CDRI to be Leading Institute in Developing Anti-malaria Drug

Stating that the last drug approved by the Drug Controller General of India was developed at CDRI in 2000, Tushar KantiChakraborty, director, CDRI, said that stringent regulatory guidelines to complete the safety, regulatory and clinical studies on new molecules in the country has made it increasingly difficult and time consuming to develop new drugs. 

However, the way out is a two-pronged action for CDRI. First, in order to increase output and speed up drug discovery process, the institute is planning to work on repositioning of known drugs or clinically failed drugs, where clinical and regulatory studies will take less time. 

Second, there is a need to expand and work with other institutes, universities, funding agencies in the country and outside. For this, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research has created a platform called Open Source Drug Discovery. It was started two years back. 

OSDD gives an opportunity to people from all over the world to work for a common goal. It was started to eradicate tuberculosis and the next phase is planned for malaria in which CDRI plans to take an initiative. 

CDRI will be the leading institute in drug discovery for curing malaria under the platform of CSIR in the 12th five year plan. 

OSDD is a CSIR team India consortium with global partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to developing world by providing a global platform, where best minds can collaborate and collectively work to solve complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, leshmaniasis, etc. 

Scientists, doctors, technocrats, students and others with diverse expertise can be a part OSDD team. 

The MNCs mostly do not target the drugs for tropical diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, leshmaniasis and dengue fever. It is mainly the poor and marginalised communities, which are affected by the tropical diseases.