S KOREA AHEAD CHINA CATCHING UP WITH INDIA

THE ECONOMIC TIMES NEW DELHI FRIDAY 25 APRIL 2008
The fast growing clinical trials industry in the country is facing stiff competition from Asian countries like china and South Korea. While South Korea has already surged ahead of India, china is also fast catching up.
According to the USFDA registry of ‘industry - sponsored active clinical trials.’ South Korea is conducting 282 trials and the number is growing almost 80%. Compared to this Indian companies is carrying out 236 studies and growing at 61%.China is not far behind with 150 studies and growing at 64%,says Pfizer director (medical & regulatory affairs) Dr Chandrasekhar Potkar.
Currently‘s India’s clinical trials industry is estimated to be around $300 million and projected to touch $2billion by 2010.However.this still a small pie of the global outsourcing market estimated to be around $30 billion.’ Amongst Asian countries, India had a headstart having initiated global clinical research more than a decade ago. Countries like China. Korea and Taiwan joined the bandwagon more recently but surging ahead rapidly. These countries should catch up and overtake India in the volume of work in no time,’Mr Potkar added.
Global companies say that despite the clear advantage of language proficiency, skilled manpower and ethical diversity, India’s lack of overall capacity and inability to enforce intellectual property rights (IPR) may see the country lose the upper hand. However, industry sources representing Indian drug makers, pointed out those global makers will continue to flock to India. ‘When the Satwant committee recommendation had put several safeguards on data exclusivity, global companies threatened that they would not conduct trials or invest in India. But, on the contrary, discovery companies also prefer to to go to countries where the regulatory regime is relaxed and therefore lobbying for minimal governments in interference in India.’
FOR COS, IT’S TRIAL AND ERROR
$ 30B - Size of global clinical outsourcing market
$300 - MEstimated size of India’s clinical trial Industry
$2b - Projected size of Indian market by 2010
30k-50k - Shortage of clinical research staff
Advantages- Language proficiency, skilled manpower, ethic diversity
Weak Points Lack of capacity and inability to enforce intellectual property rights (IPR).

BII Noida introduces Advance Program in Clinical Trials

Bioinformatics Institute of India is happy to introduce 9 months weekend Advance Program in Clinical Trials. The main objective of the course is to provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the issues involved in the design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of clinical trials.

Program Methodology

Prospective participants may join the program by submitting the application form along with the necessary Fees and attachments.

Lecture classes for the program would be taken by expertise faculty

Guest faculty from industry and academia would also deliver the lecture

Students would be taken for Clinical site visits to various hospitals etc.

Along with the regular classes students would also be provided with the practical industry oriented knowledge of the subject .e.g. – Role of Computers in Clinical trial etc.

E-learning platform via Moodle would also be provided to students

Program Duration
The Program Duration is 9 months.

Program Eligibility
The eligibility for the training program is graduation in any discipline. Highly interested participants in final year can also apply.
The course is most suitable for Doctors, Medical professionals, pharmacist etc.
Program details are available at www.bii.in

Program Fees
The Program fees is Rs.35, 000/-.Payment in installments can also be made.

Career Prospects
Excellent career opportunities exist for students and professionals who are trained in these areas. Placement support is provided.

How to join: For a free copy of the prospectus email/write to the
Bioinformatics Institute of India
C-56 A/28, Sector 62
Noida
Tel: 0120-4320801, 802, 9810535368
Email: info@bii.in, support@bioinformaticscentre.org
Website: www.bii.in,

Project Proposals for Bioinformatics Trainee

1-2 months Project

Project-I

We’ll consider the human genome.
Scan the human genome for at least 5 putative genes.
Apply different bioinformatics tools.
The gene which gives the best or interesting result, select it.
Further gene analysis can be carried out using several other tools.

Project-II

1. The members of a protein family have regions that are shared by many of them
and other regions that show high variability.
1. Choose a family of proteins.
2. Compare several family members (at least 20).
3. Give possible explanations for the regions of conservation /variability.


6 months Project

Project I

1. Consider any one biochemical pathways present in a wide range of organisms for example -glycolysis (the degradation of glucose into to create energy (ATP)).
2. Choose a pathway that is shared by at least 3 different organisms.
3. Check which parts of the pathway are shared, and the degree of similarity between the shared components.
4. Explain why some parts of the pathway are shared while others are not.
5. Try to correlate between the degree of similarity of the pathways and the evolutionary distance between the organisms.
6. Pathway distance used to understand phylogeny.
Project-II
1. Search the variants of Lipocalin family.
2. Use the Bioinformatics tools to search the domains and their family.
3. Find the similarity between the domains.
4. Retrieve the structures of these variants using various databases.
5. Find the structural similarity between the domains
6. Protein analysis
7. Check for the pathogenecity of the variants with the help of web tools.


Project-III
1. Consider the TCA cycle of Arabidopsis Thaliana and Oryza Sativa.
2. Study the enzymes involved along with the pathway.
3. Extract the genes.
4. Perform a similarity search among the genes.
5. Find the critical enzyme from the above analysis.

Project-IV
1. Consider the cell cycle of Maccaca mulata and Homo sapiens.
2. Study the genes involved in cell cycle pathway.
3. Find out the function of missing genes with the help of databases.
4. Make the comparative analysis.

Project-V
1. Disese identification
2. Target identification
3. Validation
4. Active site analysis
5. Novel hits compound selection
6. Docking: a) Select target b)design new ligand inhibitor
7. New drug hits

By- BII Training & Project team