India Outlook: The future of Indian biosciences
VOL.436 NO.7050 DATED 28 JULY 2005
Indian biotechnology companies have become very successful in the past ten years, mostly through copying patented drugs. New guidelines from the World Trade Organisation threaten to cut their profits as companies will now have to honour international patents and stop producing unlicensed generic drugs.
In a special Outlook on India in this week's Nature, K.S. Jayaraman investigates how the industry will respond to these changes and what it can do to tackle the problems it faces.
Profits are soaring for Indian biotechs and the government is working to attract foreign investment whilst fostering innovation at home;
the science ministry's budget has increased by 50% in the past year. Local companies will need this support however, as they face competition from powerful multinationals, import most of their instruments and struggle to find people trained in the latest techniques.
Another article takes a look at clinical trials in India. Multinational drug companies are attracted to India for cheap clinical trials; the hospitals are sophisticated and the medical personnel speak English. However, India is struggling to cope with the influx of outsourced
R&D, and ethical scandals continue to surface. T.V. Padma outlines the problems with drug trials in India and how the government can tighten regulations, commenting on steps already underway.
In the same Outlook Paroma Basu takes a more positive stance, writing on one of the largest ever vaccine studies, which is currently
taking place in Kolkata. The trial is unusual because of the involvement of 60,000 slum-dwellers from the city who will participate in phase III trials of an oral cholera vaccine. It follows hot on the heels of a typhoid fever vaccine, tested in the same population, that successfully cleared social and structural hurdles of such a large experiment for the first time.
The Outlook also features articles on Ayurveda: a 3,000-year-old system of medicine, India's growing AIDS problem, and how academic
institutions are working towards higher standards and enterprise.
