It has been well documented that Life Sciences Research is a lengthy, complex and expensive process. There is increasing pressure on pharmaceutical and biotech companies to reduce costs and time lines for product development. The dwindling product pipelines have added to the pressure and have forced companies to look for alternate strategies. Also, due to the recent trend of globalization and need to innovate, Indian pharmaceutical companies have felt the need to move up the value chain from manufacturing generics to novel compounds. But due to their small size most Indian companies are unable to take up the risky resource intensive drug discovery and development activities.

At the same time India has a huge network of research institutes and universities with the necessary infrastructure and knowledge to undertake research and development. By combining the low cost manufacturing skills of the industry and the R&D strengths of the research institutes the life sciences sector in India has the potential to be a global leader in this sector. This kind of Public Private Partnership (PPP) allows companies to leverage the knowledge and capabilities present within the institutes to rekindle their product basket and, for the research institute this offers the benefit of commercialization of novel inventions or processes that have the potential to generate additional revenues for the researcher and the institute.

The Government has recognized the importance of PPP's as a tool to help India emerge as a world leader in the Life sciences space. Of the DBT's budget 30% has been set aside for PPP programs. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has initiated a program titled the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) aimed at catalyzing PPP in the R&D domain in India. But, despite the enormous benefits and the initiatives taken to encourage PPP in India, the number of PPP's are not doing justice to the resources allocated for this purpose. One of the key reasons for this has been the yawning infrastructure gap in the life sciences sector. This gap, if not corrected early can have a negative impact on innovation and entrepreneurship and subsequently affect the growth of the industry.

Here too, the PPP model has been proposed as the ideal tool to bridge the infrastructure gap and facilitate life sciences cluster development. These clusters comprising Special Economic Zone's (SEZ), Technology parks etc. act as cauldrons of knowledge and resources, which can fuel innovation and development. They build a conducive environment for technology-based entrepreneurship where small start-ups can grow and thrive under the shade of larger, more established companies. Close geographical proximity to basic science research institutes, drug discovery companies, clinical research organizations, patent lawyers, venture capitalists, etc can nurture many starts-up and lead to the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

To help leverage the opportunities presented by cooperation between public bodies and private industry, Frost & Sullivan is organizing a one-day event on PPP with the intention of stimulating more such partnerships in the Life Sciences domain. This event will bring together on one common platform the different stake holders in PPP, that is, the Academia, Industry and Government representatives to highlight some of the success stories in the PPP space and also to address some of the issues that have prevented the optimal usage of the PPP concept. The main theme of the event is focused on various successful models in R&D, manufacturing and in life sciences infrastructure development.

In order to highlight the opportunities in the Life Sciences Sector ushered by public private partnership and to provide the best possible networking platform, Frost & Sullivan is pleased to present one day executive summit titled, 'Nurturing Public Private Partnership in the Life Sciences Sector in India' scheduled to be held on 4th July, 2008 at the Shangri-La Hotel, New Delhi'