Aim for Noble Prize: Union Minister Harsh Vardhan tells Indian scientists

Jammu: Union Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday exhorted scientists to build great passion for scientific experimentation and to "keep eye on Noble Prize".

The Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences was speaking at the inauguration of a WHO cGMP plant at the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) in Jammu.

The state-of-the-art WHO cGMP plant for extraction, formulation, packaging of medicinal plant based phyto-pharmaceutical drugs is the latest addition to the IIIM.

"This newly built, state-of-the-art WHO cGMP Plant will give boost to the research at IIIM. This is the first such national cGMP facility established in the public sector in India," said Mr Vardhan.

The cGMP facility would provide a high level world-class infrastructure for the manufacture of botanical-phyto-pharmaceutical in a way to ensure their safety, efficacy and quality for global market, an official release said.

It will also help all CSIR Institutes engaged in drug discovery and development in converting their natural product leads to preclinical and clinical development for marketing approvals, it further said.

MoS in PMO Jitendra Singh also attended the inaugural function.