Drugs targeting single genes are bound to fail; Dr. Bhushan Patwardhan in IPCs Funded Golden Jubilee Commemorative Lecture here at MCOPS

An important annual event usually held around the Annual and Awards Day at MCOPS is the Golden Jubilee Commemorative Lecture. MCOPS has the unique distinction of conducting three Indian Pharmaceutical Congress here in Manipal. Money saved from these conferences is kept as a corpus fund to sponsor the Golden Jubilee Commemorative Lecture. An eminent academic or a person from pharmaceutical industry is invited to deliver this lecture. This time Prof Bhushan Patwardhan, from Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, Savitribai Phule Pune University delivered the lecture. The title of the lecture was, “Moving away from drugs to formulation discovery”. Prof Patwardhan spoke eloquently on why formulation discovery should get precedence over single drug discovery. He said that many of the diseases are caused by polygenic changes and, therefore, drugs targeting single genes are bound to fail. He explained with examples like rofecoxib and troglitazone, how drugs fail to realise the expectations. On the other hand, many formulations from herbal drugs have proved to be of immense value for treating chronic diseases. His talk was mainly centred on the work conducted under his supervision. Following the lecture there was a lot of discussion. Many questions were asked and the speaker answered them. Dr Josyula Venkata Rao (Professor and Head, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology) and Mr. P V R Chowdhary (Reader, Pharmaceutical Chemistry) moderated the programme as chairman and co-chairman.