What was your reaction when you were informed that OPPI will honour you for outstanding research in drug discovery?
| Dr Girish Mahajan receiving the award |
It was a splendid feeling. This is not only because I have been honoured with the the most prestigious pharmaceutical research related award. One reason is that Piramal Healthcare scientists are recipients of this award for the three consecutive years, including this year. It means that our drug discovery wing is persistent in discovering new ways to reduce disease burden of the globe and trying to meet unmet medical needs. Another reason for this splendid feeling is that this year the award has been given to me, a scientist who is discovering new drugs from natural resources, especially microbial resources. As the area of natural product antibacterial discovery from natural products has contracted, especially in the US and Europe over the past 10 years, it is important that the continued pursuit of natural products in other avenues, especially the burgeoning scientific arena of India, has to be fostered through recognition of Indian scientists in the field.
With whom did you share this news first and why?
I shared this news first with my direct team of scientists and senior management. Even though the award is individual, the drug discovery can never be a one man’s army.
It is possible only with the help of a hard-working, talented and skilled team as well as a visionary senior management.
The citation of the Scientist Award states that you have received this award for ‘outstanding research work in the area of Drug Discovery Research’. Can you give us details of this work/ project?
I have been a keen believer of the continued usefulness of microbial products as a resource for new antibiotics and applications to reduce the burden of resistant bugs on the globe. I have patented, published, presented and mentored broadly in the area, nationally and internationally and have two pre-IND antibiotics in the pipeline. These new antibiotics have been products of microbes isolated from very unique ecological areas.
How will this award help you to further enhance your career? What are the goals that you have set for the future?
It is difficult to predict how this award will help in enhancing my career. Nevertheless, at least I can speculate that the pharma industry in India and abroad will definitely start rethinking about investing more in natural products and exploit the rich microbial diversity in India for getting new drugs for the masses. I am sure India will be looked upon as a prime hub of natural resources. Scientifically, my goal as such would be to promote the message to investors that microbes are the sustained sources of new drugs and other bioactive compounds.
What credit would you like to give Piramal Healthcare for boosting your career?
It is the vision of Dr Piramal and Dr Somesh Sharma to continue to work in natural products area with modern, advanced tools and to exploit unexploited natural resources to capture novel curative ways. This vision has boosted our ways to look upon at this classical resource with modern tools. Perhaps that is why we have been more unique as compared to others.
Tell us about the formal procedure which OPPI follows while selecting the right candidates for this award category?
Based on my current experience, OPPI sends an alert call for nominations for this award. The individual organisation shortlists the candidate based on their internal assessment for that year. OPPI has very unique international standard format for providing application forms. The candidate has to put their data in that format. The organisation of the candidate sends the nominations (application+CV) to OPPI. Through OPPI the copies of these are sent to expert panel of judges. Opinions of all judges are pooled and then the final awardees are decided.
Overall, how much time did you take on the drug research project for which you got this Award? Please share your success story with us.
Technically, drug discovery is a journey as there is continuous need for new drugs to combat against resistant bugs and infections in immune-compromised patients. Especially, if you consider a microbial source as an example, it may take about two to three years to decide and confirm the novelty of the drug and to establish that it is a good project to take ahead for preclinical development. Looking at the climatic and geographical diversity in India, I feel there is huge scope to explore more and more least-explored types of microbes for drug discovery. Many scientific experts in India have showed the potential of this resource but there is need to completely characterise and screen the compounds in an exhaustive way. That will really give a way for the discovery of new scaffolds. Perhaps due to this strategy our R&D has been successful in getting novel potent bioactive compounds from microbial resources.
How is your research work going to help the industry?
I have been demonstrating successfully that natural products, especially actinomycetes and myxobacteria, are still sustained goldmines of new bioactive leads to reduce the burden of disease globally. Two new compounds are in preclinical development. The work could confirm that extreme niches yield microbes which can give novel leads in various therapeutic areas. Moreover our work unanimously proved that India harbours great biodiversity of microorganisms which can be explored effectively for finding new drugs to reduce the disease burden. So these drugs can be considered for semi synthetic modifications to improve their properties towards drugability.
Besides this latest recognition, which other awards have you won?
Besides this latest OPPI award, some of my other latest national level recognitions and awards are Awards for Excellence ‘ISCB AWARD OF APPRECIATION FOR INDUSTRY SCIENTIST -2012, in the area of Drug Research’ by the Indian Society of Chemists and Biologists (ISCB) at ISCB Conference-2012.