India has seen a rapid growth in biotech industry with an annual growth rate of nearly 20%; it is among top 12 biotech destinations globally
DR MANASVI M KAMAT
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India, celebrated its 34th Foundation Day yesterday (February 26). This department since its inception has encouraged policy-enablement, higher education and pioneering research in biotech, while recognizing the contribution of scientists working in various educational and research institutes at different levels across the country.
The DBT is also credited with establishing the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech Inventiveness. The prime objective of BIRAC is to further sensitize the biotechnology industries for public health, agriculture, food securities, green technology and industry.
Biotechnology (biotech) is a top-notch field of study that emerged into the scientific world as a result of revolutions in biology with inter-relations in chemistry (biochem), informatics (bioinformatics), systems (biosystems) and engineering (bioengineering). It is considered to be an applied branch of biology and helps out this respectable field of science to keep pace with time and remain competitive in the contemporary world.
Biotech, a knowledge-intensive field, has the potential to bring about specific manmade changes in DNA or genetic material in plants, animals and microorganisms leading to useful products and technologies. Biotech degrees teach the use of microbiological processes, living organisms and bio-systems to produce new products that improve the quality of human life. This field of knowledge also has the potential to develop genetically modified plants, animals and micro-organisms.
Thanks to the yeomen service the DBT has rendered in over last three decades, India has seen a rapid growth in biotech industry amounting to an annual growth rate of nearly 20 percent and is considered to be among the top 12 biotech destinations in the world, ranking third in the Asia-Pacific region. In terms of auguring production capability, India has now set an ambitious target of US $150 billion by 2025 to be the second-highest number of US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) approved plants after the USA, and is the largest producer of recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine.
The biotech sector plays a significant role in addressing major global challenges in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, energy, livestock, etc with focus on innovation and R&D. The last decade in education witnessed considerable strides in the subject of Information Technology while the coming decade is expected to see tremendous potential in the super-specialty areas of biotech. The DBT has already covered general biotech, agricultural-biotech, medical-biotech, marine-biotech, industrial-biotech, pharmaceutical-biotech and biochemical-engineering for academic programs at the UG and PG levels.
Based on the National Institutional Ranking Framework’s (NIRF) list for 2019 which ranks the higher education institutes of India the listed top biotech universities on overall basis for biotech/ biosciences courses offered are the IITs led by IIT Madras, IISc Bangalore, JNU, BHU, University of Hyderabad, the Calcutta, Jadavpur and Anna University among the government-funded while Amrita, Thapar, Amity and OP Jindal University score better among the private institutions.
With diverse specializations on offer, this entire field has changed its course and is rife with innovations. The focus of study in future days is on four big areas -- computational biomedicine, cloud biology, digital therapeutics and chemical ecology. Some of the gap areas like environmental biotech, industrial biotech, proteomics/genomics, and molecular genetics will also need attention in the coming years to cater to the needs of the industrial sector.
Computational biomedicine is the usage of machine intelligence and developments in computer technologies like image recognition and pattern matching to human reports to come up with a more accurate diagnosis than a trained radiologist can do. Cloud biology is the application of cloud computing theories to biological research. Just like in cloud computing, a bio researcher can tap into a large number of computational resources at reasonable costs to conduct previously unthinkable experiments. While digital therapeutics focuses on treating medical situations through behavioral solutions, the domain of chemical ecology is the study of how organisms use chemicals to interact.
In the above context, two significant developments in the biotech industry involving two foreign nations assume importance. During the official visit of the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to India, an MoU between TERI-DEAKIN Centre, Gurugram and International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) Braga was signed intending co-operation in nano-biotech.
In addition to the above, Queensland, the Australian state home to a massive IT and biotech community, has become the newest partner in the Government of Karnataka’s K-tech hub. This partnership enables university researchers and academics undertaking innovative work in the IT and biotech work in the North-east Australian state to share learning and network with contemporaries in Bengaluru. This partnership will enable university researchers and academics working on IT and biotech in Queensland to share learning and network with contemporaries in Bengaluru.
For the overall development of this sector, the government should consider creating a platform for big-data analytics, skills for advanced diagnostics, innovation fund for MedTech start-ups, low-cost rapid diagnostic tests for rare diseases, creation of virus repository with genomic data, and extension of weighted tax deduction for R&D activities outsourced to laboratories or contract research organizations.
Currently, students are showing tremendous interest in biotech education. The primary reason behind this interest emerges from the fact that the technical and procedural application of biotech touches a vast array of disciplines. With the advances in sciences, biotech is definitely redefining the boundaries of science, and to be a part of such an innovative field one must need to possess an inherent attitude of originality and imagination. With this interdisciplinary branch of science that is rapidly gaining significance, the opportunities for youngsters who want to explore the new frontiers of science are immense and diversified.
