NEW DELHI – India plans to set up a new National Centre for Drug Discovery from Natural Products and strengthen its infrastructure and regulatory support for drugs trials, all part of its second national biotechnology research strategy unveiled recently.

The natural products drug discovery center is one of five new centers to be built to spearhead research and training in highly technical emerging areas of biotechnology that are relevant and specific to the Indian context. It is also among a series of initiatives aimed at revitalizing India's knowledge environment in biotech to put it on par with the country's growing biotech-led economy.

India's National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2015-2020 aims to make the country a biomanufacturing hub, said Renu Swarup, director of the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a publicly funded not-for-profit unit that supports biotech start-ups. Those new initiatives, which Science Minister Harsh Vardhan announced at the end of December, are part of the plan to meet that goal.

"The government will help set up core infrastructure, train quality people and develop technology incubators in rural and urban areas," added Krishnaswamy VjiayRaghavan, secretary of Department of Biotechnology (DBT).

The potential is certainly there, said Arun Chandru, co-founder and managing director of biotech start-up Pandorum Technologies, but to achieve the potential, it needs to expand biotech industry-facilitating entities such as BIRAC that supported Pandorum through a grant. Bangalore-based Pandorum produced India's first artificial 3-D printed liver tissue.

Chandru also said that in a populated country like India, "to pull out young people from diverse social and economic backgrounds and mould them into world-class researchers, the government should provide substantially higher direct monetary incentives such as scholarships to students and salaries to faculty."

In tandem with the launch of the new center, India aims to set up a natural products repository that would include extracts, plant chemicals and botanical reference standards for quality assurance of plant-based drugs. The repository will be accessible to researchers across academic institutions and industries, subject to the signing of a materials transfer agreement, and will maintain a comprehensive information system for research leads generated from natural resources.

Other prongs of India's efforts to build its knowledge environment is a plan to strengthen existing infrastructure in institutes that provide training and degrees in the specialized discipline of "pharmacognosy" or the study of medicinal drugs derived from medicinal plants, to supporting end-to-end facilities for new drug discovery and development.

The country will also set up a new multi-user and accessible regional advanced technology platform located in a university (yet to be designated), that will be linked to technology and business incubators and inter-institutional centers. It also will set up centers on the lines of the Bangalore-based Centre for Cellular Molecular platforms, or C-CAMP, a public-funded not-for-profit initiative by India's DBT to provide research, development, training and services in state-of-the-art technology platforms to promote bioscience research and entrepreneurship.

As part of its efforts in basic, disciplinary and interdisciplinary sciences, India will focus on indigenous vaccine development; affordable diagnostics and treatment for diseases of national priority; clinical therapies using stem cells and tissue engineering; and biodesign for medical devices, implants and diagnostics.

To encourage use-inspired discovery research, India will, among other efforts, develop new targets for cancer through chemical biology and offer training support for early translation, preclinical and clinical studies.

The country will also strengthen its skills in drug trials by creating and strengthening infrastructure in areas of preclinical and clinical trials in diverse demographic settings, and creating manufacturing facilities for clinical-grade materials for evaluating promising vaccine candidates. Specialized "translational accelerators" will support preclinical studies, clinical trials and compliance with regulatory requirements and production following GMP standards.

Other proposals include creating and strengthening infrastructure in preclinical toxicology, improving manufacturing facilities for production of clinical-grade material to evaluate promising vaccine candidates through a public private partnership model; setting up efficient regulatory departments well versed in good clinical practice, GMP and GLP; and strengthening clinical trial infrastructure

It also plans to set up an overseas center of excellence for vaccine research to attract overseas talent to research on vaccines that are difficult to develop.

Other key elements of the strategy include encouraging use-inspired discovery research; creating a technology development and translation network across the country with global partnerships, comprising five new clusters, 40 biotech incubators, 150 technology transfer offices and 20 Bioconnect centers;and ensuring a transparent, efficient and regulatory system that is among the world's best.