The National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) at Mohali, Punjab continues to stand tall as the mainstay pharma education cradle of the country, expanding its reach in the country by setting up new centres, introducing new courses, helping the industry growth and conducting research activities in newer vistas.
Already the institute has set up its educational centres in Ahmedabad, Hajipur, Hyderabad and Kolkata this year to give a boost to the pharmacy education in the country. "Of late, the number of students opting for doctoral programme has increased," said the sources within the institute when asked about the rationale behind opening new centres of NIPER across the country. In another move, NIPER is all set to set up a dosage form (formulation) pilot plant in 2008-2009.
The growth of NIPER in fact closely mirrors the rapid progress of the pharmaceutical industry within the country. Recently, NIPER strengthened its established academic credentials by commencing two new courses in this academic year in the areas of traditional medicine and regulatory toxicology.
Also, NIPER is learnt to continually upgrade its curriculum for the Masters' and PhD courses to incorporate the latest developments in various fields. To add to its reputation, the students graduated from this institute have been recruited by reputed pharmaceutical companies.
In the last year alone, the institute has published 252 articles in journals of repute. The work carried out has also resulted in the filing of 13 patents. In a major development, NIPER has received four patents from the authorities concerned.
The institute is also collaborating with the industry to bridge the gap between the curriculum and the emerging needs of the industry. "From its inception in 1992, NIPER has come of the age crossing a number of milestones, including establishment of national bioavailability centre and setting up new NIPER centres. During the last one year NIPER has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chicago College of Pharmacy, Midwestern University, USA to collaborate in the fields of medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, pharmaceutics (formulations) and pharmacy practice. Another MoU was signed with University of Hertfordshire, UK to collaborate for the development of academic cooperation in international education and research in areas of mutual interest and expertise in pharmaceutics, formulations and pharmacy practice," said the sources within NIPER.
Apart, in addition to the Astra Zeneca endowment fund started last year, Bristol-Myer-Squibbs will be funding one PhD and two Masters' students in identified areas of pharmaceutical sciences from this year, informed the sources. "Bristol-Myer-Squibbs (BMS) has endowed an amount of US $49,000 to fund one PhD and two Masters' students in the areas of metabolism, pharmacokinetics/pharmaceutics (for PhD) and medicinal chemistry and pharmacology (one each for Masters' degree)."
To its credit, in a short span of less than ten years in the research arena NIPER's scientists have bagged several awards, including Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award, Ranbaxy research award, National Bioscience award, OPPI award, Punjab Ratan award, Innocentive awards and IBM faculty award, apart from one INSA young scientist medal and two CRSI bronze medals.
In the last academic year, as many as 85 Masters' and 19 MBA (Pharm.) students were graduated from NIPER with six students getting recruited for packages of Rs 6 lakh and above per year. A second point to be noted this year was the arrival of global operators to the institute as hiring hands. Students were placed in reputed pharmaceutical companies, including Apothecaries, Astra Zeneca, Cognizant, Dr. Reddy's Lab, Heron, Jubilant, Kendle, Kinapse, Lupin, Micro Lab, PharmArc, Promed, R K Swamy, Ranbaxy, SmartAnalyst, Strand, Torrent and Zydus among others, noted the sources.
Research Front
In the research arena, NIPER has taken up several new projects like computer aided drug design. The main objective of this move was to design new chemical entities for various therapeutic applications using different 3D-QSAR techniques such as comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA).
In the past year, NIPER also made considerable progress in designing and synthesis of anti-tuberculosis agents, malaria and bacterial antigens. A novel 'nucleophile electrophile dual activation' strategy was developed for 'atom economical' syntheses of aryl alkyl ethers and methyl esters in solution phase. The scientists here also made some strides in developing an oral contraceptive from traditional medicine. Pippalyadi Yoga, an ayurvedic oral contraceptive, is a combination of Pippali (Piper longum), Vidanga (Embelia ribes) and Tankana (borax) mixed in equal amounts.
Funded by Dabur Research Foundation, NIPER is also working on another project - for conservation of phyto-medicinal plants, with a view to replace scarce part(s) of few important endangered species of trees with renewable parts or their derived mixtures through chemical and biological studies that may lead to conservation of materia medica used by herbal drug industry.
Interaction with industry
Globalisation of Indian pharmaceutical industry has introduced new regulatory and intellectual property challenges in the area of drug discovery and development. The industry expects academic institutions to respond to their emerging needs in research and development. Realising this, NIPER has established strong ties with the Indian pharmaceutical industry. The research activities on solid state characterisation, improvement of aqueous solubility and permeability screening are targeted at companies engaged in the new drug discovery research.
Pharmacy practice
The NIPER's concerned department in this area has undertaken studies of sociological aspects of drug use, drug surveillance, community and rural pharmacy. Such studies on patterns of drug use and drug-related problems have helped not only to identify grey areas where a potential intervention is feasible but also facilitated improvement in patient safety. Very few institutions in India are engaging themselves into these areas of professional practices.
"The department has also been dissipating drug-related information to the healthcare professionals through its "Medicine Information Centre". The department intends to establish a "Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Lab" in order to train the young pharmacists in clinical pharmacokinetic services. Off campus training during the summer vacation exposes the students in community and hospital pharmacy operations at Medicine Shoppe (Mumbai), St. Stephen's Hospital and Max Healthcare (New Delhi)," according to sources.