U.S. and India Colaborate on Science & Biotechnology

U.S. State Department | News Room America | June 24, 2013

The United States and India and enjoy robust bilateral science and technology cooperation. This collaboration has been vital in achieving a broad range of shared goals, including sustaining economic growth and job creation; allowing our citizens to live longer, healthier lives; developing clean sources of energy; and protecting our environment for future generations.

Tackling the Scourge of Diabetes

Approximately 62 million Indians and 26 million Americans suffer from diabetes. Under a 2012 agreement between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the Indian Council of Medical Research are conducting cooperative research aimed at developing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying diabetes and identifying innovative solutions to prevent and treat the disease.

Rotavirus Vaccine

Through a unique U.S.-India social innovation partnership involving the U.S. National Institutes of Health, India’s Department of Biotechnology, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PATH, Bharat Biotech, Stanford University, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and a range of other public and private partners, collaborators recently released the results of a Phase 3 clinical trial involving a new rotavirus vaccine: ROTAVAC®. Positive results from the Phase III clinical trial, involving more than 6,000 participants in India, showed that ROTAVAC® has an excellent safety and efficacy profile, and could be recognized as the first entirely new vaccine developed within India in over 100 years.

Low-Cost Medical Technologies

The U.S. National Institutes of Health signed two Joint Statements in 2013 with India’s Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology. The Joint Statements are intended to initiate new areas of bilateral scientific collaboration focused on the development of low-cost, diagnostic, and therapeutic medical devices, and to continue such existing collaboration.

Making Governments More Transparent and Accessible

The United States and India announced in July 2011 the launch of an open-source software platform with the goal of combining elements of both countries’ respective open-government sites that house government data. The Open Government Platform (OGPL) enhances data transparency and citizen engagement by making more government data, documents, tools, and processes publicly available through a freely available, open source platform.