CSIR-CDRI holds its 68th annual day celebrations

New Delhi: The Lucknow based Central Drug Research Institute that is affiliated to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research celebrated its 68th Annual Day on the 17th February, 2019. On this occasion, in the first session, the prestigious 44th Sir Edward Mellan by Memorial Oration was delivered by Dr David G. Russell, Professor, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. The topic of his talk was “Next Generation Anti-microbial Therapeutics”.

In his oration, Dr Russell stated, “For the biggest infectious disease killers like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria we lack effective vaccines, and for the majority of bacterial infections we are facing increasing incidence of drug resistance. All this in the face of reduced efforts in the development of new antibiotics because of the financial burden associated with drug development.”

“We feel strongly that we need to be creative to harness and integrate host anti-microbial activities and host-directed therapies with chemotherapeutics to develop a new generation of drug regimens to compact infection. While our own focus is on tuberculosis we believe that these concepts have much broader relevance.
“CSIR-CDRI has the potential to stimulate the pharma start-up ecosystem for Industrial revolution 4.0”, said Professor Vinay Kumar Pathak.

The second part of the celebration started with the graceful presence of Professor Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice Chancellor, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow as the Chief Guest of the function. Professor Tapas Kumar Kundu, Director CSIR-CDRI welcomed the Chief Guest, other dignitaries and presented a detailed account of the achievements made by CSIR-CDRI during the reporting period (2018-19).

On the occasion of Annual Day celebrations, Professor Vinay Kumar Pathak said, “CSIR-CDRI has the potential to stimulate the pharma start-up ecosystem in areas of national priorities. Convergence of Chemistry, Biology and Engineering can initiate the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Inter-disciplinary collaborative work including Drug research, Machine learning and artificial intelligence can lead us for next generation products. In industrial revolution 2.0 and 3.0, we have lost our resources in buying the technology and medicine and healthcare but now we are ready for Industrial Revolution 4.0 with our cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach for working.”

Licensing of Nutraceutical Product for the prevention and management of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)

CSIR-CDRI has developed a nutraceutical product for the prevention and management of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) and signed a licensing agreement with Lumen Marketing Company, Chennai on non-exclusive basis. Director, Professor Tapas Kumar Kundu said that the Lumen Marketing Company, Chennai has entered in to the agreement with CSIR-CDRI, Lucknow to market this nutraceutical product developed by the CSIR-CDRI team for the management of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH).

CDRI Awards-2019 for Excellence in Drug Research

On this day, the prestigious CDRI Awards-2019 for Excellence in Drug Research were announced. These awards will be conferred on CSIR’s Foundation Day in September this year. In Life Sciences category the award will be given to Dr Amit Singh, IISc, Bengaluru & Dr Dipyaman Ganguly, CSIR-IICB, Kolkata and in Chemical Sciences category the award will be given to Dr Seergazhi Gopaln Srivatsan, IISER, Pune & Dr. T Govind Raju, JNCASR, Bengaluru.

Annual Excellence awards 3 in Technology category and 11 in publications category were also conferred.

Besides this, Dr MM Dhar Memorial Distinguished Career Achievement Award-2019 (Biological Sciences) was given jointly to Dr Subhashis Pal (Student of Dr N. Chattopadhyay) and Dr Durgesh Kumar (Student of Dr. Anil Gaikwad), Dr MM Dhar Memorial Distinguished Career Achievement Award-2019 (Chemical Sciences) conferred jointly to Ms Shachi Mishra (Student of Dr. Atul Goel) and Ms. Sampa Gupta (Student of Dr K.V. Sashidhara), Dr JM Khanna Memorial Distinguished Career Achievement Award-2019 conferred jointly to Mr Sushobhan Mukhopadhyay (Student of Dr Sanjay Batra) and Mr U. Sandeep (Student of Dr PR Mishra), Dr Swarn Nitya Anand Memorial Early Career Achievement Award 2019 was given to Ms Akanksha Mishra (Student of Dr Shubha Shukla) and Dr D L Shrivastava Memorial Early Career Achievement Award 2019 to Mr Venkatesh Teja Banala (Student of Dr PR Mishra) was also conferred for the excellent research work.

Besides this, 10 Best Technical Employee Awards were also conferred to the regular staff. The program was concluded with the vote of thank by Dr Atul Goel, Chairman organizing committee.