The world's pharmacy is currently under attack, but it is a silent, microscopic one. As a result of being both a global leader in providing affordable generic drugs, and as a country at the forefront of an increasing wave of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), India is at the centre of this growing problem. At the core of the AMR crisis is a structural conflict, which the scientific community does not discuss enough: the "stewardship paradox".

As it stands now, when pharmaceutical innovations succeed globally, they are based upon their ability to penetrate markets and create high sales volumes. However, for antibiotics, "success," from a public health perspective, requires the exact opposite: they must be used sparingly, strictly conserved, and to the lowest extent possible to delay the onset of resistance. As such, there exists a market failure within the patent system that rewards the behaviour that causes the rapid obsolescence of the drug. As an independent researcher and patent agent, I have witnessed how the ROI generated by the patent system is inconsistent with the R&D required for the stewardship of the drug. In order to generate the next generation of life-saving drugs, we need to separate the cost of R&D from the volume of sales.

The "stewardship paradox" in action

For at least thirty years, the typical response to the "drought" in the development of new antibiotics has included offering stronger intellectual property rights and/or longer patents to potential developers of antibiotics. The rationale behind this approach has always been that, by increasing the level of economic reward from developing a new antibiotic (i.e., greater profits), there would be more financial incentive for researchers to develop new antibiotics. Unfortunately, it has been more than thirty years since a new generation of antibiotics has entered clinical use.

The reason for this lack of success with the approach of strengthening the intellectual property rights for antibiotic developers lies in what is referred to as the "stewardship paradox". Unlike most therapeutic classes (e.g., oncology; chronic lifestyle disease), where the primary objective of a patent applicant/holder is to treat as many patients as possible with their patented compound, the primary objective of an antibiotic developer is to delay resistance by limiting use. Therefore, when a new "last-resort" antibiotic enters clinical practice, it simultaneously marks the beginning of its path toward eventual obsolescence.

A fundamental contradiction arises when public health officials want to restrict the availability of drugs to ensure they remain effective, and pharmaceutical companies want to make money from their products. The commercial success of a drug, particularly a costly one like an antibiotic, depends on high volume sales. Companies cannot recoup their R&D investments if their products are locked away in "glass cases" as emergency supplies only. Thus, companies must aggressively promote their products to maximise volume sales. However, in countries where patients pay directly for health care (e.g., India) this typically translates into aggressive marketing to physicians and pharmacists. This leads to exactly the type of overprescribing that generates drug resistance.

The way forward: A delinkage model

The solution lies in moving towards a “delinkage model”. Delinking refers to the separation of the financial returns from a drug from the volume of the drug's sales. Instead of relying on large-scale sales, innovators receive "pull incentives", e.g., market entry rewards or milestone payments.

One widely discussed approach is the "subscription model" (also known as the "Netflix model" for antibiotics), where governments pay a fixed annual fee to a company for access to an effective antibiotic regardless of whether the antibiotic is used. The subscription model allows companies to generate revenue from their products and provide governments with the means to retain effective drugs "in inventory" for stewardship purposes.

Adopting a delinkage model would not only be scientifically necessary for India but also strategically important as the country transitions from a manufacturing-based to an innovation-driven bioeconomy. Domestic startups require predictable returns on investment that do not depend on contributing to the AMR crisis. By integrating delinkage into national science policy, India can lead in creating a system that balances innovation with sustainability.

Reframing innovation for a world resistant to disease:

The tension between 20th-century patent law and 21st-century evolutionary forces of microorganisms is no longer simply a theoretical debate – it is a pressing public health crisis. For India to continue to protect its role as the "pharmacy of the world", we need to look beyond the limited focus on volume-based ROI. Protecting and strengthening IP rights in the absence of stewardship-compatible financial incentives will only add to the flames of the fire we are desperately trying to put out.

Addressing this challenge requires a multi-faceted approach: adopting delinkage models, increasing funding for early-stage antimicrobial R&D, and developing national policies that treat antibiotics as a global public good rather than a commercial commodity.

Young researchers and policymakers will play a critical role in shaping this future. The goal must be to create an ecosystem where the value of a drug is measured by the lives it saves over time, rather than the volume of units sold in a quarter. In doing so, India has the opportunity to lead a global model of sustainable innovation—one where science stays ahead of resistance.

On a train from Pune to Mumbai after attending Young Investigator Meeting 2026, Pune (YIM 2026), I found myself thinking about a contradiction at the heart of Indian innovation. This started as a casual conversation with a fellow traveller, a young entrepreneur, someone who has taken the path I was contemplating to take. I was still carrying a certain energy from the meeting, the optimism, urgency, and a sense that something important is trying to take shape in the Indian biosciences ecosystem.

Coming from the UK after more than a decade abroad, this visit felt different. The conversations at YIM 2026, especially the repeated emphasis on team science, translational research, biomanufacturing, and mission-mode efforts felt like a clear signal. There is intent. There is direction. There is, at least at the level of vision, a strong alignment on where India needs to go.

And yet, somewhere between that vision and what one sees on the ground, there is a noticeable gap. The energy of the meeting initially masked this gap. But it became harder to ignore during a short post-YIM 2026 tour across Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Delhi. Conversations with academics, industry professionals, and startup ecosystems revealed a growing disconnect between vision and execution.

During the YIM 2026 meeting, many university representatives spoke about supporting startups, incubators, faculty-driven ventures, and student entrepreneurship. It all sounded right, motivating, and familiar. The language of innovation has clearly spread across the system.

But when the conversation moved from intent to outcomes and specific support, things became less clear. There were only a handful of examples of startups that had truly emerged from faculty and scaled meaningfully. A few exceptions stood out but it was hard to tell whether they were the result of strong institutional ecosystems or simply driven by exceptional individuals, or even advantages tied to specific cities.

What seemed more widespread was something else: a kind of collective momentum driven by the fear of being left behind — a kind of institutional FOMO. Incubators are being set up. Programmes are being launched. Everyone wants to participate in the startup narrative.

But mere participation is not the same as impact. The harder questions, around how many of these efforts translate into real companies, meaningful IP, or revenue-generating technologies remain largely unanswered. There is still a visible gap between patents filed and patents that matter, between announcements made and systems that deliver.

This is where the tension deepens. Because at the same time, the broader call from leadership at YIM 2026 was powerful and necessary: to move towards mission-driven science, to build teams rather than silos, to focus on translation and manufacturing, and to think at scale. There is a kind of consonance in this vision almost everyone agrees on the direction. And yet, the execution ecosystem feels fragmented. For someone like me, standing at the edge looking in, this creates a very real dilemma.

Because in parallel, there is another pattern that continues to play out globally. Many founders and scientists of Indian origin still choose to anchor their intellectual property and companies in the US or UK, while building operational or execution layers in India. This is not about lack of intent to build in India. It is about where systems make it easier to take risks.

Setting up a company abroad is faster. Funding for uncertain, early-stage science is more accessible. There is more patience for ideas that take time to mature.

In India, bold, long-horizon work often falls into a gap, too applied for academia, too early for venture capital, and not yet fully supported by mission-mode structures at scale. So the outcome becomes almost predictable: the thinking happens in one geography, the execution in another. Over time, ownership follows the thinking. And that is the heart of the "two-body problem."

Sitting on that train, this is what stayed with me, the contrast between what is being said, and what is still being built. This is not about intent, the intent, if anything, feels genuine.

YIM 2026 felt like a rare and important space, one where these conversations are happening honestly, and where a generation of scientists is trying to imagine a different system. If anything, it made me feel that platforms like YIM are not just useful, they are essential.

But they are also too small. If India is serious about building in deep-tech, biotech, and frontier science, spaces like this need to grow 50 –100 times in scale, depth, and continuity. Hearing that even this kind of platform faces funding constraints is concerning. These are the spaces where alignment begins.

They could also become places where something more concrete emerges, shared roadmaps, policy inputs, sustained networks, and even training for those returning after years abroad, trying to re-understand a system that has evolved in their absence.

Because that is the other layer to this story, the human one.

For many of us working outside India, the question of returning is never fully settled. It sits somewhere in the background, shaped by both emotion and practicality. You feel the pull to come back, to contribute, to build something meaningful in the place that shaped your early curiosity. But you also see the friction, the delays, the uncertainties, the structural gaps. So for those who are contemplating the question of coming back to India, you end up, quite literally, on the fence.

There was one more thing that came up at YIM 2026, almost unanimously, and yet strangely quietly, that felt like a quintessential example of this gap: age. Everyone acknowledged it as a real barrier for talented people considering a return. Too old for certain fellowships, ineligible for schemes designed for an earlier career stage, structurally locked out by limits that were never designed with the diaspora in mind.

And yet, despite broad agreement in the room, it remained one of those things nobody wanted to say too loudly, the kind of problem everyone sees clearly, but that sits just above the threshold of open confrontation.

To be fair, there has been some movement. There is gradual progress toward revising age limits in certain programmes and that matters. But it is difficult not to notice a deeper pattern.

We often admire the scientific and innovation ecosystems of the western countries like the US, and the UK, and often attribute their success primarily to resources and funding. What we speak about less is what quietly enabled those systems to flourish: the removal of artificial barriers such as rigid age limits, and the prioritisation of merit over inconsequential parameters. It was not just wealth that built those ecosystems. It was also the decision to step aside and allow talent to emerge — regardless of when in life it appeared.

And that is why this moment feels important. Because there is momentum. There are signals. There is a growing recognition that India needs to move towards team science, translational impact, and biomanufacturing at scale.

The question is whether the systems will evolve fast enough to match that vision.

And that is perhaps where this becomes less of a reflection, and more of a call for action.

To the people shaping these systems, the leaders across funding agencies, institutions, and policy bodies, this is the moment where alignment needs to move from language to structure. Because small decisions made at that level determine much larger outcomes: who returns, who stays, who builds, and where.

India does not lack talent. It does not lack ambition. It does not even lack vision.

What it needs now is coherence — a system willing to remove artificial barriers to innovation, whether age, rigid credentialism, or institutional risk aversion toward backing ambitious early-stage ideas. And for those of us watching, deciding, and hoping to return, and build in India, that makes all the difference.

I almost ignored it.

On a plate seeded with bacteria, our C. elegans mutants were not feeding in the dispersed manner we expected. Instead, they formed distinct clusters at the edge of the food and did not disperse well despite being starved in that confined space. It would have been easy to dismiss the pattern as noise — a population density effect, a plating inconsistency, or a minor behavioural fluctuation. Biology is full of variation, and we are trained to average it away.

But the aggregation persisted. It appeared again. And again.

Most scientific papers begin with a hypothesis. Many scientific discoveries do not. They begin with a moment of hesitation and a pause long enough to ask: Why is this happening?

In the early days of ethology, scientists such as Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch spent years simply watching animals, without a defined map of what they should see. The zig-zag courtship of a fish, the waggle dance of a bee — these were not predictions tested into existence. They patiently allowed the organism to define the question. That spirit of disciplined observation still matters.

Starting from an observation rather than a predefined roadmap allowed us to explore the worm swarming phenomenon without prematurely narrowing its meaning. We did not yet know whether the behaviour reflected altered sensory processing, neuromodulatory imbalance, or something else entirely. What we did know was that it was reproducible.

For us, that shift from seeing to measuring marked a turning point. Recording videos, quantifying aggregation, and developing assays transformed a fleeting observation into something testable. Hypotheses emerged, but they emerged honestly, grounded in description rather than imposed upon it. There were many failed attempts. There were also moments when the animals behaved exactly as predicted. Those moments did not feel like confirmation of a prewritten story. They felt like alignment, as if the original observation had been pointing toward something real all along.

Yet scientific culture often narrates discovery differently. By the time a paper is written, the path appears linear. The hypothesis comes first. The experiment follows. The answer emerges. The uncertainty, the false starts, and the long period of simply watching rarely make it to print. This is not merely a stylistic issue. It shapes how young scientists are trained.

In many Indian research settings, students are encouraged, and often required, to define precise hypotheses early, sometimes before they have deeply encountered their system. Grant applications demand clear deliverables. Doctoral committees ask for directional clarity. These structures are not unreasonable; they provide accountability. They can also unintentionally signal that exploratory observation is unfocused or risky.

Observation-driven science is risky. It requires time without immediate narrative payoff. It requires tolerating ambiguity long enough for patterns to clarify. In environments where productivity is measured in short cycles, that patience can feel indulgent.

In my teaching, I try to carve out space for this discipline of attention. When students encounter C. elegans for the first time, I do not begin with an explanation. I hand them a plate and ask them to record eight to ten observations before attempting interpretation. Only afterward do we discuss the meaning behind those observations. The exercise separates noticing from explaining.

In practical sessions, I present a single behavioural phenomenon and ask: What questions arise? What assumptions are you making? How would you test this? The goal is not to extract the correct answer. It is to cultivate the habit of careful seeing before structured reasoning.

This approach does not oppose hypothesis-driven science. It strengthens it. Clear predictions are more powerful when they arise from faithful description. If we only reward predefined narratives, we risk overlooking the phenomena that generate the best hypotheses in the first place.

Today, our tools are becoming extraordinarily powerful, such as automated imaging, large-scale behavioural tracking, and machine learning–based analysis. These technologies expand what we can measure. They do not replace the first step: noticing that something is worth measuring.

Before logic, before models, before validation, there is the simple act of seeing.

Reclaiming the value of observation is not a call to abandon rigour. It is a reminder that rigour begins with attention. By protecting space for careful observation in our labs, our classrooms, and our funding structures, we protect the source from which meaningful questions arise.

In a recent survey, public trust in scientists was relatively high in India, which ranked second among 68 countries. However, the proportion of people who think that science is interesting is still thought to be a “minority”. It is widely accepted that communities that do not uphold value-based science risk losing the foundation for long-term progress. Trust without interest suggests two things: first, that science is viewed as important work done by scientists, but is not perceived as relevant or useful to common people. Second, that scientists do not speak the language of the public who pay the tax that most commonly funds their work.

The general lack of interest in science, compounded by anecdotes of early-career researchers reporting delayed or unpaid salaries, toxic lab environments, and poor mentorship, may contribute to research not being among the top career choices in India. Apart from lower investment in research, brain drain and the lack of preference for a career in research may also contribute to India’s lower research density. India is reported to have only about 255 full-time equivalent researchers per million people, which is way below the figure for developed economies such as the US (over 4,800) and Germany (5,400), or other Asian countries, such as Pakistan (474), China (1,849) and Singapore (7,920).

Additionally, while scientific outreach efforts to ignite interest in the community are making slow but steady progress, there has been a rapid increase in publication retractions from India (1, 2), driven by errors, plagiarism, and ethical concerns. For example, the proportion of randomised controlled trials published in Anaesthesia between 2017 and 2021 found that 62% of Indian trials contained falsified data, while 46% were fatally flawed. Partly driven by the “publish or perish” pressures in Indian academia, such practices lead to research and resource waste in an already limited resource environment. More importantly, over time, research or publication errors and fraud can chip away at scientific credibility and compromise public trust.

This misalignment between trust and interest in science in citizens, coupled with the preoccupation with publication metrics, presents a reality that requires us to introspect and assess “what ails science in India?” This introspection is a necessary step for the scientific community because issues can be appropriately addressed once they are recognised and then faced head-on. The urgency is greater now than ever because new technologies amplify both facts and falsehoods. Artificial intelligence (AI) can scale errors and distortions rapidly, and celebrity influencers can package persuasive narratives that cast science and researchers as snake-oil merchants rather than as servants of society. Thus, restoring integrity, transparency, and accountability in scientific research is critical to maintaining public trust. In life science research, the misalignment is prominent due to the high stakes associated with life-saving research and its outcomes.

With shared experience of over two decades spread over Asia, Europe, and America, we identify the following as important drivers of the current state of life science research in India and its social relevance.

1. Rewarding individualism versus collectivism: Institutions routinely single out and reward individuals and concentrate authority, despite the norm of science being largely interdisciplinary and collaborative. This focused recognition reinforces power hierarchies in academia. The need is to recognise the collective contribution of each researcher to institution-building. Like the adage, it takes a village to build an institution! The centralised power structure fosters “mafia-like behaviour” of research groups where younger researchers or new faculty in a university “toe the line” of senior researchers to survive or advance in academia. Reinforcement of existing poor practices and behaviours through role-modelling and recognition is among the dangers for science at institutional, national, and global levels. The younger generation is more likely to choose science if it looks less hierarchical.

2. Obsession with metrics: Currently, institutional ranking and career promotion metrics are a proxy for excellence and high quality. While such metrics have merits for assessment agencies and scientometric evaluations, in the recent past, they have led to an obsession and a certain fixation with such numerical indices. Most ignore the biases in these indices and, by citing a lack of alternatives, indirectly encourage others to use these metrics. There will be new metrics that invariably would be implicitly reductive and ignore the nuances of how science works. Nevertheless, the presence of a flawed framework risks amplifying the same problem. There are numerous instances where authorships are frequently negotiated or imposed through power dynamics. Such practices have been demonstrated repeatedly to be disadvantageous for women and underrepresented researchers because the system was built in the global north, which is relatively safeguarded from some of these biases. Ghost and gift authorships, and, more recently, fake authorships generated by paper mills, inflate existing metrics utilising their underlying weaknesses. Funders that prioritise apparent "return on investment" often channel resources toward already highly-ranked individuals and institutions, reinforcing conventional thinking, entrenching investigator biases, and sidelining alternative perspectives that might be scientifically valuable. This particularly affects early and middle-career researchers, making research a less optimal career choice with lower probabilities of success, making attracting and retaining talent difficult.

3. Undervaluing mentorship and collegial service: Institutions celebrate huge grant wins, publications in prestigious life science journals, and awards. However, the support for a healthier research culture that sustains and provides for such achievements is overlooked and not given enough credit. In short, we fail to recognise “goodness” in scientists. Improving methods, mentoring trainees thoughtfully, running professional societies and focused groups, serving as editors and performing peer review are less factored. In other words, a framework akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs for life science research may be needed to foster a healthier research culture.

4. Social media influencing: Currently, social media amplifies both the good and not-so-good parts of academia. High-profile cases where former mentees publicly shared unpleasant or negative experiences show that professional success does not guarantee good leadership. Also, social media tends to project survivorship bias. On the contrary, when researchers share their work on social media, they democratise knowledge and build public trust. But they must do so responsibly: explain findings in plain language, state limitations and uncertainty, avoid hype or definitive claims beyond the data, and link to primary sources where possible. Good science communication invites questions, corrects errors visibly, and treats audiences with respect. This helps people make informed decisions rather than just chasing attention. For example, a tweetorial or thread explaining recent publication in lay terms is one approach. Institutional science communication channels also serve as valuable resources. It is important to recognise that publications are not the end, but the beginning of dissemination.. This is one way to increase social engagement and increase public interest in science.

5. Inadequate emphasis on standards of research integrity & reproducibility: Thanks to social media and other outlets, the frequency of news reporting scientific misconduct and other practices is higher than earlier. While this exposure is welcome, it indicates the need for emphasis on research integrity and reproducibility in the institutional setting, in researcher training. There should be funds and time allocated for reproducibility audits and independent replication studies as a normal part of research cycles, and not as a corrective action. Indian scientists enjoy a high level of trust and should persevere to keep it.

6. Biased perceptions: There exists an implicit bias that high-quality science happens only in well-established and elite institutions, while other institutions are engaged primarily in teaching. However, the ground reality is that there is good science happening in many institutions, and there are retractions of published work from elite institutions, both within India and abroad. An understanding that such bias exists and learning to ignore the pincode/zipcode-based evaluations would benefit all stakeholders. This would also reduce the brain drain and migration towards elite institutions within and outside the country.

What’s the way forward?

Some practical steps to consider are given below to make science interesting to society:

To make science socially relevant

• Encourage scientific communication as part of a research career and foster healthy discussions about ongoing research with local communities.

• Train grant reviewers, institutional evaluators, and researchers on qualitative research impact assessment, such as DORA and CORRA, which are still unfamiliar to many.

• Make scientific dissemination plan an essential criterion in research grants.

• Reduce emphasis on individual visibility and publication metrics, and adopt a multi-pronged assessment framework in hiring and promotion decisions

To make scientific careers attractive and retain talent

• Create and strengthen existing fellowship schemes that encourage students to pursue research at postdoctoral levels, with scope for stable positions

• Co-develop research programs with the industry/research institutions to establish research positions also outside of academia

• Create alternative funding schemes that incentivise inter-institutional or industry-academia collaborations to build capacity, and explicitly prioritise early- and middle-career investigators and collaborations between investigators with varying levels of experience.

• Develop structured mentorship schemes, where senior researchers mentor junior investigators beyond their immediate networks, creating broader opportunities for growth.

• Recognise and reward effective mentorship through institutional and professional society-level awards, and actively amplify these values.

• Normalise routine, constructive feedback from mentees as part of faculty review and professional development.

To improve research integrity to reinforce trust in science

• Conduct workshops for researchers on the risks of hyper-productivity and the ethical and practical problems of being a hyper-prolific author

• Guide researchers away from idolising institutions or individuals (within and outside India). Instead, emphasise evaluating contributions based on their societal impact, including knowledge generation, process improvement, and innovation.

The trajectory of India’s scientific growth is defined by a vibrant spirit of innovation and an urgent commitment to scaling impactful solutions. As the nation pursues its goal of becoming a global powerhouse, a clear opportunity exists to align academic excellence with socio-economic reality. By embracing a unified vision bolstered by the operationalisation of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), India is successfully pivoting toward a structure that prioritises domestic needs and high-impact translation through strategic collaboration.

India’s real scientific challenge is not discovery, its translation

India’s unique competitive edge lies in its unparalleled ability to scale affordable, high-quality medicine. While high-tech biologicals continue to advance, peroral dosage forms remain the industry’s cornerstone, representing the most accessible bridge to healthcare for a massive global population. By focusing research specifically on peroral nanomedicine, overcoming physiological barriers like gastric pH degradation and mucosal permeation, and leveraging R&D reinvestments from industry leaders, India can transform "chronic disease management" into a self-sustaining export engine. This evolution involves developing “novel functional excipients”, converting complex injectables into patient-friendly oral formats, and serving as a specialised Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) to minimise drug attrition through advanced nanoparticle formulation (nanomedicines).

India is uniquely positioned to lead the global transition in making nanomedicines, traditionally reserved for intravenous routes, viable for peroral administration, setting a new international standard for patient care. To date, global regulatory frameworks have almost exclusively addressed intravenous targeted nanomedicines, leading to a prevailing industry presumption that nanotechnology is synonymous with intravenous delivery. India has the opportunity to disrupt this status quo by providing a definitive regulatory direction, including drafting the world’s first comprehensive guidelines for peroral nanomedicine. By establishing this framework, India does not just follow international standards; it creates them.

From bench to market: Why India needs patient capital, not fast papers

This immense potential remains largely theoretical because the path from "bench to bedside" is currently blocked by a dual crisis of capital and culture. While deep-tech startups recognise these opportunities, they are frequently caught off-guard by the "exit-strategy obsession" of traditional venture capital. To overcome this, funding agencies must look beyond blue-sky innovation and incentivize the “unsexy” stages of development-such as pilot scaling, and rigorous preclinical, and early clinical validation, which currently fall outside the remit of academic grants. This structural misalignment between short-term capital expectations and the long-term gestation periods of nanotechnological breakthroughs often stifles innovation in its infancy, leaving brilliant translational work stranded in a "valley of death". To bridge this gap, India must pivot toward "patient capital" and strategic sovereign funding, ensuring that deep-tech ventures are nurtured by investors who value long-term sovereignty over immediate liquidity.

Institutional reform: Beyond the “rolling advertisement” culture

Capital alone cannot bridge the valley if the institutional framework remains stagnant. The persistence of "rolling advertisements" across NIPERs, IITs, IISERs, and INST has evolved from a recruitment strategy into a symptom of a deeper structural crisis. While these open-ended calls suggest a constant search for talent, they effectively mask a rigid institutional culture that over-indexes on traditional academic metrics like h-index and publication counts at the expense of translational expertise. This has created a bottleneck that alienates high-caliber, mid-career professionals. The "rolling" status is no longer a sign of growth, but an admission of an inability to integrate seasoned, market-aware experts into a traditional, hierarchical framework.

The ILF model: Fueling the lab-to-market pipeline

The solution lies in a structural shift where the State provides the foundational platform, but Industry provides the operational fuel through an Industry-Linked Faculty (ILF) model. Proposed here as a high-impact pilot program under the mandate of the ANRF, this 100% industry-funded track targets expert-tier professionals in translational research. Under a 60/40 functional split, these experts dedicate 60% of their bandwidth to solving high-stakes industrial challenges, such as the complex transition of nanomedicines from lab to market, while the remaining 40% is reserved for the rigorous teaching and mentorship required to build a world-class, industry-ready workforce.

To ensure this model is commercially viable, it must be underpinned by a modern, industry-weighted intellectual property (IP) framework. In this shared IP ecosystem, the sponsoring industry partner retains a majority share, typically 70% to 80%, ensuring the commercial freedom and "right to play" necessary for massive capital reinvestment. The host academic institution retains a minority stake and a royalty-linked revenue stream, ensuring the lab remains self-sustaining while providing the financial basis to align faculty incentives with industrial outcomes. This model serves both Industry and Government with precision: industry gains direct access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and elite talent, while the Government fulfills its mandate to scale high-quality education without additional fiscal overhead.

Asserting global authority

In this framework, the "return to India" movement transcends philanthropy to become a self-sustaining economic engine. By focusing on national bottlenecks through collaborative innovation, India’s elite institutes move beyond traditional academic metrics to become the primary drivers of a resilient mission that delivers genuine, life-changing impact on a global scale.

Whilst basic science remains the indispensable underpinning of our research, the future necessitates more than mere discovery; it demands a decisive intervention in the high-stakes arena of translational drug delivery. By bridging this gap with precision, India will move beyond the mere adoption of global benchmarks, and instead, assert the authority to define them.

Why don't giant animals get more cancer?

When cancer comes to mind, it is usually a human disease. While it might seem that every multicellular organism, including massive animals like whales, would be much more likely to develop cancer simply because they have so many more cells where something could go wrong, recent research shows that some large mammals have evolved special mechanisms to reduce their cancer risk. For example, elephants have lessened their risk by duplicating a key gene called TP53.

Surprisingly, this is not what is seen. Very large, long‑lived animals such as whales and elephants do not appear to get cancer nearly as often as simple “more cells = more cancer” reasoning would predict. This puzzling mismatch between expectation and reality is known as Peto’s paradox, and it has pushed scientists to ask a deep evolutionary question: How do giant animals stay cancer‑resistant for so long?

Peto’s paradox in plain language

Across species, cancer risk does not scale up straightforwardly with body size or lifespan. A blue whale has orders of magnitude more cells than a mouse and lives far longer, yet whales are not wiped out by cancer early in life. If each cell carries the same chance of turning malignant, whales should be in constant danger.

The fact that whale and elephant populations persist tells us something important: these species must have evolved extra layers of protection that keep cancer in check. Instead of being victims of their own size, they are products of intense natural selection for better tumour suppression, DNA repair, and immune surveillance.

The bowhead whales DNA shield

One striking example is the bowhead whale, which can live for more than 200 years while showing surprisingly low cancer incidence. Research suggests that bowhead cells maintain their DNA with exceptional accuracy, especially when dealing with dangerous double‑strand breaks events where both strands of the DNA helix are cut at once. If these breaks are not fixed correctly, they can trigger mutations or outright cell death.

Cells usually repair such breaks using a process called non‑homologous end joining (NHEJ), which rejoins the broken ends quickly but can introduce errors. In whales, this process seems to work with much higher fidelity. A key player is a protein called CIRBP (cold‑inducible RNA‑binding protein). Humans also have CIRBP, but the whale version appears to stabilize broken DNA ends more effectively and guide them into cleaner repair. When scientists introduced whale CIRBP into human cells, those cells repaired DNA damage more accurately and picked up fewer harmful mutations over time.

Experiments in other organisms support this idea of a broad protective role. In fruit flies engineered to produce more CIRBP, researchers observed longer lifespans and better resistance to DNA‑damaging stress, such as radiation. Together, these findings suggest that bowhead whales are not just relying on extra tumour‑suppressor genes. Instead, they have evolved ultra‑precise DNA maintenance systems that reduce mutation accumulation across their unusually long lives, helping to explain both their longevity and their apparently low cancer rates.

Genomes of giants: Humpback whales and beyond

Whales defense does not stop at a single protein. When scientists assembled and analysed the humpback whale genome, the full set of its genetic instructions, they found extensive signs of adaptation in genes involved in body structure, immunity, and the control of cell growth and death. Many of these genes sit at key checkpoints where a cell either repairs damage, pauses division, or self‑destructs if things look too risky.

Notably, humpback whales carry extra, active copies of several genes that help identify and remove damaged or unhealthy cells. These additional copies may allow whale tissues to cull potentially cancerous cells more aggressively before they can form tumours. Genomic and cellular data also indicate that whales, as a group, accumulate genetic errors more slowly than would be expected for animals of their size and lifespan. Fewer mutations over a lifetime mean fewer chances for a cell to become malignant, neatly fitting the broader pattern described by Peto’s paradox.

What this could mean for human cancer

All of this raises an exciting possibility: instead of fighting cancer only with drugs designed from scratch, medicine might borrow strategies that evolution has already tested at a massive scale in whales and other large animals. The goal would not be to use whale cells directly, but to understand and adapt their defenses.

There are several promising avenues. Whale‑like versions of DNA repair factors such as CIRBP, or small molecules that boost their activity, might one day help human cells fix dangerous DNA damage more accurately. Extra copies or enhanced forms of certain tumour‑suppressor genes could inspire gene‑therapy or gene‑editing strategies that make high‑risk tissues more resilient. Insights from whale immune surveillance and cell‑death pathways might guide new immunotherapies that recognise and clear precancerous cells earlier and more reliably.

Peto’s paradox shows that huge body size and long life do not have to come with a crushing cancer burden.

Whales, elephants, and other giants demonstrate that biology can evolve powerful internal systems to keep cancer in check, even under extreme conditions. By decoding those systems in detail, biotechnology may eventually turn the same evolutionary tricks that protect whales into new tools for preventing and treating cancer in humans.