HEC holds workshop on clinical research in life sciences
By Bushra Makhdoom

ISLAMABAD—National Core Group in Life Sciences (NCGLS) of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in collaboration with Bahria University held a two-day workshop on “Clinical Research in Life Sciences and its Industrial Implications”.
The aim of this workshop was to improve the level of interest and expertise among current and future human resource related to clinical research in life sciences and biopharmaceutical industry. Moreover, it was aimed at producing clinical research professionals trained in Good Clinical Practices (GCP) and conforming to guidelines of International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) to become competitive in the international arena.
In the workshop, speakers from top pharmaceutical companies including Schering Plough, Bayer Schering Pharma, Abbott Nutrition International, Eli Lily Pakistan, High Noon Laboratories, Sanofi Aventis, Metrics
Research (Pvt.) Ltd, Hilton Pharma Pakistan and from National Agriculture Research Council, Islamabad, Pakistan Medical Research Council, Islamabad, CEMB, Lahore and College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia gave their presentations on the topics including “Process of Drug Development, “Needs for Research in the Area of Drug Development”, “Communication between Researchers and Industry, ethics in clinical research, good clinical practices (GCP) required for clinical research”, “responsibilities of investigators & sponsors in clinical research, writing and Publishing of a Scientific Paper and overview of clinical research industry.
They underlined the need that Pakistan has to pay attention to Biotech products (medicines, vaccines, nutritious proteins etc) and New use of old inventions. They said that there should be a long between academia and industry to refine expression technologies.