Biotechnology in India - Reworking a Strategy

This book examines the progress in the biotechnology sector in India towards knowledge and innovation driven Bioeconomy. The chapters of the book review different genome editing techniques and the GM crops focusing on the emerging potential in agricultural biotechnology. Chapters on Vaccines and AI in healthcare unfold huge opportunities in medical biotechnology. The book covers the advances in biotechnology towards delivering important benefits of healthcare, particularly through the pharmaceutical industry focusing on new healthcare interventions and delivering innovations. Further, it explores the major opportunities in industrial biotechnology related to bio-pharma, biorefinery, fermentation biotechnology, and growing synergies between industry-academia. Toward the end, the book also reviews the genetic regulation and the critical role of HRD. In summary, the book emphasizes on India as a strong bio-manufacturing hub for innovative, affordable and accessible products for the society and also for global markets while describing the sector wise strategies required.

Dr. George John is a Biotechnologist with over 35 years of experience in various national and international organizations as a scientist, research manager, policy maker and institution builder. He worked in the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India from 1992 to 2013 and contributed in the areas of Animal Biotechnology, Aquaculture, Marine Biotechnology and Public Private Partnership. He was Senior Adviser in the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India. He also worked as Senior Scientist at the WorldFish (CGIAR-FAO) Regional Research Center for Africa and West Asia, Cairo from 2001 to 2006. He was a member of various national and international committees. He contributed to the setting up of new institutes of Animal Biotechnology and Marine Biotechnology. Dr. John implemented the Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI), the flagship programme for promoting Public-Private Partnership and bio-entrepreneurship, the success of which had a multiplier effect leading to the development of new programmes for PPP. He was the Vice Chancellor of Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi from Sept 2014 to Sept 2016. The university that has released a number of plant varieties and animal breeds is poised to play a key role in ushering in India’s Second Green Revolution expected to begin in the eastern states. He has published about 50 papers in peer reviewed national and international journals including book chapters. He has edited a number of publications. He is the Vice President of Society of Biotechnology Promoters of India.

Dr. Amulya Panda has a B. Tech degree from HBTI, Kanpur, Master’s from IIT Madras and Ph D from IIT Delhi. He worked at National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi from 1990 to 2021 and retired as its Director in May 2021. He was a visiting scientist at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, USA. His area of expertise is in bioprocess engineering that includes fermentation, protein purification and formulation of biologicals using polymeric nanoparticles. He published the very first report on high cell density fermentation studies from India in 1995 and is an expert on refolding of proteins from inclusion bodies. Dr. Panda reported the highest amount of recombinant protein expression among the earliest Indian studies (1999). Novel protein refolding methods developed by him have been accepted worldwide for high throughput recovery of bioactive protein from inclusion bodies of E. coli (2005). Because of his contribution in applications of chemical engineering principles to biological processes, he was awarded the Young Asian Biotechnologist Prize from the Society for Biotechnology, Japan, for the year 2004. His other area of research is vaccine delivery using biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles and Immuno-engineering. He has published 160 research papers, and 12 book chapters. He is President, Association of Microbiologist of India (AMI) 2017, Member, Scientific Board of Pharmacopeia Commission of India, (2021-2024) and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (Cambridge) since 2020.