Innovating its way out of poverty: the rise of Indian biotech

India is developing a globally competitive biotech industry — a development with the potential to fundamentally re-shape both international markets and health and prosperity in the developing world. This conclusion forms the centrepiece of a compelling article in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Led by Dr. Peter Singer and Abdallah S. Daar, a team of researchers at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health argue that the impact of Indian companies on the international biopharma industry will be as profound as their impact on the IT sector ten years ago. The study of 21 emerging Indian biotech companies reveals an industry “at a crossroads.” On the one hand, Indian firms are ideally positioned to help mitigate the health and development challenges affecting their country. On the other, these same firms often lack both the political and financial support to play this profoundly important role.

The authors identify four major categories of products and services in which India firms are beginning to excel: affordable vaccines, nonvaccine therapeutics, innovative product development and contract services. What I found even more interesting, however, were the seven barriers to the industry’s ongoing development that Singer et al. identified:

1. A dog’s breakfast of regulatory agencies. Multiple authorities create complicated and inefficient approval processes.
2. Too few HQPs. The exodus of trained Indian researchers and managers is only beginning to unwind, leaving many firms scrambling for talent.
3. PPPs have delivered disappointing results. Companies partnering with research institutions have complained about differences in expectations undermining collaboration.
4. Researchers lack commercial ambition. Only 4 of the 21 companies examined were founded by Indian academic scientists, illustrating the challenging tech transfer environment that exists across India.
5. Insufficient funding. Domestic sources of capital remains underfunded and an overly bureaucratic public funding program has deterred some applicants.
6. Domestic health needs are obscured by lack of prioritization. Some executives identified a tension between innovation and affordability, while others demonstrated a lack of knowledge about commercialization programs focused on local health needs.
7. The high costs of domestic distribution. The country’s sheer size, coupled with considerable infrastructure problems, makes distributing health products a challenge.

What’s striking about the above list is not how unique it is, but how universal. Although Canada is in some ways a profoundly different market from India, some of the challenges facing our biotech sector are perfectly mirrored above.

These similarities may be explored more fully on May 2-4, when the MRC hosts a conference at MaRS that will bring innovative biotech firms from India and other emerging markets with prospective partners and collaborators from Canada and beyond. I’m looking forward to attending – and to blogging about it here.