Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Mar 18, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Mar 18, 2003 |
|
|
|
|
|
Corporate
-
Awards & Honours Variety - People Bangalore scientist bags InnoCentive award Madhumathi D.S.
BANGALORE, March 17 DR Ammanamanchi Radhakrishna could be any busy Indian technocrat juggling scientific passions with mundane administrative hassles. But he does not wear the label of one who has possibly shown a way out of one of the pharma world's vexing problems. Some 18 years of corporate drug research and two patents in the belt must be why Dr Radhakrishna can understate it. What he has offered in proteomics could one day mean simply dissolving cataracts and cardiovascular clots probably with drops and injections, not costly surgeries; who knows if diabetics would even say `good riddance' to insulin; or even answer the problems of ageing and Alzheimer's. For now, it has made Dr Radhakrishna, Deputy Director (ASD-SP, Technical) at the Shriram Institute for Industrial Research, Bangalore, only the second Indian to bag an award from InnoCentive, Eli Lilly's and Company'srevolutionary online R&D site. In October last year, InnoCentive told Dr Radhakrishna that his research submission was the best of theoretical solutions received from across the world. It had posed the problem of `protein crosslinking' (protein modification that can cause problems like cataract in diabetics) with a four-month deadline. Created in mid-2001, `incentives for innovations' is what Eli Lilly's smart e-platform offers. Dr Radhakrishna's solution won him $3,000 (almost Rs 1.5 lakh). So far, 20 chemists — and now biologists — called `Solvers' have won awards ranging $2,000 to $75,000 for the best R&D solution. InnoCentive gets research companies or `Seekers' to place their problems online and invites registered Solvers to take on the challenge, all under a secrecy agreement. The secret Seeker company evaluates and pays only for successful results and gets the full IPR (intellectual property right) of the solution. But no names! Only Dow Chemicals and Procter & Gamble have openly agreed to work with it. Like Dr Radhakrishna, there are some 22,000 scientists from 125 countries registered with it and tackling problems related to drug development, biotechnology, agribusiness, plastics and polymers, foods, flavours and fragrances, petrochemicals and specialty chemicals. Earlier, Dr Apparao Satyam of Glenmark Research Centre won $75,000 for his wet research. With R&D costs, especially in drug development, running up to $1 billion, finding solutions through the InnoCentive interface — so far the only such — would mean a fraction of this amount, as also additional research capacity, access to a global pool and quicker results. Since late September, InnoCentive has also tied up with Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers. The CSIR, which has a 7,000-strong research pool, is also a registered entity. Does e-research make the laws of the land hazy? Does it fit e-brain drain? Or should the scientists be concerned about transferring their IPR? Dr Radhakrishna, for one, who has worked on cardiovascular drug development at Hoechst India, Lupin Labs and Deepharma, looks at it rather "as solving a challenge and giving an important input to society." "Besides," he says, "I do publish many international papers. This is a pre-published work. You would find many highly stimulating challenges on the site. We have one of the best research pools in India but not everyone has the same opportunities or facilities. It can be a powerful medium for even a rural research enthusiast to work with world-class projects and get recognised."
Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication
|
Stories in this Section |
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | Home |
Copyright © 2003, The
Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu Business Line
|