The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has tied up with Thailand's Ministry of Science and Technology to develop joint programmes for the advancement of biotechnology in areas of genomics, infectious disease like TB, and malaria amongst others.

Speaking at the Indo-Thai workshop on biotechnology in Pune, S. Natesh, advisor, DBT, said areas like aquaculture, marine biotechnology, agriculture, food and fermentation technology would be covered under the programmes.

He describes such bilateral and multilateral collaborations of utmost importance and said that India has focussed on collaboration with 25 countries viz. Switzerland, Germany and Sweden in the field of science and biotechnology. He also pointed out the importance of investments in areas of healthcare, agriculture, medicines, human genome and toward bio-industrial development.

Internationally compatible regulatory structures has also been set up for risk assessment and management of recombinant DNA products.

A new scheme, 'Technology Incubators Pilot Level Facilites and Biotech Parks,' introduces for the promotion of biotechnology, has caught the attention of various states. Luknow has been declared as a biotechnology city, while a biotechnology incubator facility has been set up in Andhra Pradesh, he said.

Speaking about biotechnology applications, Natesh said over 55 technologies had been transferred to the industry including HIV diagnostic kits, leprosy vaccine, diagnostic kits for detection of pregnancy amongst others. He further said that many other products are in the pipeline for technology validation including the world's first recombinant DNA vaccine for rabies, which is ready for commercial use in animals while pre-clinical evaluation for vaccines on HIV, malaria and TB have also been taken up.

The other delegates presented were deputy director, BIOTEC and head of Thai delegation Prasit Palittapongarnpim and DBT director G. C. Mishra.