The Centre will take steps to acquire new powerful tools to identify new drug targets in the national drug programmes with special focus on biotechnology and will support the interested universities to remodel the departments of life sciences to make them globally competitive and boost research in the country.

Measures have been initiated for continuous support to research work carried out by the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology through national and international linkages. To spur the research works in the areas of hepatitis, malaria, recombinant gene product, plant molecular biology, plant resistance and plant transformation, the Ministry of Science Technology is planning to go for new globally-acclaimed tools to identify new drug targets, sources said.

The effort is being made against the backdrop that India has still a long way to go in the field to address health needs and ICGEB will coordinate with the Western countries for coordinating scientific and technological exchanges and obtaining vital inputs for health research. The government has already approved the proposal in this regard, sources added.

During the current 11th Plan period, DBT will be establishing eight new institutions in frontier areas of biotechnology. Out of this, approvals from Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) and Cabinet have been already obtained in case of three institutions and implementation of activities has already begun. EFCs have been circulated in case of two other institutions for comments and the same are under preparation in case of two more institutions. Further, the Cabinet Note for establishment of UNESCO centre is in pipeline as per procedure. In all these cases, the timeline for implementation are clearly worked out for monitoring from time to time.

To make the university departments of life sciences competitive in the global arena, the government is planning a number of measures to get them remodelled and extending infrastructure support. Thrust will be given to areas like molecular modelling, drug designing, immunological studies, pre-clinical studies and clinical trials during the Plan period.

The DBT has already prepared the scheme in this regard and 12 universities have expressed interest by sending letters of intent. The process of selection for funding and support is going on based on the merit of the proposal and vision of the university to transform life science research for making it globally competitive. Department will support every effort made in upgrading the infrastructure of R&D base of Life Sciences Department in such universities, sources added.