The Regional Centre for Biotechnology, a biotech cluster supported by Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will start operations soon. The project was launched almost an year ago. According to Dr K K Tripathi, advisor, DBT the cluster has already attracted around 15 Indian biotech companies under its wing from the time of its launch.
The centre which is situated in Faridabad, Haryana is aimed at generating interdisciplinary manpower relevant to biotechnology that will facilitate in fulfilling the demand for trained and skilled work force in the country.
According to Dr Flaguni Sen, director, Global Healthcare Innovation Management Centre (GHIMC), Graduate school of Business, Fordham University who recently joined RCB as a consultant to provide his expertise said, “This initiative taken by the government by setting up this biotech cluster is a huge step that shows the government's pro active interest in pushing for innovation and generating trained manpower in the country. Apart from training, one of the important aim of this cluster is to push for innovation and come out with new molecules which is the need of the hour.”
This particular cluster is built over around 40 acres of land that was bought in the name National Institute of Immunology (NII). Dr Tripathi informed that DBT will be investing around Rs.10 crore on the development of this unique biotech cluster.
He further informed that the contribution of UNESCO will be in terms of training, sharing of technological know how, generating of competent manpower etc. whereas, the centre will support by providing adequate infrastructure for scale-up and process engineering.
Dr Tripathi states, “Our aim through this cluster is to ensure that proper impetus is given for innovation so that more companies will take-up initiatives to develop new molecules. The educational programmes at the centre are designed to create opportunities for students to engage in research where they learn new techniques of integrating science, engineering and medicine to provide health care solutions.”
Elaborating further he said that one of the most important activity of this centre would be to focus on expertise building in the field of regulation, product development, scale up, manufacturing science and bio-entrepreneurship. “We will also have specialised domain specific programmes for the interested people that will help in creating new opportunity areas such as cell and tissue engineering etc,” informed Dr Tripathi.
This cluster will act as a centre for education, training and research in biotechnology which will help in producing new cadre of professionals with expertise in relevant areas, enabling them towards delivery of low cost, effective and penetrative technologies in health care, agriculture and veterinary sciences.