The Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) Academy recently conducted a workshop on 'Biologics & Biosimilars: Upstream and Downstream Technologies.'

The workshop was conducted in association with the University of Hyderabad BioNEST incubation centre, Syngene International, Centers for Biopharma Analysis at Pune and Bangalore, Cytiva Life Sciences and Ingenuity Biosciences.

The inaugural address was given by Dr Mahesh Bhalgat, COO, Syngene International on 'Quo Vadis – Where Is Biotechnology heading.' Dr Bhalgat highlighted points about the innovativeness of the biologics industry, the efficacy of the products, safety etc.

This was followed by introductory lectures on topics such as 'Overview of biopharma product development' by Dr Nithya Kalyani Srirangan, Head, Center for Advances Protein Studies (CAPS), Syngene International; “Roadmap for biologics development” by Dr Ravi Krovidi, CEO, Ingenuity Biosciences, and “Approval of 100 mAb by the FDA” by Dr Nandakumar, Head, Analytical Development Services, Kemwell Biopharma.

The day 2 session on 'Biologics by Design' was conducted by Schrodinger on in silico Modelling Solutions for Biologics – BioLuminate.

The day 3 sessions on “Upstream and Harvesting Technologies” started with a talk on “Overview of Prokaryotic Expression Systems: Advantages and Disadvantages” by Prof Dayananda Siddavattam from the University of Hyderabad. This was followed by Dr Muralidharan Vasudevan’s (Cytiva) lecture on 'Cell types of Industrial importance.'

The day 4 sessions on 'Downstream processing Technologies' began with a talk by D Ashok (Cytiva), who delivered a talk on ion-exchange chromatography, the principle, usages of different resins etc.

Day 5 started with a session by Dr Rahul Bhambure (NCL Pune), who presented a talk on 'Continuous Purification of Monoclonal Antibody Therapeutics” in-depth, where he focussed on process chromatography for purification of therapeutic antibodies and proteins, while day 6 and 7 sessions were conducted on 'Analytical Characterization'. 

The sessions ended on day 8 with a talk by Dr Madhavi (DBT-BIRAC) who briefed the participants on the “National Biopharma Mission (NBM)” for promoting novel drug discovery programmes in the country.