Building science bridges with India

PA 34/09 The University of Nottingham's highly rated Schools of Pharmacy and Business have joined forces to establish a 'Science Bridge' with India in the field of biopharmaceuticals and regenerative medicine. With funding of nearly £760,000 awarded by Research Councils UK (RCUK), Nottingham's 'Science Bridge' — BioPharm 2020 — will build links between the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, UK industry and the University to develop a vision for collaborative knowledge transfer. Professor Kevin Shakesheff, Professor of Advanced Drug Delivery, said: "We aim to bring together complimentary teams to exploit new inventions and techniques to advance the pharmaceutical and related regenerative medicine industry in the UK and India. We are particularly interested in using the Science Bridge to boost the East Midlands pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector by matching skills in our region to Kanpur." BioPharm 2020 will create a step-change in collaborative innovation in target identification, drug discovery, drug delivery and manufacturing. It will build on extensive collaborations with the goals of producing clinical and commercial benefits from patent protected research, world class human resource with a focus on working with industry and assess the supply chain and outsourcing potential for long term business engagement and policy formulation between the two countries. RCUK have announced a total of £12m of funding for collaborations between British universities and institutions in China, India and the US.