Indian pharmaceutical companies should invest more in research and development activities in order to make innovations in the field of pharmacy, opined prominent pharmacy scholar and scientist of the National University of Singapore, Heng Wang Sia Paul, while interacting with The Pioneer on the sidelines of the international conference here on Friday. Paul said that pharmaceutical companies in the developed countries are spending up to 30% of their revenues in R&D. The resources put in research reflect new inventions. He said that in India only some companies are putting aside the money for research and most of them are manufacturing generic medicines. Paul informed that an amount to the tune of $1.20billion is needed to be spent to develop a new drug.

He said that the companies are trying to develop solutions to the challenge posed by changing strain of viruses of diseases like Ebola and swine flu. Paul was confident that science would evolve the solution in due course of time as it had done in finding solutions for the bacterial diseases. "Nowadays hundreds of antibiotics are available in the market while some years ago only a few were available to the patients", he said. Paul informed that nowadays the focus of the drug manufacturing industry has shifted to harness the traditional knowledge. The director, Faculty of Pharmacy, DIT University, N V Satheesh Madhav said that now the emphasis of the pharmaceutical industry is to develop new drugs.