TKDL-Livelihood of Large Population in World India Equipped to Protect More than Two lakh Formulations Under TKDL: Bansal

TKDL crossed many hurdles and impediments and have been successfully negotiated and benchmarks created and set in place. TKDL team with its organized and objective activity has brought TKDL to this stage of international acceptability. More than 150 experts in the area of traditional medicine, Information Technology, IPRs and Scientists spent almost ten years for this task.Speaking at the inaugural session of the International Conference on Utilization of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a model for the protection of Traditional Knowledge here today, Union Minister of Science and Technology, Earth Sciences and Vice President, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, said, “Today, India is well equipped to protect 2lakh,26 thousand formulations within a time range of ‘days and weeks’ and without any cost, whereas in the cases of ‘Neem’ and ‘Turmeric’ the country had to incur huge cost and it took more than 10 years to get the ‘Neem’ patent revoked at EPO. TKDL has been embraced by the World Intellectual Property Organization and by the EPO and US-PTO as well as other patent offices worldwide who have found in it a powerful weapon to fight biopiracy.”

The Minister explained that Traditional Knowledge is also the basis of the livelihood of a very large population in the world, in particular, in developing countries. He added, “ The issue of Traditional knowledge protection is quite a sensitive one, since traditional knowledge is the information that people in a given community, have developed over generations, on the basis of their experience and which is adapted to local culture and environment. Many countries are struggling to protect their traditional knowledge, against wrongful exploitation, primarily in the pharmaceutical sector. This knowledge is used to sustain the community and its culture, as well as biological resources necessary for the continued survival of the community. As per World Health Organization reports, it is estimated that more than 70% of the population is dependent on traditional medicines for their primary health care needs.”

For the last several years efforts are being made by different International organizations like World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and Convention on Biological Diversity, to evolve an implementable solution for protection of Traditional Knowledge, though it is very difficult to bring about a consensus due to diversity of interests at multilateral fora.

Shri Bansal informed, “To ensure that that no wrong patent is granted on India’s traditional knowledge, the access of TKDL database – which breaks the language barriers and converts India’s traditional knowledge of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha & Yoga, originally written in Sanskrit, Arebic, Persian and Tamil, into five international languages makes information understandable to the International Patent Examiners. Access to TKDL has been given to several international Patent Offices under a non-disclosure agreement.” Expressing deep concern about earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 12.3.2011, Shri Bansal said, “We were to sign the TKDL Access Agreement with Japan Patent Office on March 25, 2011, in New Delhi. People of Japan are passing through a difficult and trying times. We express solidarity with the brave and resilient people of Japan.”

TKDL has made waves around the world, particularly in traditional knowledge rich countries by demonstrating the advantages of proactive action and the power of strong deterrence. The idea is not to restrict the use of traditional knowledge, but to ensure that wrong patents are not granted due to lack of access to the prior art for Patent examiners. India developed this much needed tool for protection of Traditional Knowledge. This process began in the year 2000, when wrong patents granted on the wound healing properties of turmeric by US Patent Office and another on the antifungal property of Neem by the European Patent Office, came to notice and were later fought and got revoked.

CSIR to Provide Affordable Healthcare with Global Partnership

March 24 is the World TB Day. India has the world’s largest TB epidemic in terms of incidence and mortality and the disease remains the largest killer of Indians between the ages of 15 and 45. In order to find new drugs for TB, CSIR had initiated the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) project which was launched on 15th September, 2008.

In the past two years OSDD has gathered momentum as an internationally recognised open innovation model. Today, OSDD has more than 4500 registered users from over 130 countries. The offshoot of OSDD is a new model of imparting higher education to young aspirant scientists in remote areas of India and of nations less endowed with scientific opportunities.

New initiatives taken by CSIR

1. Setting up of an OSDD Chemistry laboratory at CSIR-IICT Hyderabad, exclusively dedicated to synthesis of potential anti TB compounds.

2. Large scale screening of molecules against TB to find novel molecules which may end up as new TB drugs. For this, CSIR laboratories will open up its small molecule libraries, from synthetic as well as natural sources

3. Sequencing Mtb strains in large numbers to study variation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). This is an Open Screening Facility where all researchers who are having interesting TB strains are welcome to contribute them to OSDD. These strains will be synthesised and results will be available on OSDD open portal.

4. A collaboration with ICMR to bring clinicians and researchers together for improving TB drug research.

5. OSDD will extend to other neglected diseases like Malaria.

Open Source Drug Discovery Initiative for Malaria

The early success of the Mtb OSDD programme has presented a model for the way drug discovery research for infectious diseases may move in the future. As the next step, CSIR proposes to initiate a pan-India open source program for malaria with global participation.

In extension of the OSDD paradigm, the malaria initiative proposes to expand on wet lab approaches while retaining and building upon the computational approaches that have yielded important results in the area of tuberculosis.

Researchers in malaria as well as interested students and individuals from other fields are invited to participate.

Initiatives of DBT

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) funds about 120 tuberculosis researchers for development of diagnostics, novel vaccines, booster to the existing vaccine BCG, Drug Development and creating appropriate infrastructure. The research includes clinical trials for increasing the efficiency/cure-rate of existing Anti Tuberculosis (ATT) Drugs. DBT has been supporting immuno-modulation clinical research using some known immuno-modulators i.e. Mycobacterium indicus pranii (Commercially available as IMMUVAC) for increasing the cure rate of ATT in Category II TB patients who are most difficult to treat. Initial results show apriori defined improvement in cure-rate. Other well-known immuno-modulators that work at the cellular level such as Vitamin D & Zinc are being clinically tested to shorten the ATT regimen in Category I patients with encouraging early results. Scientists at University of Delhi South Campus (UDSC) have identified several proteins produced and secreted specifically by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) during growth. They have developed high affinity monoclonal antibody pairs to detect several of these Mtb-specific proteins called MTCAg. These antibodies have been used to develop a test to detect the presence of two MTCAgs in the cultures of specimens from suspected TB patients. The presence of both or any one of the MTC specific antigen in the sample confirms the presence of Mtb. The test is specifically designed as a rapid immunochromatographic format that allows easy and rapid screening of specimens for confirmation of growth of Mtb. It can be performed with minimal training and provides results in less than 20 minutes. This visual test for detection of tubercle bacilli in culture has been developed and is available with trade name ‘Crystal TB confirm’.

A team of scientists at ICGEB led by Dr. Kanury V.S. Rao have made an important breakthrough in TB research. About 20 Mtb-derived antigens presented in the early stages of the infection have been identified and are now under evaluation as potential vaccines for TB. The rationale is to supplement immune memory of the host to improve protective efficacy. Understanding the biology and immunology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections, ICGEB, New Delhi, the team is aiming to use the knowledge generated for the development of new therapeutic strategies for tuberculosis. The scientists are collaborating with a pharmaceutical company to translate these leads into candidate drugs that can be tested in the field.