India’s Pharmaceutical Sector Enters New Innovation Phase, Former NIH Director Says

BOSTON — India’s rise as a global pharmaceutical power is moving into a new stage as the country expands beyond generics and manufacturing into innovation, vaccine production and clinical research, according to Dr. Elias Zerhouni, former director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Zerhouni said the health care and biotechnology relationship between India and the U.S. has grown steadily, with Indian companies playing a larger role in global pharmaceutical development.

“There’s a tremendous amount of exchanges and a presence of now larger and larger Indian companies, Lupin and Sun Pharma, and many others,” Zerhouni said in an interview with IANS. “I’ve seen an ascending and increasing relationship, which now is getting even better because I think we’re not just using or working with India as a manufacturing country, but also as an innovative country.”

India remains a major force in generics and active pharmaceutical ingredients, or APIs, which are central to the global drug supply chain. Zerhouni said India’s strength in chemistry has made it a critical supplier alongside China.

“India is very strong in chemistry and all the APIs… they come either from India or from China,” he said, adding that the country remains “a major source of generic principle drugs.”

But Zerhouni said India’s influence now goes beyond low-cost generic medicines. He pointed to the country’s vaccine manufacturing capacity, particularly the role of the Serum Institute of India, as a major global contribution.

“Without Indian contributions to the manufacturing of vaccines like the India Serum Institute, it would be very hard to immunise the population around the world,” he said.

He also highlighted India’s tradition of “frugal innovation” as a competitive advantage, saying the country has focused on making health care and medical products more accessible.

“Innovation that doesn’t cost such an amount of money that people don’t have access to it… I think that’s in the culture in India,” Zerhouni said.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in global medical supply chains and forced governments and companies to rethink health security, he said.

“We discovered that we were not set up very well for a pandemic situation or a global health emergency,” Zerhouni said.

He said India and the U.S., as large democracies, are more likely to rely on private-sector collaboration and economic incentives than centralized planning to address future health challenges.

“I don’t know that there is a grand plan… I think it’s the goodwill and the economic incentives that will drive that,” he said.

Zerhouni also pointed to bureaucratic delays as one of the obstacles in past NIH collaborations with India. He recalled working with then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to address delays in grant approvals.

“We are democratic, right, but also bureaucratic, both the US and India,” he said.

India’s clinical trial sector is still developing but improving, Zerhouni said, noting that trials require strong regulatory oversight, capable research sites and a culture of compliance.

“Clinical trials are very sensitive… the sites have to be capable,” he said.

He also said global pharmaceutical and biomedical companies are increasingly looking to India as they reduce their reliance on China.

“There’s a pivot right now… a lot of people are pivoting outside of China… to India in many ways,” Zerhouni said, citing growing collaboration in medical technology and biomedical research.

The U.S. and India face different health care challenges, he added. In the U.S., high costs remain a major barrier, while India’s central challenge is expanding access.

“In healthcare, America is the cost… people cannot afford the very expensive medications,” Zerhouni said.

Artificial intelligence is also changing the sector, though Zerhouni said its impact remains gradual rather than revolutionary.

“It has improved the speed, improved the quality… but it has not really discovered anything that we didn’t know,” he said.

Zerhouni said biotechnology is entering a more “multipolar” era, with India, China and other countries contributing more directly to medical innovation.

“I don’t care where the cure comes from. I want patients to be cured,” he said.

Zerhouni served as the 15th director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health from 2002 to 2008 under President George W. Bush. A physician-scientist, he was previously a faculty member and executive vice dean at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was appointed one of the first U.S. presidential science envoys in 2009 and later served as a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Source: IANS)