NIPER entered its 10th year of existence when it celebrated its foundation day on February 15. The foundation lecture was delivered by Pr. Goverdhan Mehta, director, IISc., Bangalore. Jagdish V Dore, managing director, Sandoz presided over the function.
In his welcome address Dr. C.L.Kaul, director, NIPER briefed the audience with the annual progress report of the institute. Introduction of a new masters degree programme in Pharmacoinformatics, over 90 research publications and honours bestowed upon two of the NIPER Faculty members were the highlights of his report.
Further, new buildings viz. Technology Development Centre and National Bioavaliability Centre have been added to the existing infrastructure of the institute. The World Bank has chosen the institute for its capacity building project (training component) for the drug regulatory personnel and this project will run for a period five years, Dr. Kaul said.
In his presidential remarks Jagdish V Dore, managing director, Sandoz, Mumbai indicated that India would appear as a major player in generic drug by the yea 2005. Further, he said that it would be appropriate for the country to increase the intellectual property contribution in the field of pharmaceutical sciences in the near future. Dore appreciated the achievements of the Institute which is less than 10 years old, and desired to have close collaboration between Sandoz and NIPER. Dore introduced the speaker Prof. Mehta to the audience.
Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, in his lecture entitled “Natural Products Synthesis and drug discovery” emphasized upon the competitive nature of the synthetic organic chemistry in the process of drug development. He advocated novelty, simplicity, flexibility and diversity of approach in the process of drug discover vis-à-vis natural products. Dr. Mehta’s talk was interspersed with organic chemistry which audience thoroughly enjoyed. In his message to the young generation of pharmaceutical scientists at NIPER, Prof. Mehta said that there is a need to explore the existing natural flora within the country as starting point in drug discovery and development.
On this occasion two of the national award winning faculty – Dr. C S Dey and Dr. Ramesh Panchagnula were felicitated.
Prizes were also distributed to winners of the various events organized on the occasion of Foundation Day.
The programme ended with a vote of thanks by Prof. K.K. Bhutani, Dean of the Institute. On this occasion a colourful cultural programme was organized in Institute’s auditorium.
A four day workshop on “Drug Discovery and Development in new millennium: Interfacing with pharmacological and toxicological experimentation” was inaugurated at NIPER by Prof. Y.K.Gupta, Director, Industrial Toxicology and Research Centre (ITRC), Lucknow.
This four-day forum will provide students, researchers, managers and regulatory authorities an insight in to the ways of in-depth understanding of the different aspects of drug discovery and development.
In his presidential remarks, Dr. C.L. Kaul, Director, NIPER said that due to paradigm shift in the drug discovery process critical decisions have to be made regarding targets, lead generation, optimization and biological screening strategies and these are the prime factors for success. Further, the integration of such knowledge is the order of the day to achieve enhanced productivity in this area. Dr. Kaul emphasized the need to reorient the screening programme in such a way so that test compounds with pharmaceutical and safety problems could be excluded at an early stage of development. He introduced the Chief Guest Prof. Y.K. Gupta, to the audience.
Prof. Y.K. Gupta in his key note address entitled “Oxidative stress and neurological disorders”, emphasized on the utilization of technologies, networking of scientific personnel and strong basis for conducting animal experimentation in the process of drug discovery and development. He continued to explain the involvement of free radicals in various neurological disorders. Dr. Gupta presented the summarized findings of research done by his team of scientists in the area of stroke, Alzheimer’s diseases and Parkinson disease. Ischemic stroke is the third largest cause of mortality and WHO has identified stroke as a major disorder. Dr. Gupta’s key note address was very well taken by the audience and he concluded that research into free radicals was fiction 20 years back and as of today, it has become fiber of the disease process.
In his welcome address Prof. P. Rama Rao, Head, Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology and the convenor of the workshop said that one of the purpose of this workshop is to network various personnel involved in the drug discovery process and also to provide them a platform to acquaint with various new technologies. The four day programme will have over 25 lecturers and half a dozen demonstration in the well equipped labs of the institute. Over 50 delegates from various parts of the country are participating in the deliberations of the workshop and experts from various areas of drug discovery and development have been invited to interact with the participants.