India, not US, should come with the next big drug discovery story: Oncologist

The next big drug discovery story should come from India and not from the U.S., and that calls for a huge disruption of the entire drug ecosystem in the country, opined city-based Dr. Vishal Rao, Head Neck Oncologist, Robotic Surgeon and Innovator who holds patent for a voice box for throat cancer patients.

Leading a panel discussion on Next-Gen Immunotherapies for Cancer at Bengaluru Tech Summit here on Wednesday, the oncologist said, ‘‘It is time that India stopped restricting itself as a player in generic medicines and led the next wave of drug discovery story for the whole world using technology.’‘

Dr. Rao said the country’s drug ecosystem required a huge disruption. ‘‘India should adopt AI-based technologies to fast track innovation in medical research and also to bring cost down,’‘ he added. According to Dr. Rao, India currently was sitting on a humungous amount of research, clinical and medical data. However, these are unstructured data and, therefore, not useful.

‘’The era of carpet bombing in medical research is over. Instead of following the one pill-fits-all strategy, India has the potential, tech prowess and will to develop customised and precision-centric drugs for its people,’‘ Dr. Rao insisted.

Also commenting on advancements in oncology care, he said it was seeing a significant shift from chemotherapy to immunotherapy, a therapy that uses substances to stimulate or suppress the immune system to help the body fight cancer, infection, and other diseases.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Ujjwal Rao, CEO of Rector Healthcare and a data scientist-cum-clinical researcher, said with the help of specially trained AI models, India would be able to drastically bring down the time and cost involved in drug research, discovery, development and drug approvals. ‘‘AI models trained specifically for the segment is the answer. A huge time cycle can be cut from 13 to 17 years to 13 months. This will also bring the cost of drug discoveries, development and approvals drastically down,’‘ he added.