# Department of Biotechnology, Government of India

Source: https://onco.cc/institutions/dbt-india/  
OnCo record `dbt-india` (Institution). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The government department that funds India's life-science institutes and, through BIRAC, the start-ups behind the country's indigenous CAR-T therapies and HPV vaccine.

## Summary

The Department of Biotechnology was created in 1986 under the Ministry of Science and Technology. It runs autonomous institutes including the National Institute of Immunology (Delhi), the National Centre for Cell Science (Pune), the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (Bengaluru), the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (Faridabad), the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (Thiruvananthapuram) and the Institute of Life Sciences (Bhubaneswar), and funds industry through the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a public sector undertaking that supports biotech commercialisation.

For cancer, DBT and BIRAC grants sit behind much of the indigenous pipeline: the IIT Bombay and Tata Memorial CAR-T programme that became NexCAR19, academic cell therapy and gene therapy at inStem and CMC Vellore, and the development and rollout of the Serum Institute's quadrivalent HPV vaccine.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Also known as: DBT; BIRAC; Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council
- City: New Delhi, IN
- Type: government
- Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20260209042353/https://dbtindia.gov.in/

## Sources

- Department of Biotechnology (archived copy): https://web.archive.org/web/20260209042353/https://dbtindia.gov.in/
- BIRAC: https://birac.nic.in

## Connected records

- fronts: [Cell Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/cell-therapy/), [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/), [Prevention & Risk](https://onco.cc/fronts/prevention/)
- technologies: [CAR-T cell therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/car-t/), [HPV & HBV vaccination](https://onco.cc/technologies/hpv-vaccine/), [Point-of-care and decentralised cell manufacturing](https://onco.cc/technologies/point-of-care-cell-manufacturing/)
- companies: [ImmunoACT](https://onco.cc/companies/immunoact/), [Serum Institute of India](https://onco.cc/companies/serum-institute-of-india/)
- institutions: [Christian Medical College, Vellore](https://onco.cc/institutions/cmc-vellore/), [Indian Institute of Technology Bombay](https://onco.cc/institutions/iit-bombay/), [Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine](https://onco.cc/institutions/instem/)
- people: [Rajesh S. Gokhale](https://onco.cc/people/rajesh-gokhale/)
- bottlenecks: [Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)
- drugs: [CERVAVAC (quadrivalent HPV vaccine, India)](https://onco.cc/drugs/cervavac/)

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