The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is set to expand its role as a facilitator of services, by providing IP reference substances, free of cost to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries. Through this initiative, IPC aims to assist the said countries in developing and building their own working reference substances (RS) to enhance the quality of medicines manufactured in their country.

IPC will be providing the IP reference substances to them through the world health organisation (WHO) in a phased manner starting from January. It is understood that IPC plans to release the reference substance in a lot of 20, each month to ensure that they are given enough time to study and do research on the same to upgrade and strengthen their pharmacopoeia accordingly.

The IP reference substances consist of authentic specimens approved by the IPC for its use as comparison standards in the test and assays as specified in pharmacopoeia of this country. Dr G N Singh, secretary cum scientific director of IPC informed that this is a huge step towards recognition of the IP globally as a key player in ensuring availability of high quality drugs in the market.

“We are very excited about this venture as it reinstates and establishes the position of the IPC in the international market as a contributor to safe and efficacious medicine across the world. Moreover it will also help us to further strengthen our relation with the SAARC and ASEAN countries by helping us play a major role in assisting them in enhancing their pharmacopoeia as per the required standards,” he stressed.

He further informed that this is the first such initiative where India will be playing a active role as a provider of reference substances where in till now, apart from researching and working on building our own reference substances India have also been referring to RS from other pharmacopoeias like USP, WHO etc.

At present there are 178 reference substances prepared by the IP as per the requirement and the needs of the country, which are used in analytical procedures of pharmaceutical substances for evaluating and enhancing the quality of medicines.