India’s Second Testing Lab for Vaccines to Come Up in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: In a mega boost for Telangana’s vaccine industry, the Centre has approved the setting up of a regional testing laboratory for vaccines in Hyderabad. This key announcement was made by Telangana IT and industries minister KT Rama Rao at the inaugural of TOI’s six-day virtual conclave — ‘Reboot Telangana – Making Telangana Future Positive’, on Monday.
“The regional testing lab for vaccines has been sanctioned and it will be stationed in the Genome Valley,” KTR said while interacting with industry leaders on how to revive Telangana’s economy at the Reboot Telangana conclave, which is being supported by CREDAI Hyderabad in association with Meluha Technologies, Janapriya, Agromech and Saket Pranamam.

This will be only the second such laboratory in India after the Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) at Kasauli and will be set up at the upcoming National Animal Research Facility at Genome Valley. Sources said that it will take about one year to come up.

Hyderbad accounts for 33% vaccines

Currently vaccine players send their vaccine batches only to Kasauli. CDL is the National Control Laboratory for testing of Immunobiologicals (vaccines and antisera) meant for human use in India.
There has been a longstanding demand from Telangana’s vaccine industry to set up the lab in Hyderabad, which houses major vaccine players like Shantha Biotechnics, Indian Immunologicals Ltd (IIL), Bharat Biotech and Biological E, which are in the global race to develop Covid-19 vaccines. In fact, Hyderabad accounts for nearly 33% of the total vaccines developed and supplied globally.
Shantha Biotechnics founder Dr K I Varaprasad Reddy pointed out during the conclave that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the world is racing against time to develop a vaccine, the Centre must work towards significantly boosting R&D budgets and encouraging patent filing from Indian labs. He pointed out that in 2019, out of the 33 lakh patents filed globally, only 3,000 were from India.

“Barely Rs 20-30 crore is made available for vaccine development in India, whereas globally, it takes anywhere around $500-600 million to $1 billion to develop vaccines,” he said.
Even as the country attracts FDI in the pharma and biotech sectors, Reddy pointed out that it is important to ensure that MNCs, which are offered numerous incentives and prefer India because of its rich talent, must innovate here and create intellectual property here.

Source: ToI

Image Courtesy: India Today