India’s growing biotech ecosystem in the fight against antimicrobial resistance

By Dr Renu Swarup, Former Secretary, Government of India Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest public health challenges of our century – with drug-resistant infections estimated to claim 700,000 lives each year globally. Multi drug resistant TB kills over 250,000 each year. It is important to have a well-established Action Plan with a clear implementation strategy to ensure that the focus remains on surveillance, testing, treatment, and prevention. Innovative interventions for addressing the priority challenge need special attention. Rapid point-of-care diagnostic tests that can identify bacterial infections – and help doctors to prescribe the right antibiotic – are key to reducing the burden of AMR.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how quickly we can develop and deploy multiple solutions to fight a pandemic. A key highlight has been the new diagnostic tests which can be developed and implemented at large scale. India has been a global leader in developing and manufacturing quality, affordable and easy-to-use Covid-19 tests. In a short span of less than 60 days, India became self-sufficient in its production of diagnostics to test a population of over a billion with nearly 1 million tests per day. 

This was possible due to a very high level of commitment and because research, innovation, translation and product development were high on the National and Global Agenda. A similar commitment is now needed for developing diagnostics for a wide spectrum of resistant bacterial pathogens. The answer does not lie in a single test. It will require a variety of solutions, and more importantly, a robust pipeline of innovations and continuous development. Collaboration, convergence, and commitment are key factors for success.  

The Government of India is committed to supporting high level of research and innovation through its various initiatives positioned at the industry-academia interface, organisations such as Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India to address nationally relevant product development needs by providing support and opportunities to start-ups and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).  A wide range of schemes and programmes offering mentorship, research and development support, product validation by industry, as well as accelerators, incubation facilities contribute to a very vibrant, robust ecosystem that enables affordable and accessible innovative product development by start-ups. 

The India partnership with the Longitude Prize, through BIRAC is a very important initiative. BIRAC has collaborated with Nesta Challenges on Longitude Prize activities since 2016 and has been responsible to create a pipeline of innovators focused on diagnostics for AMR in India. In addition to financial support, the Indian Innovators have been put through very robust mentoring programmes and have gone through well curated Accelerator support. 

The Longitude prize – which has just announced its final phase – has many India-based teams participating. Longitude Prize Judge and Senior Specialist in AMR, Vaccines and Global Health at Innovate UK, Penny Wilson discussed whether an Indian team might win the Prize, in a Nesta podcast in 2018.

India has already established its credentials with respect to homegrown innovation, but there are also opportunities to adapt and validate diagnostic tests that may have been designed for countries with different conditions. India’s strong ecosystem of innovators and entrepreneurs are already stepping up to the challenge of AMR. With the support of Nesta Challenges’ Longitude Prize and the Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India we hope that our Innovators are getting closer each day to finding the basket of perfect solutions. This will be a game changer and will solve huge challenges across the globe.