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DR PRABUDDHA KUNDU
CO-FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR, PREMAS BIOTECH PVT. LTD.
COVID-19 ACCELERATES PHARMA R&D AND INNOVATION
this emerging trend where the nascent technology would be incubated, till a certain time, where it was being sold off at a huge valuation. With the advent of COVID-19, the entire health care research ecosystem got a big jolt in the right direction and shifted into hyperdrive in response to the pandemic. COVID-19 offered both an opportunity and risk simultaneously. This led to the unleashing of different forces, perhaps more asymmetric than anticipated. Unprecedented collaboration, rapid development, regulatory landscape change and breakdown of the silos were seen to promote a culture of a greater good. The economic and public health burdens that came along, demanded that we rethink our approach to developing new vaccines and therapies.
Pandemic pushed the boundaries
Researchers and business leaders in pharma and biotech companies are evaluating the lessons learnt in the past During COVID-19, the entire health care research got a big 14 months, and how we can utilize the boost and shifted into hyperdrive learnings from these experiences and apply the lessons to the route to rapid development in the future. The major lessons and impact are technology; imechnology and Innovation have been hallmarks of proving the clinical development path, the global pharmaceutical and biotech industries and building partnerships. along with being one of the most regulated inFor the technology route, there has dustries. With competition evolving over the past been an enormous effort and spurt of few decades, blockbuster drugs were becoming the utilization of new technology to comincreasingly difficult to deliver, given the fact that there were bat the pandemic, whether it is Medtech, no new classes of antibiotics, nor other classes of blockbuster biotech or vaccine tech. Initially, repurdrugs being launched. The innovation had moved to different posing of the available drugs was done, modalities of biologics, more evolved and niche technololike, anti-viral, anti-malarial, gies, CAR-T, stem cell therapies and custom mediplasma therapy, anticocines. Moreover, large companies were suffering agulants, etc. Concomifrom their inherent large size, which came with tantly, new modalities, “Researchers silos and internal bureaucracy. This led to inlike mRNA, DNA and business novation moving out to a burst of smaller tech vaccines, monocloleaders in pharma companies globally who kept the innovation nal antibodies, RNAi and biotech companies engine running. This contrasted with large and cell therapy have are evaluating the companies who had strength in processes and taken off, with sevlessons learnt in the regulatory insight, whereas the smaller compaeral vaccines being appast 14 months” nies gave space for innovative thinking and fertile proved under emergency grounds for newer exploratory technologies. Partneruse authorisation and other ships evolved with the larger pharma/biotech companies therapies being rushed through accessing newer tech via M&A strategy or funding at the onset, large scale human trials. etc. The Venture Capitalists (VC) of the world understood this As of March 4, 2021, there were evolution and started putting huge amounts of investments in 1,084 drugs and vaccines in develop-
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