The expert committee of the drugs development promotion board of ministry of science and technology will carry out preliminary evaluation of 15 funding proposals from drug industry and pharma R&D institutions on June 10. The applications for R&D support that have reached the ministry include both collaborative initiatives and soft loan applications for individual drug units.
According to sources, the response to the Pharmaceuticals Research and Development Support Fund (PRDSF), after its scope was enhanced to Rs 150 crore every year, has been tremendous. "About 15 applications in both soft loan/collaborative venture categories have already come," ministry officials informed. While the average loan amount sought is about 8 – 10 crore, there are applications for bigger projects also. For instance, Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is known to have put forward a huge proposal worth Rs 96 crore. The task before the ministry will be to identify promising proposals and grant the funds worth a total of Rs 159 crore before April 1, 2006. The soft loans availed through this programme are to be returned by 10 years and attracts just 3% interest.
The DST had managed to fully utilize the PRDSF funds for the previous year (2004-’05) also. Of the Rs 23 crore amount sanctioned last year, Rs 13.5 crore went towards collaborative research programmes. The soft loan component of the fund last year was Rs 9 crore. While the funds for collaborative projects were utilized to set up two national facilities ie, the Pharma Informatics Centre at NIPER, Chandigarh and Regulatory & Toxicology Centre at CDRI Lucknow, the soft loans for industrial R&D were given to companies like Dabur India, Biological E, Promed Exports, Intas Pharma and Dalmia Centre for Research.
Dabur is to utilize the funds for oncology drug research. Biological E is known to be working on the development of dengue vaccine. The projects for which the other three companies received soft loans are biotherapeutics (Intas) and traditional medicine (Promed, Dalmia).