A four-day Workshop on "Drug Discovery and Development in the New Millennium-2 (D3NM-2): Interfacing with in silico, cell based and pharmacological experimentations" was inaugurated at NIPER on Monday, February 28. The workshop is to provide drug discovery scientists, researchers, managers, students and regulatory authorities an insight in to the ways of in-depth understanding of the different aspects of drug discovery and development.
Prof. P. Rama Rao, director, NIPER in his welcome address said that drug discovery and development is presently undergoing a paradigm shift. The new paradigm, which is based on target identification & validation, robust assay system, chemical and biological informatics has provided powerful momentum to drug discovery and development.
The inaugural function was presided over by Dr. Girish Sahni, director IMTECH, Chandigarh. During his presidential remarks, Dr Sahni stated that the global scenario of drug discovery and development has undergone a drastic change in the new millennium. All the pharmaceutical companies are embarking to conquer the great molecules (medicine) which can innovate healthier life of mankind. India is already a leader in generic market as it has a vast experience of 20-25 years in the field and it is the time to venture into the drug discovery and focus to get new molecules which can elevate the health conditions.
The chief guest, Dr. Anil Gulati, President Chicago Labs, USA and faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago inaugurated the workshop. In a very lucidly delivered keynote address on "Drug Discovery and Development in Pharmaceutical Industry" he emphasized that since drug discovery is a complex, costly, risky and a long-term process, it requires substantial human and financial resources to bring a new drug to the patient.
There are two parts to this, he said. The first one pertains to the Research - where molecules with specific and potentially useful characteristics are identified, and the second one revolves around development when the identified molecule undergoes numerous steps of testing in order to develop into a final product. Of these two, development is the more important part and consumes over 70 per cent of the entire R&D budget.
Dr Gulati continued, "To bring one new drug to market typically costs nearly $900 million and about 10 to 12 years. Economic pressures have forced collaborations. Larger companies are not able to develop enough new compounds and partnership collaborations between big pharmaceutical and biotech companies have increased by over 300 per cent in the past 5 years." At the end, Dr Anil Gulati appealed to the younger scientists to work towards filling the gap of experienced individuals in commercialization of drug discovery process.
The workshop is being attended by over 70 participants from all over the country.