Molecules and mid-day meals, peptides and poverty, amino acids and Araku coffee growers. There were clear link nodes on science and societal impact running across any interaction with Dr Kallam Anji Reddy, the scientist-entrepreneur founder of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. Ten years since his passing, the company, led by his family, organised the first Dr Anji Reddy Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, March 15th with an intent to hold it each year henceforth and get some of the finest minds in science to share insights. In his welcome address, G V Prasad, the co-chairman and managing director of the company and Dr Anji Reddy’s son-in-law, described Dr Reddy as someone who wanted to serve society through science, make medicines affordable, accessible and find solutions to unmet medical needs.
In keeping with this, he said, the theme for the lecture was around science, society and sustainability. To Prasad, Dr Reddy was always “a big picture person,” who thought big even when the company was very small. It was driven by his passion for science, which he believed as the true enabler for lasting change and for the betterment of society. At Dr Reddy’s, he said, while the company transitioned from being an active ingredient-maker to a finished dosage manufacturer, Dr Reddy retained his singular focus only on drug discovery.
Unfinished agenda
To many who now see Dr Reddy’s as a largely generics maker, Prasad held out hopes on the discovery journey. Conscious of Dr Anji Reddy’s “unfinished agenda” to discover and launch a drug globally from Dr Reddy’s, he said, “we hope to fulfill his desire in this decade.” While he did not articulate how but then the vehicle for this may be the subsidiary (Aurigene) where the company is working on NCEs (new chemical entities) and NBEs (new biological entities). To Prasad, Dr Reddy also stood out for “his bias for action”. That is, if he decided on something, he would push for it. Another attribute of Dr Reddy that stood out for Prasad was Dr Anji Reddy’s ability to trust. “Once he spotted talent- be it in the field of science or social sector, he would put his complete trust in that person, encouraged them to take risks, think big and was tolerant of genuine mistakes.”
Delivering the keynote address, Dr K VijayRaghavan, the former principal scientific advisor, government of India talked of the changing approaches to research and the new opportunities emerging. He also reminded of the many lifestyle related health challenges that India may have to deal with as its young demography starts getting older “so factors of healthy aging are going to become important. The emphasis therefore on lifestyle and infectious diseases response, would play a crucial role,” he said. Also, because the evolution process tends to link organisms on earth given their common origin and “therefore a shared chemistry that is connected through the thread of DNA, studying any organism can impact learning about other organisms,” he said.
The memorial lecture was delivered by a Nobel laureate – Professor Ada E. Yonath, Nobel Laureate in chemistry in 2009 and from the department of structural biology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel- who spoke at length on ribosomes, the factories that produce proteins- the building blocks of life itself. She pointed out that highly active cells like those in the liver, could contain as many as six million ribosomes and even bacterial cells contained 50,000 to 80,000 ribosomes. She also shared a video titled, “ribosomes in action.” That apart, she spoke of origin of life, future of antibiotics, genetic diseases and also the problem of antibiotics and drug resistance.
Dr Swami Subramaniam, CEO, Ignite Life Science Foundation and one who had a long association with Dr Anji Reddy, felt to spur innovation, we may now need to look beyond government funding and look to reliance on private sources of funding with focus on quality and efficiency in academic science. Satish Reddy, chairman, Dr Reddy’s and also the son of Dr Anji Reddy, spoke of the passion his father shared in the fields of science and social impact. He also spoke of the things that provoked him to think, invest his time and resources to the various initiatives that he supported – be it to further research or to support the underprivileged.
