Far removed from the concept of IT outsourcing, partnering in biotechnology can happen only when Indian firms develop specialised skill sets.
Further, genomics as a concept has not yet impacted drug discovery in a positive manner and neither has it been able to lower the cost of drug discovery and development.
These were the two pertinent issues discussed on the inaugural day of the three-day Bio-Asia summit, which kicked off on Thursday in Hyderabad.
Vipin K Garg, president & CEO of the US-based Tranzyme Inc, at a session on "Outsourcing trends; Criteria for selecting partners, Success factors, Future Opportunities", said aspiring Indian biotech companies need to develop specialised and niche skill sets for foreign companies to evince interest in partnering them.
"What we are talking about in biotechnology is something far removed and very different from what we typically see in IT or BPO outsourcing from the US to India. In pharma and biotechnology for partnering to happen Indian companies need to become the best-in-class," Garg said.
This apart Garg said the concept of Genomics far from accelerating drug discovery and development has had the opposite effect of slowing down new drug discovery and development.
"What genomics has ensured is that it has opened up more diseases that need to be targeted and since the technology is costly, the more targets you have higher is the cost," Garg said.
Earlier Stephen E Lawton, vice-president and general counsel of the US-based Biotechnology Industry Organisation, said that unless the government came out with rules and laws to protect intellectual property rights, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies will be wary of partnering Indian companies.
"If Indian companies need to succeed in tying up with companies abroad the Indian Parliament needs to update their patent protection and data exclusivity laws. Unlike the EU and even Singapore, India does not have a data exclusivity law despite being a signatory to the TRIPS agreement."
"India should be the last place for an intellectual property debate as India is one of the ten largest industrialised nations in the world. Strong patent protection will bring in more investment and also life saving biotech products into the country," Lawton said.
The BIO in the US, he said, was an association of 1,000 biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and it was able to foster partnership between its members purely because of the strong patent protection that existed in the US, apart from the collaborative form of technology research and transfer that existed between the various university labs and the various national institutes of health."
Apart from partnering, clinical trials for new drugs also hold much hope for companies in India. The cost of conducting clinical trials for a drug in the developed world could go up to $150 million. This cost be halved if they were to be conducted in India, he said.
