India’s process re-engineering expertise, strengths in medicinal chemistry and ability to deliver biology related research makes the country an integral part of global drug discovery programmes, according to Sri Mosur, CEO & president, Global Drug Discovery and Development, Jubilant Biosys.
He told Pharmabiz that with pure chemistry literally disappearing from US and Europe, global pharma-biotech majors are focusing on India to accelerate the development of the drug pipeline. The major crunch in R&D investments has resulted in off-loading drug discovery projects to India because it is almost 30 per cent lower compared to the costs in the West. The attrition ‘per molecule’ can also be managed better here, he said.
There are several opportunities for entrepreneurs in the life sciences space to maximize value of global drug discovery opportunities. The inherent chemistry expertise and emerging biology partnerships are witnessing a reverse brain drain of scientific workforce. Global companies are getting comfortable with India as a validated domain to pursue discovery and translational research. Government of India through the department of biotechnology (DBT) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have provided funding options. The venture capitalists are also beginning to offer the required seed capital. Start-ups with innovation and enabling technologies are set to fuel opportunities for the global majors to negotiate strategy for collaborative research, he added.
This is where companies like Jubilant Biosys, the subsidiary of Jubilant Organosys have an early mover advantage in investing in the drug discovery space. With its ‘business of science model’ based on the chemistry-biology capability, the company entered into early stage discovery, lead optimization, target identification and validation which enables commercialization of the possible drug candidate. The company has inked pacts with a spectrum of companies and universities that include AstraZeneca, Eli Lily, Endo Pharma, BioLeap, Orion, Duke University, University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) and Southern Research Institute. It pioneered the shared risk model with a technology platform for computational chemistry and structured biology to offer high-throughput and protein crystallography instead of focusing on small assays.
According to Mosur, India’s future lies in vaccine and small molecule development. With emerging opportunities, reverse brain drain together with India’s chem-bio strength can only increase research partnerships, licensing deals and revenue streams.
Current trend is an increasing interest in biology. However, the challenge for companies across all verticals in the drug discovery space is talent acquisition and its management for which there is a need to devise a mechanism for career progression at the mid level, he said.