Global AIDS research body keen on India

KOLKATA: A global biotech drug research consortium developing AIDS vaccine — Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD) — is keen to have a presence in India.

The CAVD, which enjoys major grant support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has approached the West Bengal government to jointly develop a research facility in the state with a local partner.

The CAVD also plans to extend its scope of research to ‘poverty-related diseases’ of particular relevance to India like TB and malaria. The state government has already identified two Kolkata-based organisations for the tie-up - School of Tropical Medicine and Bose Institute.

CAVD is coordinated by Germany’s Fraunhofer-Institute for Biomedical Engineering (IBMT). It is an international network of 11 vaccine discovery consortia with the mandate to apply new technologies, concepts and approaches to the design of safe and effective preventive vaccine against HIV/AIDS.

Confirming the development, West Bengal’s biotech and IT secretary Mr Siddharth told ET: “The consortium has recently expressed interest to jointly conduct biotech research and set up a research facility with a local partner in the state. They will provide us a draft proposal within a fortnight on the finer details of collaboration.”

The CAVD has indicated the alliance with an Indian partner will primarily be to explore new concepts and ideas in the area of ‘poverty-related’ disease research. “They wish to conduct drug research for diseases which are of particular relevance to India. Possible areas are HIV, malaria and tuberculosis,” said Mr Siddharth.

The biotech secretary said the possible choice for the tie-up is either School of Tropical Medicine or Bose Institute. “Both institutions have huge domain knowledge in advanced biotechnology. Once we receive the draft proposal, we will finalise the local partner. We expect to finalise the alliance in a month’s time,” Mr Siddharth said.

The proposal from CAVD was given to the state government during the state biotech secretary’s recent visit to IBMT facilities in Germany. The state secretary was recently in Germany to hardsell West Bengal as a possible biotech destination.

The CAVD was established in July 2006 with the Gates Foundation funding of $287 million with additional co-funding provided by Fraunhofer Society, Ministry of Economic Affairs of Saarland in Germany and the Swiss State Secretariat of Education and Research.

Apart from IBMT, other prominent partners in CAVD include the likes of World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in London, National Institutes of Health & University of Washington in US, University of Saarland in Germany and Lund University in Sweden.