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COMMENTARYIndian biotechnologyrapidly evolving and
industry led.com/naturebiotechnologyNandini K Kumar, Uyen Quach, Halla Thorsteinsdttir, Hemlatha Somsekhar, Abdallah S Daar & Peter A SingerAFTERhttp://www.natureIndia became an independent nation in 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehrus socialist vision to improve
the quality of life for the masses identified a
central role for science and technology. He
once said, The future belongs to science and
those who make friends with science. Fueled
with nationalistic aspirations for self-reliance
and pressured to cope with poverty and underdevelopment, the Indian government focused
on policies in education and infrastructure to
establish a strong science and technology
capacity. This strong science base has enabled
its successes in biotechnology, agriculture,
information technology and pharmaceuticals.
Given its limited resources for R&D in the past,
the government encouraged process, rather
than novel product innovations. This resulted
in a strong pharmaceutical industry with
capacities in bulk and generic manufacturing,
low-cost process innovations and some novel
drugs. Many of these pharmaceutical firms,
such as Ranbaxy Laboratories (New Delhi),
Dr. Reddys Laboratories (Hyderabad) and
Wockhardt (Mumbai), are now drawing from
their existing capacities and venturing into
biopharmaceuticals and biogenerics. According to a report from Ernst & Young1,India now
has the twelfth most successful biotechnology
sector in the world as measured by number of
companies1. If the current rapid pace of
progress of its health biotechnology industry is
any indicator, India has a promising future at
the national and international level.The success of Indias health
biotechnology sectorOne of the biggest successes identified by many of the 38 experts interviewed for this study was Indias
first indigenously developed
hepatitis B vaccine, a recombinant form of hepatitis B
surface antigen produced in
Pichia pastoris and manufactured under the name Shanvac-B.
Although not a novel biotechnology product, the Shanvac-B vaccine
uses novel expression technology and
is an important success story for Indias
health biotechnology sector.Shantha Biotechnics (Hyderabad, India), a
biotechnology start-up, began research for
an affordable indigenous vaccine in 1993 in
a government-sponsored collaborative program with Osmania University (Hyderabad,
India) and with financial support from Oman
under the patronage of His Excellency, Yusuf
Bin Alawi Abdullah, Foreign Affairs Minister
of Oman. (http://www.oeronline.com/php/
2001_may_june/main3.php). Subsequently,
scientists from the Centre for Cellular and
Molecular Biology (CCMB, Hyderabad,
India; http://www.ccmb.res.in/) a national
laboratory of Indias Council for Scientific
and...