Overview
- Union minister Jitendra Singh announced Nafithromycin as India’s first indigenously discovered antibiotic at an AI–multi-omics workshop in New Delhi.
- The Department of Biotechnology and Wockhardt were credited with developing the drug, presented as effective against resistant respiratory infections in high‑risk patients.
- Officials said the molecule was entirely conceptualized, developed and clinically validated in India, though regulatory or commercial details were not disclosed.
- The minister highlighted a reported gene‑therapy milestone from CMC Vellore for hemophilia, achieving a 60–70% correction with zero bleeding episodes and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
- He cited over 10,000 human genomes already sequenced with a plan to scale to one million, supported by the ANRF’s Rs 50,000 crore five‑year outlay that aims to draw Rs 36,000 crore from non‑government sources.