Context: Recently, Minister of Science & Technology, Health and Family Welfare and Earth Sciences in a written reply in the Lok Sabha stated features of National Biopharma Mission.
About National Bio-Pharma Mission

• It is an industry-Academia Collaborative Mission for accelerating biopharmaceutical development in the country.
• It was launched in 2017 by the Department of Biotechnology(DBT) with 50% co-funding by World Bank loan.
• Implementation of the mission is under Biotechnology Research Assistance Council(BIRAC)-a Public Sector Undertaking of DBT.
• Under this Mission, Government has launched Innovate in India(i3) programme to create an enabling ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship and indigenous manufacturing in the biopharma sector.
• Promoting entrepreneurship by supporting small and medium enterprises for indigenous product development (Novel Cell lines, indigenously developed Biologics, devices and Raw materials for Biologics manufacturing) and through establishment of shared facilities and Technology Transfer Offices.  
• Technical Advisory Group (TAG): It provides approval and reviews scientific progress of its components. 
• Scientific Advisory Groups (SAG): the domain specific SAG each for the activities/ product development partnerships, are responsible for providing scientific decision making and knowledge and oversight necessary for TAG.

Four Verticals of the mission

1. Development of product leads for Vaccines , Biosimilars and Medical Devices that are relevant to the public health need by focussing on managed partnerships.
2. Upgradation of shared infrastructure facilities and establishing them as centres of product discovery/discovery validations and manufacturing.
3. Develop human capital by providing specific training to address the critical skills gap among the nascent biotech companies across the product development value chain in areas such as Product development, intellectual property registration, technology transfer and regulatory standards.
4. Technology Transfer Offices: To help enhance industry academia inter-linkages and provide increased opportunities for academia, innovators and entrepreneurs to translate knowledge into products and technologies, 5 Technology Transfer Offices are being considered for funding under NBM.