Open Source Drug Discovery gets Rs 500 crore
Inaugurating the Open source drug discovery portal by the Council for scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR), the Minister of science and technology, Kapil Sibal announced that a sum of Rs 500 crore has been set aside in the next 5 to 6 years for the Open source Drug Discovery programme. "Open source drug discovery is the largest collaborative effort since human genome sequencing and perhaps the largest in the world," he said.

CSIR has launched an innovative 'Open Source drug discovery' OSDD programme to combat the scourge of infectious diseases that afflict the developing world. A CSIR led consortium with global partnership, OSDD aims to provide affordable healthcare to all inspired by the success of open source movements in software and the Human Genome Sequencing Project. The web portal http://www.osdd.net will provide a platform for collaborative research, data on pathogens, tools for data analysis and discussion forum for members to share ideas, projects for students to participate in drug discovery etc. Tuberculosis or TB will be the first disease target. Elaborating on the same, the minister said, "There are only 3 drugs for TB as compared to 399 for cancer and TB also accounts for a number of deaths in the country. Hence it was decided to focus on TB." Seven CSIR institutes along with five non-CSIR institutes are collaborating in the project along with industry support from Sun Microsystems, TCG Lifesciences and Jalaja technologies amongst others.

CSIR celebrates its 66th Foundation Day
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR celebrated its 66th Foundation Day on 26 September 2008. Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences gave away the CSIR Young Scientist Awards 2008 and the CSIR Technology Awards 2008 at a function organized in New Delhi to mark the occasion.

In his address, Sibal called upon the scientific community to bring science out of laboratories in the form of solutions to the day-to-day problems of the people. Observing that India is the third most attractive nation for R&D, Sibal reiterated the commitment of the government to provide world-class environment for scientists to pursue their research.

Lauding the recent launch of an open source platform by CSIR, the minister strongly advocated a system of free flow of information. He also praised the Project 800 of the CSIR which aims at bringing solutions to 800 million people in the country in the areas of agriculture, energy and health.

Prof. Bartha Maria Knoppfers of the University of Montreal, Canada, delivered the CSIR Foundation Day lecture on Investments in Health Research and International Interoperability. On the occasion Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari, Director General, CSIR announced the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes for 2008. He also named the winners of the CSIR Award for S&T Innovation in Rural Development.

Agri minister wants 'declared good' tag for biofuels
Inaugurating the first Biofuels India Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Sharad Pawar, Chairman of the Group of Ministers on the , National Biofuel Policy said the new National Policy on Biofuels envisaged ambitious targets, which would certainly boost biofuels as an alternative energy source and thereby facilitate greater investment in the sector.

Vilas Muttemwar, Minister of State for New & Renewable Energy, said that the National policy on biofuels has been cleared by the group of ministers headed by Pawar and is now awaiting Cabinet approval. He expressed hope that it would provide a roadmap for the Indian industry and the public sector to tap the full potential of this critical sector. The ministers also highlighted India's approach to biofuels is based solely on non-food feedstocks to be raised on degraded or wastelands that are not suited for agriculture, thus avoiding a possible conflict of fuel vs food security.

The CII agenda also calls for the creation of a Second-Generation Biofuels Fund along with the setting up of four Regional Bio Energy Centres to boost R&D activities and pilot projects in the sector. On the occasion, Mr Pawar released a CII-Rabobank Strategy Paper titled 'Sustainable Biofuel Policy for India'. The paper sets forth a comprehensive agenda for promoting sustainable development of the biofuels sector in the country with a view to enhancing energy security.

Wellcome Trust and Indian government announce £80 million partnership
The Wellcome Trust, UK's largest charity announced a jointly-funded Biomedical Research Career Programme to fund cutting-edge biomedical research in India in collaboration with the Department of Biotechnology. The £80m scheme, jointly funded by the Government of India's Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Wellcome Trust over 5 years, aims to strengthen the research base of Indian biomedical science by providing fellowship programmes to support researchers from newly-qualified post-docs through to senior researchers.

The programme will be delivered by the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, an independent, public charitable trust based in New Delhi and established by the two partners. Each year, the Alliance is expected to award around 40 early careers fellowships, 20 intermediate fellowships and 15 senior research fellowships. Speaking on the occasion, Dr Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said, "India has a wealth of academic talent and it is important that we can support the best researchers throughout their careers."

"This venture is the creation of the opportunities to get scientists from abroad back into India," he said. "India has embarked on a range of new institution building programmes. By attracting the best scientists back to work in these locations, we hope to make research and discovery a real contributor to health and wellbeing of not only Indians but of humankind in general," said Dr MK Bhan, Secretary, DBT.

Gates Foundation accepting proposals for Grand Challenges Explorations

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting grant proposals for Round 2 of Grand Challenges Explorations, a US$100 million initiative to encourage bold and unconventional global health solutions. Proposals will be accepted online at: www.gcgh.org/explorations through November 2, 2008.

The topic areas for which proposals will be accepted for Round 2 of the Grand Challenges Explorations
initiative are:

• Create new vaccines for diarrhea, HIV, malaria, pneumonia, and tuberculosis

• Create new tools to accelerate the eradication of malaria

• Creating new ways to protect against infectious diseases, including alternatives to traditional vaccination.

• Create new drugs and delivery systems to limit the emergence of resistance from developing in the disease-causing agent

• Create new ways to prevent or cure HIV infection that fall outside current research on vaccines, antiretroviral drugs, and other biomedical and behavior-change strategies

• Explore the basis for latency in TB, with the goal of discovering new ways to identify and eliminate latent infection, and break the cycle of TB transmission

The foundation and an independent group of reviewers will select the most innovative proposals, and grants will be awarded within approximately three months from the proposal submission deadline. Initial grants will be $100,000 each. Projects showing success will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of $1 million or more.

Avesthagen's new Strategic Scientific Advisory Board addresses its multidisciplinary product pipeline
Bangalore-based Avesthagen Ltd has announced its new Strategic Scientific Advisory Board and organized its first three-day meeting to evaluate and guide the company's scientific and research initiatives. The advisory board consists of well-known international scientists like, Dr Robert L Strausberg, Deputy Director-J Craig Venter Institute, Dr Jean-Pierre Isal (MD), Dr Chris Bowler, Organismes Photosynthetiques et Enviroment-Department de Biologie, Paris, Dr. Jean Luc Tonneau, Strategic Planning Director-Danone Research, Dr. Sven Thormahlen, Director General –Danone Research, Professor Jacques Henry Weil, Institute de Botanique, France, Prof. Frank Ganon, Director General -Science Foundation Ireland and Dr. Rita Colwell, Distinguished University Professor- University of Maryland

The Indian experts included Prof G Padmanabhan, Honorary Professor – Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Prof. N K Ganguly , former Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research, India, Prof. Satyajit Mayor, Professor-Cellular Organization and Signaling Group, National Center for Biological Science, Bangalore.

DuPont India opens first research facility at Hyderabad
DuPont India, a subsidiary of E I du Pont de Nemours has launched its first research facility at the DuPont Knowledge Center (DKC) in Hyderabad. The DKC will undertake basic research and product application development across all five of the business growth platforms for global and local markets, as well as offer other knowledge services to DuPont businesses.

The India center is the first integrated agriculture and industrial biotechnology research center for DuPont outside the US. The other research facilities at the DKC will come up in phases over the next couple of months, and the complete DKC is expected to be formally inaugurated sometime before this year-end.

The biotech research center at DKC will focus on bringing new crop genetics to the market faster and on application of industrial biotechnology to produce biofuels and biomaterials for global markets. Research teams will work to deliver new technologies and products for the DuPont agriculture and nutrition platform and the DuPont applied biosciences business for India and global markets. Starting with more than 80 crop genetics and industrial biotech scientists, DuPont expects the number at the biotech research center to double by year-end. An estimated total of - 600 scientists and engineers across all disciplines will work out of DKC once it is fully functional.

Emphasizing the significance of the DKC, Balvinder Kalsi, president and CEO, DuPont India, said, "The center will provide substantially increased competitiveness to build the future of DuPont and contribute to DuPont India's growth. This will enable us to increase our speed to market with products that come out of our R&D and innovations pipeline, not only for India but also for other growth regions."

Biocon presents successful human clinical data on IN-105 at EASD in Rome
Biocon Limited announced the results of an ascending dose study with their oral insulin drug (IN-105) at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) meeting in Rome. IN-105 is a novel analog of insulin, proprietary to Biocon. The product has special properties that make it feasible for delivery in tablet form stable at room temperature. The outcome measurements were the safety and tolerability of IN-105, as well as the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of IN-105. The results showed that IN-105 was safe and well tolerated by patients.

There were no symptomatic hypoglycemic events observed at any of the doses. "The present study shows that IN105 delivers physiologically active insulin orally in concentrations sufficient to decrease post-meal hyperglycemia and to decrease the burden of the meal on endogenous insulin secretion. These data support the feasibility of providing insulin orally to treat postprandial hyperglycemia in diabetic patients" affirmed Dr Harold E Lebovitz, M.D, FACE, Professor Of Medicine, Endocrinology and Diabetes State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn.

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