, which has now been fixed at an upper limit of 5000 hectares. EGOM met on April 5 in New Delhi and discussed various issues relating to SEZs.

A few decisions taken at the EGOM meeting are as follows:

Upper limit of the area required for multi product SEZs to be fixed at 5000 hectares. However, the state governments may prescribe a lower limit. The minimum processing area limit be fixed uniformly at 50 percent for multi product SEZs as well as sector specific SEZs.

In respect of pending applications for SEZs, these may be processed for in principle, formal approval, notifications subject to the condition that the state governments would not undertake any compulsory acquisition of land for such SEZs.

Notification in respect of the 83 cases of formal approvals, documents for which have been submitted by the developers may be issued by the department of commerce after due verification, including issues concerning any dispute relating to land. Major amongst pending notifications are Ramky Pharma City SEZ at Visakhapatnam, and Wockhardt Pharma SEZ at Aurangabad.

India, EPO sign MoU on bilateral cooperation in IPRs

India has signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the European Patent Office (EPO). As part of the MoU a one-year work plan that includes programs for human resource development, automation and data exchange between the two offices has been finalized.

The MoU was signed between the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) and EPO by Dr Ajay Dua, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), ministry of commerce and industry and Prof. Alain Pompidou, president of the EPO, in the presence of Kamal Nath, minister of commerce and industry.

An important component of the cooperation program which will run from mid-2007 to mid-2008 is the provision for training at the European Patent Office for 10 senior patent examiners from India; and training by three EPO experts of 20 to 30 patent examiners in India.

Apollo Hospital Group, IBM partner to introduce 'Health Hiway'

IBM and Apollo Hospital Group have announced a joint go-to-market initiative to build Health Hiway, a national health data network to provide a diverse set of software applications for the healthcare segment.

Conceptualized and developed by Apollo, based on IBM's IT infrastructure, the Health Hiway initiative will facilitate the rollout of hosted applications that are global best in class point of solutions, with the objective of creating a basket of offerings that will create maximum impact on the hospitals' clinical and financial performance. IBM will offer its hardware, middleware and services infrastructure, while Apollo Hospitals Group will offer its healthcare domain expertise.

Making the announcement at a press conference on April 12, Ashvani Srivastava, president strategic initiatives, Apollo Hospitals Group, said, "This initiative is our effort to offer industry and global best practices to the other players so that the industry as a whole benefits from this strategy. Standard based, common platform initiative will bring cost containment, yet more importantly use this data for patient care and later for research and analytics."

Commenting on the initiative, Mohammed
H Naseem, vice president, healthcare, IBM India said, "Other than a few large hospitals in India that have successfully implemented IT, most seem to be grappling with too much choice and very little understanding to evaluate the options. Vendor approach also does not make things simpler, and most implementations do not last beyond a few years. Our technology experience coupled with Apollo's domain expertise will enable us to serve the industry with efficient and effective solutions."

Roche Scientific launches Neulastim in India

Roche Scientific Company (India) has introduced Neulastim (pegfilgrastim) in India. Neulastim, to be administered as a single fixed dose per chemotherapy, is priced at Rs 22,000 per unit of 10 vials. It is indicated for incidence of febrile neutropenia (fever associated with severe drop in infection- fighting white blood cells) in patients with non-myeloid malignancies receiving myelosuppressive anti-cancer drugs.

Dr GL Telang, managing director, Roche Scientific Company (India), said, "Neulastim will play an important role in supportive care of cancer patients by providing tailored and more convenient protection against febrile neutropenia, a serious side effect of chemotherapy treatment, to the patients undergoing myelosuppresive chemotherapy."

He further said, "Studies conducted on 100 patients for a period of 45 days in India were satisfactory. This pre 1995 molecule has been imported from Switzerland and distributed to the patients in India by Taksal Pharma Pvt Ltd.

In India, Roche's therapeutic focus is mainly in the segments of oncology, virology and transplantation. It has launched in all 19 products including 12 products in the oncology space, two in virology and four in transplantation and one in hematology. Besides carrying out the scientific activities, Roche participates in the local phase IV and global clinical trials. At present it has five projects on hand with few are in phase III studies.

"No proposal before government to ban sale of GM seeds"

The government has no plan to impose a ban on the sale of genetically modified (GM) seeds in the country. Informing this in the Lok Sabha on March 12, Kanti Lal Bhuria, the minister of state for agriculture, said, There is no proposal with the government to ban production and sale of GM seeds duly approved by the GEAC on the basis of their suitability in the various agro-climatic zone with regards to their performance.

At present Bt cotton is the only GM crop approved for commercial cultivation by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in the ministry of environment and forests, on the basis of environmental and bio-safety evaluations. Harmful effects of Bt cotton seeds on human and animal health, plant life and environment have not been reported. Bt cotton seeds are being produced and marketed in the country by private seed companies. The government has organized public awareness programs to educate the farmers about the risks and benefits associated with the GM crops.