By Prof. Smita Srivastava, Faculty, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat & Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences; & Faculty-in-Charge, IITM Bioincubator, IIT Madras
The promotion and integration of herbal medicines into primary healthcare is crucial and is the sustainable way to achieve socio-economic development.
This integration holds the potential to enable novel drug discoveries, wider access to healthcare, conservation of natural plant resources, support in narrowing socio-economic gaps, and meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the World Health Organisations’ (WHO) directive on promotion of herbal medicines specially in developing economies. Besides having the possibility to expand access to healthcare and meet UN’s SDG-3 on Good Health and Well-being, herbal medicines play a key role across different spheres of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
However, the demand and supply gap in plant raw material availability poses serious difficulty in production of plant-based drugs. Ensuring consistent quality and quantity of phytochemicals requires careful consideration of natural plant cultivation practices, but limited cultivable land availability can cause further hindrance. In addition, the issue of adulteration and contamination during collection from nature compromises the purity and efficacy of plant-based drugs. Further, the long time required for plant cultivation to reach harvest readiness adds to the complexity of utilizing natural sources for drug development. Addressing these limitations is vital to fully harness the potential of natural plant-based drugs in healthcare and medicine.
For this purpose, it is imperative to develop sustainable production platforms for high-quality herbal(phytochemical) raw material, phytoceuticals and phytopharmaceuticals using plant cell technology. Plant cell biofactories can be cultivated in vitro in large bioreactors under controlled conditions ensuring consistency in the bioactives, as constituted by the plant biomass in nature. The technology is also amenable to optimisation to enhance the biomass and phytochemical(s) productivity. Further, the enriched biomass can be made available in any corner of the world during any season. Further, scaling up in bioreactors ensures large production volumes in less space than field cultivation to fulfil continuously increasing market demand.
Hence, bio-manufacturing of phytochemicals can be a sustainable and environment friendly way of, fulfilling its demand-supply gap in the market and, its import substitution. This in turn helps in building a self-reliant India (Atma-nirbhar Bharat) through biotech interventions promoting availability and accessibility to low-cost phyto-drugs/phytopharmaceuticals for prevention and treatment of various diseases, especially relevant to India and other developing nations.
Notably, India is ranked amongst the top 12 biotech destinations in the world and ranks 3rd in Asia. The Indian biotech industry is likely to experience significant growth due to increasing economic prosperity, health consciousness and a billion-plus population base. Current estimates value the industry at USD 111 billion by FY23, which is expected to grow to USD150 billion by FY25. Further, Indian herbal market is currently valued at ~Rs. 5000 crore, growing at a rate of 14% annually. Thus, there is enough potential to leverage the ethano-botanical knowledge base to position India globally as the top most destination for herbal drug/phytopharmaceutical manufacturing and marketing.
Hike in funding for collaborative R&D with academia
Thus, as a part of the Indian biotech academia and as a biochemical engineer, my key expectations from the upcoming and future budgets are to enable rapid promotion of this area of research for its translation to market via PPP mode.
Following are some measures in my opinion which can provide stimulus in this direction: Increased fiscal incentives to Industry and Investors for collaborative R&D with Indian Academia with a strong focus on biomanufacturing of low-cost herbal drugs/phytopharmaceuticals. Creation of centralized corpus fund via PPP with reasonable government share to promote and fund multi-institutional projects on “Sustainable biomanufacturing of low-cost herbal drugs and phytopharmaceuticals”.
Specific fund allocation for establishment of Centre of Excellence (COE) on biomanufacturing of phyto-drugs/phytochemicals, within a rich research and innovation driven ecosystem of Indian HEIs like IITs to spearhead technological advancement, capacity building and Innovation in this domain, in alignment with the vision/goals of National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2022-25, National Health Policy 2017 and National Ayush Mission 2014.
Integrated and concerted funding approach from different central departments/ministries like AYUSH, DBT, DST, Department of pharmaceuticals to establish biomanufacturing ecosystems as plug and play set ups within Indian academia to foster Industry collaborations, innovations and tech-transfers in this domain.
Flexible and increased number of professional development schemes/funds for scientists in Indian academia to support publication charges of reputed international journals in this domain for international visibility of our R&D achievements and expertise. Flexibility in using recurring and non-recurring expenditure heads interchangeably during the project tenure, if required, in government funded R&D projects. Increased fund allocation in professional development schemes to promote young scientists in Indian academia to travel to reputed International universities on short/long leave for collaborative R&D.
**Views expressed by the author are her own.
