National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), an autonomous body set up under the aegis of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, is India's first national level institute in pharmaceutical sciences with a proclaimed objective of becoming a centre of excellence for advanced studies and research in pharmaceutical sciences. Completing 10 years of incredible academic and industry services in the Indian pharma sector, the Institute is now focusing on the much more complex drug discovery research.

While appraising the academic programmes and the value added industry services of the Institute over the years, Dr Chaman Lal Kaul, the director, dwells into the new focal areas of NIPER. Dr Kaul, who has four decades of research experience centred on development and preclinical studies of new drugs, stability, bioavailability investigations, pharmaceutical formulations, quality control and biological assay, says that the Institute has now realised the necessity for solving real world problems and introduced a course in pharmacoinformatics, in an Interview with Joe C Mathew of Pharmabiz. Excerpts:

What is the significance of NIPER when compared to other institutions of pharmaceutical education and research?

The significance of NIPER should be understood in the backdrop of the status of pharmacy as a profession in this country. Even though there are 500 schools of pharmacy offering diploma, degree and post-graduate courses, pharmacy as a profession has not made any dent in India. On the contrary, pharmacy is considered as a noble profession all over the world. Not even 5% of the pharmacists in developed countries go to industry. They are all part of the healthcare team of their countries. NIPER is trying to help improve the standards and respectability of pharmacy profession in the country. It has introduced specialised courses to help the students take up greater responsibilities in all fields of pharmacy profession. The Department of Pharmacy Practice at NIPER has identified three core areas for growth ie, clinical, hospital and community pharmacy. One of the missions of the department is to provide quality teaching programmes that will prepare the students for entry into all areas of professional pharmacy practice.

Why do you give so much importance for pharmacy practice?

One has to realise that 90% of Indian population has no clue about pharmacy profession. Pharmacy practice is not just dispensation of drugs. The compliance, counselling are all important aspects of drug treatment that has to be taken up by community pharmacists. The job opportunity in this segment of community pharmacy is tremendous when compared to other segments of pharmacy profession. The Department of Pharmacy Practice is handling hospital, and clinical community pharmacy practices as three distinct parts. Much thrust is given towards prescription and counselling. We should not forget that more that 50% of prescriptions in our country are irrational.

In order to bring in a positive change in prescription habits we are in the process of setting up drug information centres in major hospitals of Chandigarh. Our Masters students are in hospitals like Fortis, PGI and Govt Medical College to be part of this information centres. We also have some faculty from London School of Pharmacy to assist us develop this concept.

What are NIPER's contributions towards the growth of Indian pharmaceutical industry?

Recently we have established the Department of Pharmaceutical Management to provide specialized, high quality education as preparation for professional positions in pharmaceutical business and industry. A critical and integral component of our educational strategy is to help the pharma industry with specially trained individuals without the limitations of a conventional curriculum and with abilities, attitudes and skills of a professional manager to serve effectively and efficiently in pharmaceutical industry.

Similarly, the department of Pharmaceutical Technology has been created with a view to directly interact with industry. The department has a pilot plant associated with it for pilot scale processing of bulk drugs, pharmaceutical formulations and natural products. It also has build up facilities for scale up studies during development of technologies for bulk pharmaceutical chemicals and different dosage forms. The department is actively engaged in collaborative projects for the benefit of the industry.

What kind of support can NIPER offer to Indian pharmaceutical industry in their pursuit to go global?

Indian pharmaceutical industry is exporting drugs to almost all major countries in the world. This has also compelled them to comply with varied regulatory requirements. In an attempt to make foreign regulatory authorities familiar with the Indian systems of drug manufacturing, we have been organising workshops for international regulatory personnel for the last five years now. NIPER has been recently empanelled by Government of India to conduct training programmes on regulatory aspects in pharmaceutical sciences for international delegations.

We impart hands-on training to these regulatory officials, mostly from African, Latin American and CIS countries, on cGMP/ GLP validation procedures in pharmaceutical industry. Standardisation of herbal products, macro and micro-propagation of medicinal plants, separation techniques, modern analytical techniques for quality assurance, impurity profiles of bulk pharmaceutical chemicals and their formulations, degradation chemistry and stability testing of drugs and pharmaceuticals, bioavailability and bioequivalence of pharmaceutical dosage forms are all to be covered under the training programme. Documentation in pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing, recombinant DNA technology for drugs, secretory proteins and biomass production through fermentation, primary drug screenings, regulatory toxicology, synthesis and technology of chiral drugs, scale up techniques in pharmaceutical industry, development of eco-friendly processes, generation of combinatorial libraries of small molecules, computer aided drug design and pharmaceutical project management also comes under the module of training and continuing education programmes.

We have organised such courses for regulatory authorities from about 35 countries.

What are the future plans of NIPER?

Drug discovery research has become much more complex science requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Converging concepts of several disciplines such as molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical sciences and computational technology has become more than a trend in education. We have also realised this necessity for solving real world problems and introduced a course in pharmacoinformatics. This course is designed to teach the new millennium drug discovery science to the pharmacy graduates to become the successful drug discovery scientist in pharmaceutical industry. Masters programme in traditional medicine is also being planned.