Innovate India 2007

The conference aims to bring the knowledge creator and the knowledge seeker on a common platform to inspire technology management and new product development.

Innovation is closely linked with increased productivity and economic growth. However, in order to build a strong innovative environment in the country, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the role of technology and innovation. This is possible only when exchange of expertise is allowed to flow freely across borders. A growing number of business gurus are recognizing that innovation realized is the revenue generated and innovation must be embedded into the very fabric of institutions.

It is to address this that the National Research Development Cooperation (NRDC) is planning to organize Innovate India, a conference on "Leveraging innovations and inventions" on October 15-16, 2007 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

The conference aims to bring the knowledge creator and the knowledge seeker on a common platform to inspire technology management and new product development. It will further address the role of people, how they spread the use of management practices, to improve goods and services and analyse how human skills are developed and deployed in new markets or business models.

The two-day conference will see researchers and professors from around 244 Indian universities and national/public research institutes present their thought-provoking ideas and brainstorm with each ot her. Budding scientists, research scholars, young inventors and academicians will exchange their ideas and explore emerging directions both in innovation and R&D management.

Conference objectives

The conference aims at inducing, targeting and stimulating the innovation and technology development in India and provide guidance and advice to individuals and companies involved in R&D. It will also help in networking with research institutions and entrepreneurs in the field of inventions and technology transfer and arrange technology transfer through buyer-seller meet. Some of the key thrust areas during the conference will be: nurturing inventions and innovations; role of universities and R&D; organization; IP assets in knowledge economy; key actors in innovation cycle; strategic innovations driving business

In a nutshell, the event hopes to provide a better understanding of the innovation cycle to improve upon the national invention system specially in three areas of particular relevance, i.e. the linkages to regional actors, regional institutions and the importance of regional markets for innovation activity.

Nurturing new ideas

The event is organized by NRDC, which aims to capture, protect, develop, commercialize and nurture the invention and innovations and put these into the marketplace for the benefit of individuals, R&D institutions, universities under its Invention Promotion Programme.

ISCGT India 2007

The two-day conference will feature noted speakers representing areas including gene therapy and stem cell therapeutics

A conference on cell and gene therapy will be organized by the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy for Cancer, (ISCGT), hosted by Actis Biologics. The conference, which will be held in Mumbai from November 16-18, 2007, was previously held in the US, Japan, China, Singapore, Germany and UK. DBT has extended its support to this conference.

India has reaped rich dividends for more than a decade of biological and biotech research and development. Laboratory-developed technologies have been field proven. Biotechnology research has a new direction with innovations being patented and technologies being transferred to, and shared with, industry.

India's biotech firms are emerging as major, global healthcare-market players, with the expertise and means to produce new and generic drugs and vaccines for significantly less than the giant Western firms.

Dr Farzin Farzaneh, president of ISCGT, said the conference will have noted speakers representing areas including oncolytic viral therapy, immunotherapy, gene therapy, clinical trials and stem cell therapeutics. In addition, this will represent a rare and intriguing opportunity to hear top international and Indian researchers from academia, the emerging Indian biotech industry, providing first hand information on the extensive clinical trials being conducted in India on oncolytic virotherapy, gene therapy, and cellular therapy for cancer, and to interact with counterparts across the world in these fields.

Sanjeev Saxena, founder and CEO of Actis Biologics, said the need to support this conference will help working with leading scientists throughout the world and entrepreneurs to set up life science ventures in Asia.

The conference will have close to 40 speakers from nine countries and close to 500 scientists, researchers, academia, clinicians, research fellows and students from India and abroad are expected to attend. Renowned scientists such as Dr Nori Kasahara, David Geffen School of Medicine, Dr Savio Woo, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr Kumaravel Somasunderam. IISc, Dr Girish Vyas, UCSF, Dr R Ramesh, MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Dr Rita Mulherkar, ACTREC, Dr Albert Deisseroth, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Centre, Dr David Curiel, University of Alabama will deliver lectures, hold Q&A sessions and conduct workshops.

Posters and abstracts sessions have been planned to promote young investigators and the ISCGT Innovation Awards will be instituted at this conference to reward those scientists, researchers and clinicians who have made noteworthy contribution in their respective fields.

ISCGT is a non-profit UK-based association with affiliations in America, Japan and Europe. ISCGT's principal goal is to foster camaraderie and collaboration between scientists and clinicians, around the globe, in their quest for cell and gene therapy for cancer treatment.