In line with the popular demands of the pharmaceutical industry across the globe, BioAsia is poised to take a new avatar in 2012 as an advocacy and networking platform for the national and international pharma and biotech industries.   

As announced earlier, the ninth edition of the prestigious global bio-business conference will be held from February 9 to 11, 2012 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre. The focus of the conference this time is on CROs, IPR, Vaccines and Investments.

Unlike earlier, this time the event will have only panel discussions to increase the interactions instead of technical sessions.

“Already, representatives of top 16 MNCs in bio-pharma have confirmed their participation. A state-of-the-art partnering system which integrates professional and social networking platforms will also be part of this prestigious event,” announced Dr. K V Raghavan, vice president, Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) & Former Director, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT).

It is learnt that high profile speakers and global thought leaders like Dr. Richard Connell, vice president and Head of R & D, Pfizer, Shanghai; Dr Ajit Shetty, president, Johnson & Johnson; Dr. Hasit Joshipura, VP and MD, GSK; Pankaj Patel, chairman, Zydus Cadila; Dr. N K Ganguly, chairman, Immunology Foundation & Former Director General, Indian Council for Medical Research; Dr. Suresh Jadhav of Serum Institute of India;  Dr. Darren JI, chief executive officer, PharmaLegacy Labs, China; and Dr Cyrus Karkaria, president Biotech, Lupin (India)  are expected to take part in the event.

Speaking at the curtain raiser event, Dr P V Appaji, executive director Pharmexcil, said, “This time the government’s major emphasis is to increase the exports to China. Ministries of both the countries are working on to ease the hurdles regarding product registrations and solve other existing problems relating to trade issues.”

He said by 2014, the government is planning to double its pharmaceutical exports to China and capture maximum domestic markets in that country.

Vibhav Garg, Head, Life Sciences, Confederation of Indian Industry, also spoke highlighting the various changes in the structure and highlights of the event this year.  An elaborate industry perspective about the emerging trends, challenges, policy framework and measures to improve exports were discussed.

On the occasion, the Genome Valley Excellence Awards 2012 were also finalized.  The awards for 2012 will go to Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO, GAVI Alliance, Geneva, for his extra-ordinary contributions to the vaccine sector and Merck & Co. for its Patient Health & vaccine research in addition to its support and backing to the initiatives focused on preventing female cancers. These awards will be presented during BioAsia 2012.

Major partners for the upcoming BioAsia 2012 includes Frost & Sullivan, Confederation of Indian Industries, Alexandria India, Lonza India, Hyde Engineering & Consulting and Yes Bank among others.  SwedenBio, Swiss Biotech, AusBiotech and Biocat (Spain) are some of the other global associations supporting the event.