UK and India to build ’science bridges’

PA 296/09 New entrepreneurial opportunities in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have opened up between India and the UK with the signing of a £1.5m UK-India Science Bridge, Biopharm 2020. The three year grant has been funded by The Research Councils UK (RCUK) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) India and was officially launched at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Experts from The University of Nottingham, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur aim to create a step-change in collaborative innovation in target identification, drug discovery, drug delivery and manufacturing. They will build on existing collaborations with the goal of producing clinical and commercial benefits from patent protected research. Professor Kevin Shakesheff, Professor of Advanced Drug Delivery at The University of Nottingham, said: "World changing advances in pharmaceuticals and regenerative medicine will require large collaborative teams to work towards common goals. BioPharm 2020 brings together leading research groups with industry. The teams at Nottingham, Kanpur and Bangalore have very different skills and by combining our ideas we can undertake new challenges that will advance us far beyond that achievable within the smaller individual groups." - Professor Pradip Bhatnagar, Senior Vice President, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals chaired the launch event.