The south Asian chapter of American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) held its second international conference on "Drug Discovery & Development- South Asian Perspective" recently in Mumbai. Maharashtra Governor and chancellor of universities S C Jamir inaugurated the two-day event.

The conference was organized to deliberate on issues like paediatric drugs, vaccines, pharmacovigilance, pharmacogenetics and phytopharmaceuticals issues of relevance to south Asian countries. Delegates from all over India and from Nepal and experts from all over India and from USA, Dr David Lehmann participated in the seminar. Sixty delegates presented papers in different fields like pharmacogenetics, pharmacovigilance, new drug delivery and phytochemicals.

The south Asian chapter of ACCP was started in 2007 to foster interdisciplinary interaction in the South Asian Countries for drug development and research and for safe and effective use of medicines. The first conference was organized from 4 to 6 October 2007 and the theme was "Contemporary Issues and Future Challenges in Drug Development."

In his speech, Maharashtra Governor SC Jamir said that the theme of the conference is particularly apt as it is coming at a time when South East Asia and India in particular are beginning to be recognized as giants in the field of drug development and clinical research. Conferences like these will provide a platform where drug manufacturers, researchers, scientists and students alike will deliberate on diseases of relevance to our country and come up with concrete guidelines and maybe even a roadmap for the future.

ACCP south Asian chapter president Dr Nilima Kshirsagar in her speech said that though India has been ranked with China, Korea, Russia etc as one of the seven pharma emerging markets, India still has only 2 per cent of global trial market share. A recent study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA on trends on globalization of trials has put India as 10th most popular clinical trials outsourcing destination. The market value of India's Clinical Research Industry is projected to touch 1.5 to 2 billion dollars by 2010 from the current 300 million dollars.

Like IT the pharmaceutical industry in India is one of the most successful industries. India is considered as one of the seven emerging pharmaceutical markets with 12-13 per cent growth. Currently, the Indian industry provides quality generic drugs at affordable prices to the world and is now poised for new drug development too.

However, these financial investments need to be matched with a strong a sense of social response, powerful growth of intellectual capacity. The planning commission of India has noted shortage of manpower and shortage for training for drug development i.e experts in ethics, drug safety and drug quality. The training should include not only issues of ethics, drug safety but as well social issues (women's health, medicines for children and for tribals who with genetic pool have specific problems, medicines from traditional systems of medicine) & education on safe & rational use of drugs. Drug development requires patience. If you want a chicken you have to patiently incubate the egg, can't just smash it, Dr Kshirsagar said.