The Department of Science and Technology (DST) is finding it difficult to sanction "loans" for industrial R&D through its Pharmaceutical Research and Development Support Fund (PRDSF) Programme to private sector due to a technical snag that prevents the department from sanctioning "loans" other than 'grants' and 'aids'.

The issue has delayed the release of funds to the only industrial R&D project sanctioned by the Drug Development Promotion Board (DDPB), by several months now. Faced with the technical problem, the expert body has been sanctioning only collaborative R&D programmes involving public research institutions and the drug industry. The DST is known to be trying hard to sort out the issue at the earliest to facilitate the release of funds to the sanctioned project and also take up more drug R&D proposals from the industry.

The PRDSF programme, primarily aimed at helping private drug R&D in the country, has several components including the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Research Programme (DPRP). The DPRP programme, which used to be a separate programme of DST got merged with PRDSF and is continuing to be the only active component of PRDSF. Recently, the Planning commission had increased allocation on pharma activities from Rs 10 crore to Rs 35 crore for the current financial year. Though PRDSF programme has two pronged activities --industry loan and industry-institution collaborative programmes--, the technical snag has made DST focus its strengths on to find suitable R&D projects in the collaborative research area for the current year. This year's sanction is much higher than expected as the normal PRDSF fund is supposed to be only the interest generating from Rs 150 crore corpus. In order to make proper use of the funds, the DST is in the process of calling for more industry-institutional joint research proposals soon. As pharmabiz had reported earlier, the DDPB had recently cleared five research proposals in the collaborative drug R&D area. In addition to this, it had considered proposals for research loans also.

The five industry-institution research proposals to be funded through PRDSF programme included an anti-cancer drug research programme of Dabur, vaccine research programme of Serum Institute, research on novel drug delivery systems for multi-drug resistant TB and Kala Azhar by Life Care Innovations and Promed Exports' herbal eye care drug research.