PHARMACY OF THE WORLD RIDING ON A BACKSEAT.
Few months back, I took an MOOC called “drug development”. A typical web-based e- learning course you can say, in collaboration with some foreign university.
It was something fresh to learn out of books and what could be better than this quarantine time (which has crossed our mental and emotional limits), to utilize this pandemic and upgrade our CV. So, it was good, interesting, and compelling, was something new to dive in. But don’t worry I am not going to be reviewing this course nor I'll be talking about the pros and cons or any other article about the corona virus situation. I'll just share a thought which occurred to me while I was going through this course.
So, while in the starting week at first, they teach you about the marketing scenario of pharmaceutical industry, the various areas where they have to invest for the new drug molecule, finding investors, the in-silo environment with various other fields like biotechnology, chemistry, and data programmers. But that’s where I started to feel, that something is lacking on our side.
Being a pharmaceutical student, I have always heard about my seniors to seek for an opportunity in the west, specifically when it comes to research and development. Well this can be an issue of brain drain too.
But when it comes to the management and marketing division of Pharmaceutical industry, you would notice that how eager are students to follow the lane, but when it comes to the research sector, the question arises, where is the money?
Students and professionals preferring marketing over research is not an issue, in a proper sense it’s a personal choice for an individual, but the problem arises when something starts to make its roots.
When we call something a perfect industry there should be a balance between innovation and promotion. With lack of innovation and sticking to the tradition, India is ought to see the face of western world for new drug molecules, import new devices and patient aids with new health issues and diseases coming up day by day.
I would not forget to mention that India is one of the fastest booming pharmaceutical industry, not just in Asia, but also competing with the giant countries of this industry. Being the largest exporter of generic medicines, India has surely able to make its place on the list.
Do you remember that chloroquine incident recently?
Why do trump preferred to buy it from India, he must be having other options too. The reason is stated, it was India only, who could provide such huge amount of stock, in a short interval of time, as our country holds the 70% share of world’s chloroquine supply, and it's not just the case with this particular drug, or with generic medicines, India also holds a big market for vaccine manufacturing and exports.
But have you ever thought that, why is it with generic medicines only, why India has only powered itself in the patent expired medicines? And here’s the reason which causes the worry.
LOWER INVESTMENT IN R&D
While studying the above-mentioned course, I was really impressed by the marketing and R&D investments in the western world. Billions of dollars are being invested upon drug trails, and even after countless number of trail failures, the industry is trying with all enthusiasm.
India being called as the “pharmacy of the world”, with a giant share of $37 billion, (with 1.5% of GDP coming directly and 3% of it indirectly), it has estimated to spend only 0.83% of its GDP on scientific research. Now, the pharmaceutical share from the 0.83% of data is an unidentified factor.
In an industry study, about public investment, intellectual property rights and drug pricing policies in 56 countries of 2016 which I found in a mint article says, “Not surprisingly, India ranked among the lowest (in the bottom five) due to weak intellectual property protection, lack of data protection for biologics, low investment in R&D and price regulations, all of which contribute to reduced revenue and therefore reduced future investment in bio-pharmaceuticals.”
Now, not just the government is to blame, where a normal pharma companies in the western world are spending 20% of their sales in the research and development area, 6% is the number which have been in reach for some pharma companies in India.
Here is an image showing top 10 companies in the world, with respect to their investment in the R&D sector. And an Indian company stands nowhere in the list.
So, what are the things and strategies which can be done to compete against these countries and not for us to look upon them for new molecular innovations.
From a clear aspect 5 main pillars are there which can be strengthened,
-Increase in availability of funding.
-Increased collaboration in educational institutions and private R&D’s. (a recent example of serum institute of India and Gavi-Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for covid19 vaccine).
-Encouragement for R&D expenses.
-More and more Government initiatives like make in India, (“aatmnirbhar bharat”, by prime minister Narendra Modi).
-To reconstruct the drug pricing policy, regulatory and testing pathways, for an easy and cost-effective procedures.
India is a big giant when it comes to our generic and vaccination market, and all thanks to the managing and marketing infrastructure, but we are having an enormous potential and brilliant workforce to invest in the research and development area. With increasing number of cancer and cardiovascular cases in our population, this opens a trail for the Indian pharmaceutical industry to research and transformation.
And if this potential is not used up in the coming years to come, we will be continuing on US or other developed nations to depend for breakthrough medicines and innovations and will always be on the backseat, calling ourselves, “pharmacy of the world with conditions applied”.
References:
https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/m8uzYstgqiT1rOK1GUOnVI/Indias-pharmaceutical-research-problem.html
https://www.pharmexec.com/view/pharm-execs-top-50-companies-2019
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