Rs 25 crore CoE being established in IICT

Hyderabad, Aug 4: Amid its Incubator centre at the Biotech park near here threatened by cost and time overrun, a new Rs 25 crore Centre of Excellence (CoE) on combinatorial chemistry for natural products will be located at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) here.

With assistance from the Union Science and Technology Department, the CoE will be a national facility providing researchers a bank to begin to molecules isolated from natural products. The CoE is likely to be in place over the next twelve months, IICT Director J S Yadav told newspersons here today.

The IICT had approached the Union Department of Bio Technology (DBT) for bridging Rs two crores gap for establishing the Bio Technology Incubator Centre (BTIC) at the Bio Tech Park in the Rangareddy district.

After it had placed orders for equipment, the State Government has expressed its inability to fund the internal facilities at Rs five crore BTIC. Now IICT depends on the response from the DBT, which was likely to be during October.

The delay at the BT Park, however did not stop the IICT from commissioning the Rs 2.1 crore pre-bio technology process generator (BTPG) facility at its institute at the DBT funds.

With state of the art facilities for carrying out benchscale processes- product development studies for bio technology products, BTPG facility would also be made available to the prospective tenants of BTIC- outside parties for carrying out benchscale processess of bio technology-bio transformation developed on laboratory scale, which would enable quick upscaling of the technology by inventors who have limited scale-up facilities of their own.

The IICT also commissioned a high field NMR with Rs five crore for research in the area of designer molecule. The state of the art 600 Mhz NMR facility will also provide extensive support and intensify the activity on drug discovery, nano-science and natural products research programmes of the institute. The IICT had earned a record Rs 25.2 crore, leveraging its facility and new technologies developed in 2005-2006, including earning from overseas. As the CSIR provided nearly Rs 63 crore, the IICT generated an income of Rs 87.5 crore, the highest among the chemical sciences labs and third among all the labs under CSIR.

The external cash flows from non-government agencies of Rs 8.54 crore included Rs 4.91 crore from foreign assignments. It had during the year filed 113 patents, 29 in India and 84 abroad and was granted 64 patents including 33 in foreign countries.

Its five US patents on anti cancer has been licenced to NRI firm in US for an upfront payment of Rs 43 lakhs, 3.5 lakh dollars towards milestone payment and royalty of three per cent on net sales.

The anti cancer drug had also earned IICT the IDMA's best patent award.

The technology for enzymatic begumming of rice brawn oil has been patented and release to fifteen firms across ten states of India had also earned the IICT the CSIR technology prize in 2005 almost after three decade.

UNI