The National Bioavailability Centre was inaugurated recently at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education & Research (NIPER), Chandigarh. Established with the support of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, NBC is the first of its kind in the country. Bioavailability centre at NIPER is one among the two centres in the world accredited by WHO for conducting bioequivalence studies of fixed dose combinations of anti-tuberculosis drugs.

Since the inception of the facility in1998, it has actively collaborated with Indian pharmaceutical industry and international agencies like World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva) and Medicines Sans Frontieres International (MSF, Belgium), an official release stated.

Inaugurating the centre, Dr V S Ramamurthy, secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST), said support for pharmaceutical research is an integral part of DST and NBC is the eight centre supported by the Department.