The Centre has approved the biotechnology industry partnership programme (BIPP), one of the key elements of the national biotechnology development strategy by the Department of Biotechnology, to accelerate the development of futuristic technologies in areas like vaccine manufacturing through public-private partnerships.

The final approval was accorded to the project, worth Rs 350 crore from the government side during the current 11th Five Year Plan. It is an advanced technology science scheme (ATS), envisaged as a government partnership programme with industries for support on cost sharing basis for high risk discovery, innovation, and accelerated technology development especially for futuristic areas. This is one of the major components of the five-year development strategy announced by DBT a few months back.

"Global experience has shown that early generation of intellectual property in frontier areas of technology empowers subsequent product development and creation of new enterprise derived from local innovation, and this is best accomplished through symbiosis between public and private sectors. The proposed programme is aimed at addressing this challenge," a senior DBT official said.

Besides increasing the global competitiveness of domestic industry in new and futuristic technologies and enhancing ownership of IP in these areas by companies and scientists, it will specially address major national unmet technology needs in areas including human health. It will take into consideration projects for tuberculosis drugs or vaccine, AIDS vaccine or a dengue vaccine. These are unchartered territories basically because of the high levels of uncertainty. As much as 30 per cent of DBT's research and development investment would be spent through this programme. The government will extend upto 50 per cent of the projects for discovery-linked innovation.

Grant in aid support would also be provided for clinical trials of biotechnology products that are based on indigenous discovery and innovation. The scheme will support major research facilities and platform technology centres as core facilities that are readily accessible to SME's and public sector scientists.

The industry partner would be allowed to retain intellectual property right with payment of appropriate royalty to the public sector scientists under this cost-sharing scheme. The results of the programme will be coming in long term in radically new areas like stem cell therapy and nanoscience as the goal of the project is to generate IPR in advanced technology segments, sources said. The programme is being launched to address the backwardness of the country in IPR as the last year saw filing of 7,000 patents globally in stem cell research but not a single one coming from India.