Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology, Dr Jitendra Singh said that India will make significant investment in R&D to develop a roadmap for design and delivery of vaccine development for future pandemic.

In his message to the two-day International meet on “Preparedness for Future Epidemics: Is India ready to meet the CEPI 100 days vaccine challenge?”, Dr Jitendra Singh said, while efforts are still on to uncover findings about the COVID-19 and the epidemiological models, India is ready to invest in future challenges.

The Conference on 5^th and 6^th December, 2022 was organized by Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Faridabad in its campus at NCR Biotech Science Cluster.

This meeting brought together leaders and experts from academia, industry and regulators to discuss important aspects of vaccine development for emerging infectious diseases. India as a country will take lead in providing a policy framework for pandemic preparedness especially for global south, aligning respective national regulatory processes with international processes, and enhancing and pooling manufacturing capacity for large scale production quickly. This will also help the country to garner the strength of our biotech industry to improve human health and also contribute to our economy beyond its current share of $80 billion.

The keynote address was delivered by Prof. K. Vijay Raghavan, former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. He cautioned that while we were lucky to have a strong immunogenic spike protein antigen for the coronavirus, this may not be the case with other infections. Therefore, developing a sustainable and economically viable system flow for achieving 100 day challenge was critical.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, WHO emphasised the need for India to develop road maps and target product profile for diseases important for India. She mentioned that WHO had set up a committee to prioritize viral families and pick prototypes from these families for vaccine development. .