Pharmaceutical industry and academia linkage in Pakistan: a prevalent challenge

The pharmaceutical industry and academia together play a pivotal role in addressing drug-associated issues, formulation, and processing errors. Therefore, the waste of expensive therapeutic moieties and problems such as batch failure during pharmaceutical dosage form production processes can easily be overcome. This partnership can also reduce the economic burden at the patient’s end. Understanding that trust is a prime factor in establishing strong linkages between the pharmaceutical industry and academia is pertinent. However, before making such commitments, organizations must revisit their capacities. Academia should focus on updating and improving the existing curriculum by including subjects with practical significance, such as biotechnology, rheology, particle processing, formulation technologies, and material sciences, to promote problem-based learning among students.