ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

International Collaboration
International collaborations in biotechnology are an
important vehicle for expanding the knowledge base
and developing expertise which would leverage the
growth of research and development in the country
There is a renewed interest in collaboration with
India amongst the developed countries. Good
progress has been made following the MOU which
were signed with Denmark and Finland and joint
projects have been funded. Joint projects have also
been funded with the Biotechnology and Biological
Sciences Research Council BBSRC, UK. In new
collaborations the Department signed two
memoranda with Agriculture and Agri- Food, Canada
and the National Research Centre Canada
respectively. The ongoing bilateral agreements and
collaborations have also been significant, with joint
projects being funded with Germany, Norway and
USA. Bilateral interactions have been initiated with
Sweden, Ukraine and EU. The multilateral
collaboration including cooperation amongst
SAARC countries were pursued.
Indo-Denmark
Under the Indo-Denmark bilateral collaboration a
joint call for proposals was announced and ten
proposals were received. The second meeting of the
Indo-Danish Joint Biotech Steering Committee was
held in February, 2006 in Delhi, India to consider the
proposals. The committee recommended seven
proposals for funding in the areas of : Biohydrogen
production and biomethanation; fungal resistance in
pearl millet, bioprocess engineering and stem cell.
As a recommendation of Indo-Danish Joint Biotech
Steering Committee a workshop on “Nutrigenomics,
molecular aspects of food and feed quality,
improved use of raw materials, nutrition and safety
(for both humans and animals)” was held in
st
Hyderabad during 29-31 January, 2007. It is
expected that at the end of the workshop the two
sides would be able to forge partnerships and
develop joint programmes.
Indo-Finland
Chapter : 10
The Indo-Finland bilateral collaboration is being
actively pursued by both sides. A joint call for
st
proposals was issued. As a response to the 1 call for
proposals in Medical Biotechnology, five proposals
have been funded. These are characterization of the
network through which IL4 influences B and T
lymphocytes, computational biology in drug
development, polymer based vaccine delivery
system for inactivated enteroviruses and diagnostics
using novel reporter systems for viral infections.
In the project funded at ICGEB, New Delhi and
Centre for Biotechnology, Turku, Finland,
approaches for mass spectrometry-based
characterization on in vivo complexes of proteins
involved in signaling, siRNA in primary cells,
correlating microarray data with protein expression
profiles, and live cell imaging techniques for studying
protein-protein interactions in whole cells would be
optimized. Training of students in each group would
be undertaken in PCR, KMNO4-footprinting and
newly emerging technique of ChIP-on-CHIP.
In another project funded at the National Institute of
Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Punjab
and Abo Akademi University, Abo/Turku, Finland,
computational drug discovery project has been
initiated by sharing the data and executing the
Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR)
analysis for ligands acting to inhibit
acetylcholinesterase enzyme. IC 50 values of 280
compounds screened for this inhibition were used for
QSAR model development. This study would
definitely pave the way for in silico identification of
better lead compound and further ADMET analysis to
combat Alzheimer disease. This project aims to
develop efficient and effective validated tools that
167 International Collaboration