A tremendous growth path of the health sector, despite an overall downturn in the Indian economy, has thrown up a great opportunity for the government, regulators, industry and academia to work in unison and grab the global leadership role for the country by 2030 in developing new drug molecules, medical devices and diagnostic equipment.
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This was the underlining message which emerged during deliberations at ICONICA 2020, a two-day Global Summit on Next-Gen Paradigms in Health Care, which concluded at Panjab University Chandigarh on Friday. More than 900 delegates from 14 Indian states and eight countries – US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Dubai and Bangladesh – participated in this first ever initiative of the university.
Photos By : Life In Chandigarh
Himachal Pradesh Governor Bandaru Dattatreya, who was the chief guest at the inaugural session, stressed on the need for setting up more incubators in institutions of higher learning so that more youth could become entrepreneurs and contribute to employment generation. Emphasising that developing scientific temper, skills and ethical values among students should be integral part of all educational curricula, he said without these traits education becomes meaningless.
Guest of honour Dr. Dinesh Dua, Chairman, Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), and CEO & Director, Nectar Lifesciences Ltd, in his address made an impassioned appeal for making India the global innovation drug molecule hub. For this to happen the industry and academia have to collaborate closely and the regulators need to ease the norms for clinical trials, he added.
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Sharing figures, he said the market size of the Indian pharma industry is estimated to be worth US$40 Bn, up from just US$ 6 Bn in 2005, showing a compound annual growth rate of 17%. It has a share of 3% in terms of value of the global pharma industry and 13% in terms of volume. This is because the Indian pharma industry has done tremendously well in formulation of generic drugs, now it needs to focus more on formulation of new drug molecules, he asserted.
Dr Dua was of the view that India must also aim for a major turnaround in the medical devices and diagnostics space where the country is currently a huge importer.
In a preceding technical session, Rodney JY Ho, Prof & Presidential Entrepreneurial Fellow of University of Washington, Seattle, highlighted the crucial role of private-public partnership in developing new impactful Next-Gen health products. He also talked about Next-Gen innovation to transform short-acting oral dosage for HIV treatment into long-acting injectables to make these more accessible to affected people in low and middle-income countries. For this, these countries need to work together closely, he opined.
Speaking on the subject 3D bio-printing, Mandip Singh Sachdeva, Professor and Section Leader for pharmaceutics activity at Florida A&M, College of Pharmacy, said in the next 10 years the world may have its first 3D printed synthetic vascularised (with blood and other vessels) human organs and live tissues for transplantation.
Informing that stem cells taken from different parts of the body can make just about everything, he said even a tumour can be recreated outside the body with the help of 3D printing using the biopsy of the tumour embedded in any part of the body. Various therapies can then be tested on it and the one giving the best results can actually be applied to the tumour inside, he added.
There was also a lecture on Intellectual Property Rights by Dr. Umesh Banakar, Professor and President, Banakar Consulting Services, Carmel, USA.
The summit had several other technical sessions as well.
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