The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), under its contract research and services (CRS) scheme, has invited proposals from the public or private universities and research institutions to take forward their research leads through validation and translation by industry.

BIRAC had recently launched the CRS to extend support to academia in the form of grant-in aid for validation of the proof of concept (PoC) by an industrial partner. The scheme would support the academia-industry interaction between research institutes, universities, public funded research laboratories, governmental organizations, research foundations and companies/industries.

Senior officials in the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) said that the BIRAC's new initiative comes in the backdrop of the fact that numerous lab scale research leads are being generated in the academic sector through funding from various agencies like DBT, CSIR, DST, DRDO etc., which have the potential for validation and translation into products.  Currently the academia is capable of limited translational research, however, product development is generally not a part of their mandate. Moreover, they may not have the required infrastructure to take on product development and commercialization activity.  

It is, therefore, important to take the industry on board to validate such research leads for pilot studies through contract research agreements, officials said.

Under the scheme, those academic partners who have already generated or have pre-existing scientifically established proof of concept/leads could seek support for specific research and validation process to be performed by a company partners within a defined time frame. The industry partner in turn would complete the validation phase in a contract research mode.   In addition, if the Academic group requires some specific services from the industry such as toxicology, sequencing, use of specific equipment etc. these could also be supported under this scheme.

The academic partner will be given grant-in-aid for the research component required for the validation at their site as well as for the validation and contract research/service components to be outsourced to the collaborating companies.

Public or private universities and research institutions having a well established research support system for basic or applied research and education are eligible for this proposal which will close on September 15 this year.  The research group should necessarily have an established lead as evidenced by scientific data ready for validation/outsourced services and may fall in the categories of validation of lab scale technology; small scale contract research resulting in generating several batches of process or multiple prototypes; and large scale validation of prototype to commercial design.

BIRAC is a ‘Not-for-Profit’ Section 25 Company established by the DBT to work as an inter-face agency for supporting industry-academia interaction in the country.