[valiumcheepval]

Overcoming a series of bureaucratic hurdles, India’s first national bioscience park, coming up in Tamil Nadu, is likely to be inaugurated by August this year.

The `1,000-crore Frontier Mediville Park, jointly promoted by Dr K. M. Cherian’s Frontier Lifeline Hospital and Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, was conceptualised in 2009. Despite being accorded a special economic zone (SEZ) status by the Commerce Ministry, the park, touted to be the country’s first medicity project, was

delayed for want of various government clearances including from the Union Environment Ministry.
“Finally, with all approvals in place, the first phase of the park is expected to go operational by August this year,” said the relieved heart surgeon, who is spearheading the initiative.

The 360-acre bio-village, coming up at Elavur Village in Tiruvallur district, in the north of Chennai, will come up in three phases. The first phase is being set up with an outlay of `139 crore and will house a bio-science lab, a bio-medical contract research organization facilities for testing and training centre

“The facility would be a hub for research and commercialisation of advanced medical technology in biosciences including nanotechnology, tissue culture and genetic application.” Dr Cherian said.
With this in mind, the company plans to set up

CRO (contract research organization) facilities within the park. About 41 acre of the park has already been given SEZ status to facilitate import of drugs to conduct pre-clinical and clinical trials. Also about 25 acre has been reserved for bio-tech aspirants to set up Greenfield units within the SEZ.

“We are already in talks with about 6-7 multinationals for this purpose,” said Mr M. Lakshminarayanan, finance controller, Frontier Lifeline. “Initially, we plan to shift our own testing lab in the Ticel premises to this area. We hope to develop some nine different new products in cardiology, nephrology and other areas of medicine in the next couple of years,” he added.

In the second phase, a `250-crore multi-speciality hospital is expected to come up while the `450-crore third phase envisage a general hospital and a medical university.

- - DC Chennai