Plan mooted for 5 new pharma institutes

The department of chemicals and petrochemicals has sought over Rs 500 crore from the Planning Commission to set up five institutes modelled on the lines of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER).

This is part of its proposals for revenue allocation in the upcoming 11th Five-Year Plan.

Aimed at meeting the growing demand for pharma professionals, the institutes will have a special focus on capacity building for clinical trials' personnel. They will come up in Ahmedabad, Hajipur (near Patna), Kolkata, Hyderabad and Guwahati.

"Each institute would require an investment for over Rs 100 crore to be spent over the next five years. The entire package would cost over Rs 500 crore and we are going to the Planning Commission with our proposal," said an official in the department of chemicals and petrochemicals.

The institutes would require land of roughly 70-100 acre which would be provided by the state government, while the central government, through the grant, would fund the infrastructure and other establishment expenses, added the official.

The proposal for more NIPER-like institutes has been mooted in the draft national pharmaceutical policy and has also been asked for by industry associations like the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA). The IPA has predicted that to double pharmaceutical exports by 2010, an additional 1,000 trained personnel would be required each year.

The institutes would offer bachelors and masters courses in pharmaceuticals, along with MBA and PhD programmes.

NIPER, Mohali is the first and only such institute so far and an extension centre of the same would be opened in Hajipur by the end of this year. The new centres would be opened in other cities subsequently.

"There would be a special focus on clinical trials too, since it is a booming sector. There would be special programmes for the same in Hyderabad that would provide trained personnel to be employed in clinical research organisations, site management organisations, investigators for the drug regulators etc," said the ministry official.

Besides training, the institutes would also focus on intellectual property protection, regulatory affairs, scientific validation of traditional medicine and frontier research in pharmaceutical analysis.