India to unveil new Pharma R&D policy, incentivise scientists on monetisation.

Close on heels of announcing schemes to achieve self-reliance in bulk drugs to avert overdependence on China, the Indian government will shortly unveil a new Research and Development policy that seeks to incentivise the scientists on the monetisation of their innovations.

Announcing this recently India’s Pharma Secretary PD Vaghela said the new policy will also insist on globally benchmarking the Research & Development ecosystem by getting rid of archaic laws and rewarding the scientists through industry-academia linkage.

The committee headed by Vaghela to finalize the R&D policy consists of representatives from the Department of Science and Technology and Indian Council of Medical Research, and industry representatives like Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Zydus Cadila chairman Pankaj Patel.

Addressing the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology’s (Hyderabad) 77th foundation day celebrations through a video-conference, Vaghela said the idea behind revamping the R&D policy was to prepare India emerge as pharmacy of the world post-Coronavirus pandemic.

The self-reliance on producing the key bulk drugs, which account for nearly 63% of imports, was also aimed at averting overdependence on one country for 58 critical active pharmaceutical ingredients for the production of essential drugs.

The government has also decided to encourage continued research towards new drug and molecule discoveries and high-end medical devices, and to ensure industry-academia linkage to translate the research into the development and the commercialisation of technologies, said Vaghela.

ET