Q: Can we still consider ICGEB as an international institute after the Italian government pulled out its funding in 2013? How does it function now and what role does Indian government play here?
Funding apart, ICGEB remains an International Institution. With Government of India increasing its share of host country contribution, we restructured the institution in such a way that it maintains its unique & distinct identity yet it must be affordable in the budgeting we have in the Indian context.
ICGEB still has three components, one being in Delhi, India; second in Trieste, Italy, which is the headquarters and the third in Cape Town, South Africa. Large number of workshops and other common activities are spearheaded from our headquarters. The Director General heads the threecomponent system and a Director is at helm in each Component.
The governance structure of ICGEB remains the same as before. The agenda is guided by the Council of Scientific Advisors( CSA), an international body and ratified by the Board of Governance( BoG). The Government of India is represented by the Secretary, Department of Biotechnology on the BoG. That was the case earlier and that is the case now. Besides the host country contribution, we receive substantial extra-mural funding from the DBT as well as other funding agencies; much of the development of malaria and dengue vaccine or many basic research projects at ICGEB were funded by extramural grants. The agenda for extra mural grants is as per the mandate of the projects as agreed to by the funding agencies. While ICGEB has always retained its autonomous character as an international institute, the government of India is also in the loop substantially due to funding reasons, besides being part of BoG. Department of Biotechnology is the Nodal agency for this purpose.
Q: How has been the progress on the joint vaccine development programme with the Sun Pharma?
The recombinant dengue vaccine developed by Dr Navin Khanna over past several years was ready to be taken for clinical development. It was the conscious decision of ICGEB to look for an industry partner for this purpose and through a regular process Sun Pharma was identified, with whom we now have an agreement for the clinical development of this novel recombinant dengue vaccine which and could be a game changer.
Initial research of Dr Khanna towards development of the vaccine was funded by ICGEB, DBT and Wellcome Trust and they all were consulted while going ahead with this stage. Dr Khanna is busy in the transfer of technology to Sun Pharma. There is a joint committee for management and advice also with eminent personalities on board. While the financial part is being supported by Sun Pharma, the technical support is by Dr Khanna’ s lab. The Sun Pharma has also given a grant to Dr Khanna to continue future research.
Besides the clinical development of vaccine, as you are aware, a botanical drug was jointly discovered by Dr Naveen Khanna’ s team at ICGEB and team and erstwhile avatar of Sun Pharma i. e. Ranbaxy under a joint project. Sun Pharma has also taken up development of this drug jointly.
Q: Has any goal setting been done for this project?
The timelines are of course required by the industry. The Sun Pharma is surely fully capable of taking it forward. Transfer of technology is presently being done and may be completed in next year or so. The stepwise subsequent clinical developments will take a while but it is being done in a very high priority.
The work that has gone into this project since last 15 years, tells a lot about the ICGEB’ s capabilities in basic as well as translational research. Lot of papers related to this project as well as other projects have been published in journals of repute.
Q: What new initiatives have been undertaken at ICGEB in last one year? Also, the ones that have been driven by you?
In the past, the ICGEB was typically focusing on two broader research areas, one being agriculture research including plant biotechnology and the second one was human health. We have lot of strength in both these domains. We have also carved out another domain called integrative biology. Thus, we have now redefined our objectives into three categories. On one hand plant biology currently focuses crop improvement
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