FPJ-Ed: IIT Indore professor bags National Bio Entrepreneurship award 2021

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): IIT Indore’s professor Avinash Sonawane from the Department of Biosciences and Biomedical Engineering, has received the National Bio Entrepreneurship award 2021 in Drug Development and Health Care category.

Sonawane received this award for his innovation on the development of novel asparaginase drug to improve the treatment of childhood primary and relapse blood cancer.

This prize was sponsored by Biocon Biologics, which is India's largest pharmaceutical company. More than 2500 registrants and 300 innovators across India participated in this competition. The winners were selected after 4 rounds of rigorous selection rounds.

The Biotechnology Industrial Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology, Government of India in partnership with Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), Bangalore set up the Birac Regional Entrepreneurship Centre (BREC) with an objective to stimulate, foster and enhance innovations of the Indian biotech industry, to encourage the spirit of bio-entrepreneurship particularly start-ups, for creation of affordable products addressing the needs of the largest section of society.

Every year, C-CAMP in association with BIRAC organizes National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC), a nationwide competition to attract, identify, and nurture bio-entrepreneurs working on novel and scalable business ideas with significant societal impact.

Over the last five years, NBEC has emerged as a flagship platform for bio-entrepreneurs and innovators in India to showcase their deep science driven ideas and has created a great impact.