The Hindu Business Line : Vaccine market emerges as mainstay for healthcare

THE vaccine market, estimated to be around $150 million has emerged as the mainstay for the healthcare segment, which in turn occupies a sizeable portion of the growing biotechnology industry.

Of the $4-billion biotechnology industry, the healthcare sector accounts for $2.4 billion. In this, vaccines with $150 million and diagnostics with approximately $75 million dominate, according to a study done by the Hyderabad-based, Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI).

The majority of the biotech firms in the healthcare segment concentrate on high-volume, low-value products such as vaccines and biological enzymes.

These firms are yet to achieve capability to create innovative biotechnology products and carry them to the clinical trials.

Consequently, there are very few firms doing research in diseases such as cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS, the study titled `Mapping of biotechnology skills and research infrastructure', sponsored by the National Science and Technology Management Information Systems (NSTMIS), Department of Science and Technology (DST) pointed out.

The range of biotechnology medications developed and introduced by Indian companies includes recombinant insulin, human growth hormone, alpha interferon, blood clotting factor etc. Shantha Biotechnics, Bharat Biotech, Biological Evans, Torrent Scietech and Bharat Immunologicals were the top players in the healthcare segment, the study said.

The Union Government has granted marketing licences for about 25 recombinant protein therapeutics.

Some of these products approved by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) include insulin, interferon alpha, interleukin-2, streptokinase, hepatitis b vaccine, chymotrypsin etc., the study done by the Centre for Technology Management at ASCI said.

Of the overall biotechnology industry output at the end of 2002, which was $ 4billion, healthcare accounted for 60 per cent, agriculture biotechnology 15 per cent, industrial applications, bioinformatics and genomics cornered 25 per cent together.

While healthcare segment is buoyant, agriculture, which is critical for India is not active.

Weak regulatory system and low research intensity combined with an absence of focused research initiatives were identified by the study as reasons for this status in the agricultural biotechnology sector.

The ASCI study covered 15 biotechnology firms, six universities and five national research institutes involved in biotechnology.

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