India’s pharmaceutical sector forms a major component of the country’s foreign trade, with attractive avenues and opportunities for investors. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry is booming, and the growth opportunities are truly endless. Chemical engineers are an integral part to any pharmaceutical Industry. The domestic pharmaceutical business is estimated to be worth US dollar 42 billion in 2021, growing to US dollar 65 billion by 2024 and US dollar 120-130 billion by 2030.Globally, India ranks 3rd in terms of pharmaceutical production by volume and by value 14th. The coronavirus pandemic and its resulting lockdown impacted all major sectors of the economy, but it was a blessing in disguise for the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Some aspects of the pharmaceutical industry were impacted, such as supply chain and the import of active pharmaceutical ingredients from China. Covid-19 has created opportunities in India for pharma companies, private hospitals, and medical device manufacturers.
Chemical engineers are involved in all the stages of pharmaceuticals product development. They are responsible for ensuring that the large scale production, packaging and delivery of pharmaceutical products, especially medicines, are done correctly. A chemical engineer may work toward advances in genetic testing and gene therapy procedures by studying and applying chemical principles to these methods. Chemical engineers may generate novel drugs, synthetic analogues of existing medicines, or utilize bacterium, animal, and plant cells to assist them understand diseases, disease pathways, and human responses to treatments in the pharmaceutical sector, which is a connected component of the healthcare field. They find ways to optimize pharmaceutical production through designing chemical routes, scaling of production and improving the efficiency of processes for existing products.
The trend of chemical engineering graduates working in bioengineering-related industries is a new feature of the twenty-first century. Bioengineering is the application of the life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering principles to solve problems in biology, medicine, health care and other fields. Bioengineering is a relatively new discipline that combines many aspects of traditional engineering fields such as chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering. Artificial hips, knees, other joints, ultrasound, MRI, and other medical imaging tools, and chemical and pharmaceutical manufacture utilizing created organisms are all examples of bioengineering capabilities. Chemical Engineers are utilized in various capacities such as research and development of new processes to manufacture drugs (APIs as well as formulations), design space, scale up and control strategy of processes for drugs which are due to go to plant for manufacturing, Process Engineers at plants for troubleshooting, operations etc. The top Indian Pharma companies are Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Cipla Limited, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Biocon Limited, Torrent Pharma, Lupin, Cadila Healthcare, Aurobindo Pharma, Glenmark Pharma, Abbott India and Alembic Pharmaceuticals.
Bioengineers are responsible for designing devices, instruments and software for developing new procedures or solving clinical problems. They work in industry, hospitals, universities, and government regulatory agencies. Bioengineering graduates are employed by a variety of institutions, including medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies and medical research institutions. They are experts in medical devices and develop new implantable and external devices such as pacemakers, coronary stents, orthopedic implants, prosthetics, dental products, and ambulatory devices. They may be called upon to develop new procedures or conduct research needed to solve problems in areas such as drug delivery, body imaging biomaterials, biomechanics, cellular tissue and genetics, system physiology and bioinstrumentation. In general, in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, chemical and bio-engineers earn around Rs. 4 to 5 lakhs per year. Salary can be obtained. Chemical and Bio engineers can get opportunity to work in production, quality control, quality assurance, research and development, technology transfer department.
The B. Tech in Bioengineering course is four-year Course and available in very few Universities in India. In this course, student can study fundamentals of chemical engineering and other subjects such as Cell and Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Immunology, Microbiology, Genomics, Gene Therapy, Biosensors and Bio-imaging, Bioethics, Biosafety & Regulatory Affairs, Bioinformatics Systems & Networks, Pharmaceutical Process Engineering, Tissue Engineering, Drug Delivery.
Prof.(Dr.) Kiran Patil
Department of Chemical and Bioengineering
Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University, Pune
For Expert view article and institute profile, please feel free to call us at 9178370957 or drop email at educationpaper2018@gmail.com
