IN FOCUS
Preparing personnel for pharma industry

THE National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), SAS Nagar, Punjab, is the first national-level institute in pharmaceutical sciences with a proclaimed objective of becoming a centre of excellence for advanced studies and research in pharmaceutical sciences. The Government of India has declared NIPER as an ‘Institute of National Importance’. It is an autonomous body set up under the aegis of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Government of India.

The institute has been conceived to provide leadership in pharmaceutical sciences and related areas not only within the country, but also to countries in South-East Asia, South Asia and Africa.

NIPER is a member of Association of Indian Universities and Association of Commonwealth Universities. It provides research programmes in the following streams barring Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutical Management. NIPER students and researchers find ready employment in the pharmaceutical industry and educational institutes offering courses in this field. The institute claims to have has 100 per cent placement prospects.

It has the following departments and courses:

The department is engaged in areas of research like identification and validation of novel target sites for various therapeutic areas; asymmetric synthesis; combinatorial chemistry; peptide synthesis; eco-friendly processes; and Computer Aided Drug Design.

The Department of Pharmaceutics is one of the key departments of the institute. It is equipped with state of the art facilities to undertake research in drug development and delivery. More recently, the department has initiated research on biomaterials and nanotechnology. In the frontier area of biomaterial research, the focus will be for synthesis and characterisation of new biodegradable polymer. To strengthen research potential, nanotechnology will be utilised to prepare effective carriers to deliver the drugs at disease targets.

The departmental research activities are concentrated in areas like drug discovery programmes; traditional medicine development; standardisation and quality control of herbal drugs and products, etc.

The Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology has the facilities to carry out pharmacological screening of NCEs. The department can enter into project collaborations in regulatory toxicological testing,.

The department is involved in the diversified activities, including active involvement in industrial research projects. The key areas of research include physico-chemical characterization of new chemical entities; forced degradation and stability kinetics studies; etc

The laboratories in the department are working in the areas of cell biology, biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, microbiology, parasitology, cell culture, and membrane drug interaction.

A special feature of the institute is the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology which has been created with a view to directly interact with industry. The department has a pilot plant associated with it for pilot-scale processing of bulk drugs and natural products. The department has build up facilities for scale up studies during development of technologies for bulk pharmaceutical chemicals and different dosage forms.

In the academic session 2002-2003, NIPER introduced a new course leading to the award of M. Pharm in Pharmacy Practice. The three core areas identified for this department are Clinical, Hospital and Community Pharmacy. One of the missions of the department is to provide quality-teaching programs that will prepare the students for entry into all areas of professional pharmacy practice.

A recent addition to the institute is the Department of Pharmaceutical Management which has been created with a view to provide a specialised, high quality education as preparation for professional positions in the pharmaceutical industry. The objective is to train Pharmacy graduates to become successful managers.

Drug discovery research has become much more complex science requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Converging concepts of several disciplines such as molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical sciences and computational technology has become more than a trend in education. This course is designed to teach the new millennium drug discovery science to the pharmacy graduates to become successful drug discovery scientists.

The Medicine Information Centre (MIC) at NIPER was established in April 2003. It has started functioning with a grant under the aegis of "Higher Education Link Scheme" supported by DFID and managed by the British Council. The centre is run by the department of Pharmacy Practice .

Its mission is to provide a centralsource of current information to healthcare providers and the community .

For details, contact: medinfo@niper.ac.in