Hyderabad to have world-class centre for curative therapies soon: KTR

Hyderabad: Telangana Industries and IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Monday said that government was planning to establish a world-class institution focussed on curative therapies in Hyderabad, which would be engaged in affordable development and commercialisation of new age curative therapies (particularly Cell and Gene Therapy).

The Minister inaugurated the 17th BioAsia convention here on Monday. He said that government was committed to building capabilities of tomorrow and was planning to establish a world-class institution focussed on curative therapies.

The institution would be working for curative therapies for the diseases pertinent to India and also other developing countries. "We have partnered with the Center for Cell and Molecular Biology (CCMB), a premier R&D institution in this effort," said the Minister.

The Minister said that Hyderabad contributes to more than 35 per cent to the national pharma production with a combined enterprise value of 50 billion Dollars.

"We have a vision to grow the industries from USD 50 Billion to 100 Billion Dollars and create 4 lakh new jobs in this decade," said KTR. He welcomed Syngene to Genome Valley, which has come up with Rs 170 crore and added that entry of Syngene further consolidates Hyderabad's position as a Global R&D hub.

Regarding the Medical Devices Park, the Minister said, it was country's largest medical devices park spread over 276 acres and within a span of about 2 years, over 20 companies are setting up their manufacturing and R&D units.

Few of them are about to commence their commercial production at the park, he said. KTR said that Pharma City was one of the flagship initiatives of the government to create a global benchmark for sustainable industrial cities.

"The industries is on the cusp of change due to several factors including price erosion and other reasons. This change, while posing a challenge to the industries is also opening up new opportunities.

Ageing population, increase in chronic illness and demand for personalised healthcare is setting the ball rolling for the industries," said Rao. He called upon the industries to leverage the opportunities to develop affordable and innovative solutions for tomorrow's problems.

The Minister said that all the planning works for establishment of Hyderabad Pharma City were complete including statutory clearances. He said that the skilling initiatives were also progressing well.

"We have facilitated industries focused training programmes for upskilling workforce. We had earlier announced establishment of B-Hub, which will be first-of-its-kind scale up manufacturing facility in Genome Valley.

Centre's Department of Biotechnology has agreed to partner with State government in this endeavour duly recognising the potential of this facility to accelerate biopharma growth in the country. The project will be grounded in the next two months and will feature a growth phase park," said KTR.