“Business prospects of biofuel are promising”
—KV Subramaniam, president and CEO, Reliance Life Sciences, Mumbai (BioSpectrum India, Oct 07, 2009)

Mumbai-based Reliance Life Sciences is developing business opportunities in the domains of medical, plant and industrial biotechnology. The biofuels initiative is under the auspices of Reliance Biofuels Private Limited, a 100 percent subsidiary of Reliance Life Sciences. KV Subramaniam, president and CEO of Reliance Life Sciences expresses his views on Reliance’s biofuel initiatives and the state of biofuel sector in India.

What are the future prospects of biofuel as an alternative to nonrenewable fuel?
Biofuel is poised for a big leap in the future and if the challenges of economics, scale up and logistics are being adequately addressed. A crucial factor in the progress of biofuels would be successful commercialization of second generation biofuels.  This could witness the biofuel replacing a substantial quantity of nonrenewable fuel.

How is the global demand for biofuel? Can you give some statistical information on the Indian biofuel market?
In 2008, the global biofuel usage was about 1.66 percent of the total conventional fuel used. Currently, bioethanol is a predominant contributor to the biofuels market with over 85 percent market share. The Indian biofuels market is at a nascent stage. About 150 to 200 tonnes of ethanol is used annually for fuel blending in India. Statistics on use of biodiesel is not available as it is mostly distributed through unorganized means......More

 “Multiple buyers are needed for maximum sensitivity, specificity”

—Dr Jehangir Mistry, director, R&D, Bioscience Division, Millipore Corporation, US (Biospectrum India, Oct 07, 2009)

Dr Jehangir Mistry is the director, R&D, Bioscience Division, Millipore Corporation, US. He leads Millipore’s Protein Research Assays Group, and also has extensive experience as director of manufacturing, director of automated systems and member of a business development team in his earlier assignment. In an interaction with BioSpectrum, Dr Mistry speaks about the gaining popularity of protein immunoassays in protein research and drug discovery, developments and trends.

What is the importance of biomarker immunoassays in life science industry?
Biomarker immunoassays are becoming very popular for the measurement of biologically important proteins that are either involved in the etiology or could serve as markers of various diseases.

How can we address the challenges posed by these diseases?
Diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases and cancer are of particular relevance for Indian researchers and drug manufacturers, given the wide footprint of these diseases among Indians. Other diseases include: autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases (e.g; Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s), toxicity and others. Major pharmaceutical companies as well as many academic clinical research centers are focused on identifying proteins that would serve as biomarkers for the purpose of either prognosis, diagnosis, monitoring drug efficacy, patient stratification, or risk assessment. These proteins either circulate in the blood or are present inside the cell.

How does Luminex xMAP technology fit in here for protein biomarkers?
The MAP stands for Multiple Analyte Profiling and x stands for any analyte of interest. The Luminex technology is based on polystyrene or magnetic beads, which are 6 micron in size. Luminex created 100 (now 500) different sets of beads, each set having a unique fluorescent signature. Each bead set can be used to conjugate an antibody to the specific analyte of interest. The second antibody is biotin-labeled and forms a ‘sandwich’ where the analyte binds between the two antibodies. Streptavidin-phycoerythrin (SA-PE) then binds to the biotin-labeled antibody. One can set up a multiplex immunoassay by mixing various bead sets of interest to measure specific analytes in a 96-well microtiter plate as if setting up an ELISA.  At the end of the immunoreaction, the plate is inserted in the Luminex reader, which has two lasers. The red laser identifies the bead set and also the analyte. The green laser quantitates the amount of fluorescence present on the SA-PE attached to the specific biotin-labeled detection antibody, and thus quantitates the amount of analyte......More

ML: Can we start with your background? You were born in 1946, just before independence.

VB: I was born in a very small village with a population of 300, about 40 kms from Akola in Vidarbha (Maharashtra). My parents were involved in the freedom movement and worked very closely with Mahatma Gandhi. They were also highly educated. My mother was a Headmistress of a school at Dewas. My grandmother was also a Headmistress. My father was an organiser of the Scouts movement and founded the Bharat Sevak Dal. So the atmosphere in my house was very education-oriented and nationalistic. This shaped my life.
I was born in October 1946 and by that time it was clear that India would get freedom. My father had been badly injured during the communal clashes and was almost on his deathbed. Around the time I was born, he also started recovering, so I was named Vijay - in fact, my name was Vijay Anand - to represent the joy of India’s freedom. My early schooling was in the village because Mahatma Gandhi had told my father that the village should be the centre of development. I studied at a temple school up to the 4th standard. I spent a lot of time those days with my grandmother as well and she had a great influence on my life. My grandfather used to run two newspapers those days in Vidarbha. He was very forward looking and a part of the Satya Shodhak movement.
I remember my mother reading books even while cooking. My grandmother used to insist that we read, so she read to us in the light of lanterns and we read a lot beyond our school curriculum. We were expected to be toppers. I studied directly in the 4th standard, because I insisted that I would study with my brother, Avinash, who was two years older. Sometimes, he topped the class and sometimes I did. Since we didn’t have formal laboratories, my brother and I used to collect prisms, magnets, syringes and scraps for experiments. We created school magazines and wrote for them. Our mother encouraged us in all this.

ML: What about your college?

VB: I studied at Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya, which was one of the best colleges in that region. I studied science and had to suddenly switch from Marathi to English. I realised that mastering English would be the key if I wanted to do engineering and so I started reading almost anything and spent a lot of time in the library. I was especially fascinated by the evolution of science and how discoveries occurred, so I used to read way beyond what was required by the syllabus....More

RA Mashelkar - A rare interview to MoneyLIFE 
-Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar (S. Dalal, 2008)
We will no longer talk of the history of science, we will talk of the geography of science, the emergence of India and China.
It is not for nothing that he is called the ‘Warrior of Haldighati’. India is emerging as a global platform for R&D and it started in Pune in a government lab called National Chemical Laboratories. The man who started the wave was RA Mashelkar. How did a boy, who lost his father at six and went barefoot till 12, go on to become India’s best-known scientist in promoting and defending India’s scientific interests at a global level? Here is that inspiring story told in a conversation with Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu of MoneyLIFE at NCL on a Sunday morning.

ML: We gather that you had a difficult childhood. Can you take us through your formative years?

Mashelkar: I was born in a place called Mashel in Goa. My father died when I was six and my mother came to Mumbai in search of a livelihood. She was an illiterate woman and I was the only child. She did practically menial work or stitched clothes to bring me up. It was a tough childhood. Getting two meals a day was a problem. I call my mother the greatest food technologist. She had mastered the art of cooking one meal in a way that I did not feel hungry at night.
I went to a municipal school (Upper Khetwadi Primary School) and I remember, the school itself was so poor that they could not afford to buy question papers. A test was held every Saturday and we had to buy the question papers ourselves. One day, I remember, we did not have three paise that were needed to buy them. When I had to go from primary to secondary standard, we needed Rs 21 as the admission fees.

ML: And your mother was determined to put you through schools?

Mashelkar: Absolutely. I will tell you something special about her little later, which I discovered when I myself turned 60. Coming back to my school days, a housemaid at Chowpatty came forward and offered those Rs 21. It was her life savings. She gave it to my mother saying, "Your son should study." In my SSC examination, I stood 11th among 1,35,000 students - without any guides or any classes......More 

"It's about not doing new things, but doing the same things differently"
-Dr MK Bhan, secretary, DBT, India
The National Biotech Development Strategy, unveiled recently by the government, is expected to set new precedents for the biotech industry, as the aim now is to focus on innovation, technology transfer, and development of an effective scientific pool amongst others. The sector is clearly poised to take a huge leap forward in the future with the successful implementation of the strategy. In an exclusive interview, Dr MK Bhan, secretary, DBT, talks about the strategy and how it proposes to make a difference to the promising biotech sector.
What would you say is the core idea behind this policy?
It is about not doing new things, but doing the same things differently. It is about looking at an institution and transforming its capacity with an integrated package. UICT Mumbai, for example, has an excellent bioprocess engineering department and we created an integrated capacity for molecular biology there through molecular biology positions and new labs. It has started the biofuels program now. We plan to create a couple of such centers. The idea is to bring an institutional change in the institutions, create successful public-private partnerships, and enable smooth functioning of the facilities, movement of biologicals, and streamline the regulations. The whole idea is to create institutions with a difference so that they are facilitators. We need more younger and mid-level people in the system which is what we shall be achieving by attracting scientists from abroad......More

India advantage
If global companies have to move forward, they must have an India strategy
A few days after announcing the new biotechnology policy, India's Science & Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, dwelt at length on India's advantages in R&D and innovation, at an event organized by the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in New Delhi. Excerpts from interventions during the event:

What are India's advantages in the global economic landscape?
One of India's advantages is that it is a living and working democracy. It is perhaps because of this foundation that India's economy is growing at eight-nine percent in recent years that has given the opportunities for entrepreneurs and ordinary people to move ahead. ...More

"DNA vaccines can be produced more rapidly than conventional vaccines"
Dr. Pundi Narasimhan Rangarajan, associate professor, Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has won this year's Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award instituted by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He is one of the five recipients from Bangalore among the eleven scientists.
Dr. Rangarajan, who is a doctorate in molecular biology with a specialisation in gene expression and infectious diseases, has been engaged in the research of DNA vaccine for rabies, hepatitis-B and Japanese Encephalitis. In an interview with Nandita Vijay, Dr. Rangarajan provides an overview of the science research scenario. Excerpts:

What are the factors that led you to bag the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award for medical sciences?
The award is an honour to my research efforts in rabies and Japanese Encephalitis. The award gives tremendous confidence to my abilities and it will also throw open potential opportunities for newer research initiatives....More

'We are bullish on India':Perkin Elmers
Nov 1, 2007: PerkinElmer India recently unveiled its latest generation of products as part of its expansion plan for the fast growing Indian life sciences and instrumentation market. In an interview with BioSpectrum, Gregory L Summe, Chairman & CEO, PerkinElmer, who was recently in India, highlighted the company’s India specific business plans. Excerpts:
What is the contribution of the Asia Pacific market to the global sales of PerkinElmer?
Asia Pacific makes for about 20 percent of our revenue and about 40 percent of our people are based in the Asia Pacific region. We have more of our manufacturing activities over here. The percentage of people will grow because we are investing ahead of the demand, and this region is growing faster than the rest of the world. It has a higher growth rate than Europe or the Americas so it is climbing as a percent. Within the Asia Pacific region, India has been a strong performer for us—at more than 20 percent a year....More

"We will be in top five, globally by 2012"

Led by its young CEO Malvinder Mohan Singh, Ranbaxy is in step with the changes globalization is bringing about. A blockbuster year 2006 with $1.3 billion in revenues, with international business contributing around 80 percent of the revenues, manufacturing operations in nine countries and ground operations in 49 countries have positioned the company to take advantage of the opportunities that are abound. However, ahead are challenges that involve surviving and flourishing in the highly competitive generics market. To retain the leadership, the company needs to make drug discovery and drug delivery platforms a part of the expansion agenda...More