NIPER’’s conference on ‘’Drugs for the Future: Infectious Diseases’’ held in Hyderabad

Distinguished invited speakers

A conference on ‘Drugs for the Future: Infectious Diseases’ was recently held at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), in Hyderabad. The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Antimicrobial Drug Discovery: Challenges and Perspectives’.

The conference saw participation from 450 delegates and more than 50 members from the pharma industry. They participated and presented their research papers through poster and oral presentations. Delegates from various renowned companies including Novartis, Daichi Sankyo, TCS, Suven Life Sciences, USP, Aurigene, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, GVK took part in the event. The conference had speakers and participants from all the inter disciplinary areas of infectious diseases research which included chemists, biologists and clinicians.

Dr Ahmed Kamal, Project Director, NIPER Hyderabad, initiated the proceedings of the conference. Talking about the conference, he emphasised on the unmet medical need in the area of infectious diseases like TB, malaria, AIDS, dengue and other bacterial infections due to widespread emergence of the resistance. He thanked the distinguished key opinion leaders who had gathered to participate in the meeting and discuss the challenges and way forward.

Dr A Venkateshwarlu addressing the august gathering	Welcome address by Dr Ahmed Kamal, Project Director, NIPER- Hyderabad

The Chief Guest, Dr A Venkateswarlu, Director, Dr Reddy’s Institute of Life Sciences, Hyderabad in his remarks has expressed concern for the decline in the interest of pharma majors to pursue research in these areas due to business challenges. Dr TS Balganesh, Distinguished Scientist, CSIR, in his keynote address, detailed the gathering about the trends in TB research in India. He also mentioned about the need for active participation of public research institutions and government agencies, in this area to overcome the current challenges. Other eminent speakers in the conference included Prof V Nagaraja, Dept of Microbiology & Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Dr JN Agrewala, Chief Scientist, Institute of Microbial Technology (CSIR), Chandigarh; Anu Acharya, Chief Executive Officer, MapmyGenome, Hyderabad; Dr D Srinivasa Reddy, Senior Scientist, NCL-Pune; Prof PP Singh, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, NIPER Mohali, SAS Naga; Dr SK Puri, Acting Director, Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR), Lucknow; Prof Diwan S Rawat, Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, New Delhi; Dr Gopalakrishnan Bulusu, Principal Scientist, TCS Innovation Labs, Tata Consultancy Services, Hyderabad; Dr Cecilia Dayaraj, Scientist E, Deputy Director, National Institute of Virology, Pune; Dr Ajith Vasudevan, Novartis Healthcare; Dr Mahesh Patel, Director, Wockhardt Research Centre, Aurangabad; Dr Sitaram Kumar, Former Head, Biology, Panacea Biotech, Mohali; Dr Hoshahalli Subramanya, Senior Vice President, Aurigene Discovery Technologies; Dr Biswajit Das, Senior Director, Chemistry, Daiichi Sankyo India Pharma, Gurgaon, Haryana; Dr RS Paranjape, Director, National AIDS Research Institute, Pune; Prof Benu Dhawan, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi; and Dr Rama Sivasubramanian, Novartis Healthcare, Hyderabad.

EP News Bureau – Mumbai