Rich rewards out of India's traditional system of medicine could be reaped only if there exists proper synergy between traditional medicine, modern medicine and modern science, emphasized Dr. R.A. Mashelkar, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. "In other words, there ha to have a constant interaction between research institutions, allopathic manufacturers and traditional medicine manufacturers forming a 'Golden Triangle'," he said. Dr. Mashelkar was speaking at the 5th International Symposium on Innovation in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology in Mumbai on February 1.
Traditional medicine manufacturers have limited resources to carry out R&D activities like finding new properties of a phytoconstituent or the discovery of new phytoconstituents. Premier research institutions in the country, which do research taking modern science as the base should help these companies in their R&D activities. Modern medicine manufacturers should work closely with these research institutions in marketing the newly discovered products. Simultaneously, the modern medicine manufacturers should associate with the traditional medicine manufactures for providing technical know how and also marketing support for the latter, he said. If this synergy is maintained in a harmonized way, much potential could be extracted out of the traditional system of medicine felt Mashelkar.
Asmon, an innovative herbal Asthma medicine from Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, an institute under CSIR has been developed only as a result of continuous interaction of CSIR with the local Ayurvedic companies.
He boasted about the country's potential of being the largest provider of intellectual capital per dollar. Because of this factor many large companies like GE, Intel, Microsoft and IBM have set up their R&D base in the country. "The real challenge, however for the country is the manufacture of innovative drugs. If an Indian company discovers a drug on its own, it will not only fix the price of the product at an affordable rate, unlike a MNC," he said. Cipla's expertise in the field of reverse engineering helped the prices of the anti-HIV drugs in the continent of Africa from $ 10,000 to $ 600, is a good example.
Proteomics, genomics and Stem Cell research are the fields, where Indian companies hold a good potential. "Indian software companies should emphasise on developing portable software. This will help to do bio-informatics research in a cost-effective manner, unlike the high cost foreign software, which cost about D 4,000 per unit," said Dr. Mashelkar. He also emphasized the Indian companies to focus on drug development for diseases pertaining to the developing world like Maleria and Tuberculosis. For the last 25 years, out of 1,393 new drugs developed, only 13 were from the tropical world.