Kalam dedicates cancer drug to nation

Bangalore, Jun 6 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today dedicated to the nation, India's first indigenously developed and manufactured monoclonal antibody, BIMab EGFR (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor), said to be a cost-effective and promising treatment for cancer.

Inaugurating the country's largest privately built Biopark on the premises of biotechnology major Biocon here, he appreciated Biocon for developing the drug and greeted its Chairperson and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shah for the contribution to mankind in the fight against cancer.

The President said presently the Indian pharma industry was contributing eight billion Dollar worth of products against the total world production of 600 billion Dollars, including 75 billion Dollar worth biotech products. The target should be to achieve 20 per cent of the total value of global production and sales of drugs, which would put the country in a prominent position in the sector.

He said the country had the necessary core competence to produce cost-effective pharma products and exhorted the Indian pharma and drug manufacturing companies to achieve the set goal of 20 per cent of total value in world production and sales of drugs.

Appreciating the skill and enthusiasm of Indian biotech companies towards producing life saving drugs at an affordable cost, Mr Kalam called upon them to stick to competitiveness, the single factor which would decide India's transformation into a developed nation.

Regretting that the country had missed the opportunity to partner in the human genome project, he asked the Indian biomedical community to take the initiative to become a working partner in the protemics project of gene characterisation.

Stressing the importance of genomics, he sought the acceleration of the national programme on proteomics, partnering with industries and R and D laboratories.

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