Driving change: Digital innovation and the future of drug discovery in India

Dr Trupti Kad-Shinde, Senior member, Medical Research and content team, ImmersiveVision Technology and Dr Debashree Das, pharmacologist and medical writer, express that pharmaceutical education must undergo a fundamental transformation to realise India's true potential in drug discovery

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India's pharmaceutical prowess is indisputable. Home to nearly 10,000 manufacturing units, 3,000 companies (1), and more than 650 USFDA-approved facilities, the country plays a central role in the global supply of generics. This manufacturing strength is further complemented by a robust academic ecosystem with over 4,000 pharmacy institutions that generate a steady pipeline of graduates, patents, and publications.

The last mile challenge

Despite this impressive output, India still ranks 39th on the Global Innovation Index (2), underscoring that while the country leads in generics, progress in new drug discovery is significantly slow (3). A major reason for this challenge is that pharma struggles in crossing the last but critical mile in the drug discovery—the preclinical to clinical leap (4).

At the heart of the problem is a research culture that often treats publications and patents as endpoints, not beginnings. Promising hypotheses are filed away in journals or locked behind IPRs, rarely progressing toward clinical application (5). It's akin to drafting blueprints for a remarkable house but never actually building it.

Even academia is more production-oriented. It places way more emphasis on hands-on training for pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, and pharmaceutical analysis while sidelining practicals in foundational sciences like human anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, and clinical pharmacology. The outcome is a workforce well-prepared for manufacturing but under-equipped for discovery and innovation.

Consequently, industry is more inclined to recruit from rather than collaborate with academia—a reality highlighted by India's 86th rank in global academia-industry R&D collaboration, as reported by the World Intellectual Property Organization (6).