Bioinformatics Advantages in India
India is well placed to take the global leadership in genome analysis, as is in a unique position in terms of genetic resources. India has several ethnic populations that are valuable in providing information about disease predisposition and susceptibility, which in turn will help in drug discovery.
However, as India lacks the records of clinical information about the patients, sequence date without clinical information will have little meaning. And hence partnership with clinicians is essential. The real money is in discovering new drugs for ourselves and not in supplying genetic information and data to the foreign companies, who would then use this information to discover new molecules.
The genomic data provides information about the sequence, but it doesn't give information about the function. It is still not possible to predict the actual 3-D structure of proteins. This is a key area of work as tools to predict correct folding patterns of proteins will help drug design research substantially, India has the potential to lead if it invests in this area.
Looking at this biotech and pharma companies need tremendous software support. Software expertise is required to write algorithms. develop software for existing algorithms, manage databases, and in final process of drug discovery.
Some major opportunity areas for IT companies include:
- • improving content and utility of databases
- • Developing better tools for data generation. capture. and annotation
- • Developing and improving tools and databases for comprehensive functional studies
- • Developing and improving tools for representing and analyzing sequence similarity and variation
- • Creating mechanisms to support effective approaches for producing robust, software that can be widely shared
As major pharmaceutical and genome-based biotech companies invest heavily in software, Indian IT companies have a great business opportunity to offer complete database solutions to major pharmaceutical and genome-based biotech companies in the world.
The IT industry can also focus more on genomics through different levels of participation areas such as hardware database product and packages, implementation and customization of software, and functionality enhancement of database.
Abraham Thomas, managing director, IBM India Ltd, says, "the alignment of a vast pool of scientific talent, a world Class IT industry, a vigorous generic pharmaceutical sector and government initiatives establishment public sector infrastructure and research labs are positioning India to emerge as a significant participant on the global biotech map."
Problems in the sector
The major issue for India is its transition from a recognized global leader in software development to areas of real strength upon which it can capitalize in the biosciences. The identifiable areas are in computation biology and bioinformatics. where a substantial level of development skills are required.
The major issue for India is its transition from a recognized global leader in software development to areas of real strength upon which it can capitalize in the biosciences. The identifiable areas are in computation biology and bioinformatics. where a substantial level of development skills are required.
