Genome Valley-like health city in Gr Noida – ET HealthWorld


Genome Valley-like health city in Gr Noida

Lucknow: Among several investors, Jeevropana Life Sciences has come with a plan to set up a healthcare city with an initial promise to invest around Rs 1,500 crore at an allocated medicine park in Greater Noida. The cue for the healthcare city has been taken from Genome Valley set up at Hyderabad.

Genome Valley is claimed to be India’s first organised cluster for life sciences R&D and clean manufacturing activities, with state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities in the form of industrial / knowledge parks, special economic zones (SEZs), multi-tenanted dry and wet laboratories and incubation facilities.

The valley is home to more than 200 companies with a scientific workforce of about 15,000 professionals, including presence of global names like Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Ferring Pharma, Chemo, DuPont, Ashland, United States Pharmacopeia, Lonza amongst many others. It is home to companies from about 18 countries across the globe and is also home to three of India’s largest vaccine manufacturers, namely Bharat Biotech, Biological E and Indian Immunologicals.

The idea is to provide the best of healthcare facilities with minimal cost of drugs, said MG Venu, of the directors of Jeevropana Life Sciences. Citing examples to clarify the idea, Venu said that for example cancer drugs cost over Rs 1 lakh for ten tablets along with an offer of two additional strips as part of the company’s CSR initiative to meet the month’s requirement. But given the size of the population, only a handful would be able to afford such a huge cost on medicines. However, the same tablets imported from foreign countries through various means might cost Rs 6,000 for the same quantity of tablets, Venu explained and added but such drugs are not officially approved by the government as per the law of the land. However, once a healthcare city is set up in UP, the cost of the drug would come down from Rs 1 lakh to say for example Rs 20,000.

Secondly, like in various other sectors, Jeevropana is discussing collaboration with big foreign players, said Dr Ram Shanker Upadhyay, who is also one of the directors in the company. Dr Upadhyay is a native of Agra based in Sweden. He is also a medicinal scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital, USA.

Citing another example, Venu said that there are many celebrities who are going to Sloan Kettering Hospital in the United States for the best of the treatment. “Our idea for setting up a healthcare city is to collaborate with Sloan Kettering like hospitals and bring the same standard of treatment to India,” he said.

Other than setting up high standard hospitals, Jeevropana is already in talks with some top universities of the country to set up a health university in the city itself, Dr Upadhyay said. The university will help in providing manpower resources and help to begin research and development from college level itself, he said. The idea is to develop indigenous molecules for treatment of cancer and for cardiac-related disease, he said and added that this will help in bringing down the cost considerably.

If Genome Valley can become a vaccination hub in the past two decades, why UP can’t become a drugs hub in the next one decade, Venu said, adding that the company has already roped in Deloitte, KPMG and CRB for preparing a DPR for the project.





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