Central Facilities, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research S.A.S. Nagar

The central instrumentation laboratories are equipped with major instruments like 400 MHz NMR, 300 MHz NMR, GC-MSⁿ, GCMS , Head Space GC, LC-MSⁿ, Powder XRD, MALDI TOF-TOF MS, FTIR with ATR & microscope , UV-VIS spectrophotometers, CHNS-Elemental analyzer, Polarimeter, Circular Dichroism, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Analytical and preparative HPLC systems, DSC, TGA, Spectroflourimeter, Capillary Electrophoresis, Lyophilizer and Ultra Centrifuge etc.

Each department also has a separate specialized instrument laboratory to fulfil individual departmental needs based on the research programs, which includes high and normal pressure multiple organic synthesizer, peptide synthesizer, gel permeable chromatography, hydrogenation reactors, photoreactor, microwaves reactor, GC and HPLC systems, protein purification system, HPTLC, MPLC, spray dryer, lyophilizer, polygraph, stimulator, auto analyser, blood cell counter, tissue processor and embedding set-up, freeze microtome, spheronizer & extruder, Glatt multi-purpose coater, Neocota, inverted and upright microscopes, humidity and thermostatic chambers, automated dissolution apparatus, laser particle size analyzer, incubator shaker, electrophoresis and immunoblot apparatus, gel dryer, imaging densitometer, microelectroeluter, stirred cell microconcentrator, steritest system, scintillation counters, rotapress, fluidized bed dryer, capsule filling machine, strip packing machine, ampoule/vial washing and filling machines, tube filling machine, sparkler filter, multimill and colloid mill.

The Computer Centre caters to the needs of faculty, staff and students for their research and teaching. Computer Centre manages and administers high performance computing, named as PharmaGrid. This facility created at NIPER, S.A.S. Nagar is the central facility to establish a nationwide grid for carrying out pharmaceutical research with cutting edge technology. In the first phase, high performance computing facility was created with 192 cores cluster on linux, 64 cores cluster on windows platform and two 16 cores SMP servers. The aggregate compute power of the facility is 3.56 Tflops and the data storage capacity is over 15 Terabytes. The facility will work on all the major aspects of bioinformatics and chemoinformatics viz. genome analysis, sequence analysis, protein structure prediction, QSAR, molecular modeling, molecular dynamics and quantum chemical analysis. To facilitate these, various commercial and free software are available like Discovery studio, pipeline pilot, Amber, CPMD, Gaussian, GROMACS, NAMD, MATLAB, StarDrop, VASP, RDBMS (SQL server, Oracle) and Compilers (C, C++, , VC++, Visual Basic, Visual Java, FORTRAN etc.).

In addition to the HPC, Computer Centre has a general purpose computational lab with more than 60 high-end desktops. The various software available are ChemOffice, Pallas, SPSS, Sigmastat, Sigmaplot, Endnote, Acrobat Suit most of the popular Microsoft products like Office 2007/2003/XP/2000, Visual studio, SQL server etc.

Computer Centre also manages and administers other services such as Electronic Information Retrieval System, DTP and helps the Institute community by managing computing resources which are available centrally or in various departments.

A campus-wide gigabit-ethernet local area network (LAN), which uses fiber optic media, makes computing services available across campus. Centre is also equipped with 6 Mbps dedicated internet connectivity allowing users to have access to the email, Internet, SciFinder and ScienceDirect. Faculty and students can use internet, email and computing resources of the Institute from their residences/hostels by dialing through a modem or using the ADSL routers.

The Centre houses eight servers and several computer systems manufactured by IBM/Dell/Compaq/Acer. Computer Centre also supports high speed, network color laser printer, black & white laser printers, color plotter and scanners.

NIPER has subscribed SciFinder and Scientific and Technical Information Network (STN), a leading and comprehensive scientific online information service, giving access to over 200 scientific and technical databases of chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and biotechnology. STN service has been extended to the outside of NIPER on payment.

The Computer Centre has developed few databases and customized software for various applications.

The library at NIPER is being developed in a manner that it can eventually gain the status of National Library and Information Centre on Pharmaceutical Sciences. A beginning has been made with the subscription of 62 international and 59 national journals. The library has Chemical Abstracts from 1907 till date and Cumulative Indices up to eleventh bound volumes. A number of CD-ROM databases such as International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and Drug Information Full Text (1977-1997), Ekaswa, Syntheline, MFline & DRUGDEX are also available. The library is accessible to all the Pharmacy professionals from the country and abroad and provides information to the academia, researchers and the industry personnel. The library has obtained institutional membership of DELNET, Chandigarh Libraries Consortium, British Library (Chandigarh), Current Science Association (Bangalore), and Association of Indian Universities (Delhi).

At present library possesses 5715 books, 17528 bound volumes of journals and 205 theses.

Central Animal Facility

National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) is the first national level institute in pharmaceutical sciences set up under the aegis of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Govt. of India.

The Central Animal Facility (CAF), NIPER is established with the state- of- art technology in a double storied building with a design of ‘Two-way corridor system’ to minimize the cross contamination. Our CAF is registered with CPCSEA, Ministry of Environment and Forest, GOI. The different species of small laboratory animals like mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs and rabbits are being bred and maintained to provide the quality animals for various research purposes in NIPER. Though our CAF is not a commercial unit, we are capable of supplying the adequate numbers of quality animals on request to the outside CPCSEA registered establishments at reasonable rates for the breeding and experimentation purposes only.

Each species of animals is housed in barrier maintained individual rooms to avoid inter-species cross infection. The animals are maintained under controlled environmental conditions (temperature (22± 2ºC), relative humidity (50 ± 5 %), 12:12 h light and dark cycle with 100 % of fresh air exchange in animal rooms) with uninterrupted power supply. The macro- and micro- environment around the animals are maintained as per the CPCSEA guidelines. Separate building for holding of infective and non-infective experimental animals is available. A high degree of hygienic conditions is being maintained. Regular disinfection of animal rooms and cleaning and sterilization of cages, water bottles, bedding etc are practiced. Heavy duty steam sterilizers have been provided for sterilization of all materials entering into animals rooms. In addition to the conventionally maintained colonies, CAF do have the animal isolator and individually ventilated caging systems (IVC) for breeding and maintaining the animal colonies in SPF environment.

Periodic health monitoring of the animals is carried out to ascertain the heath status of the animals. In addition, feed and water analysis are carried out periodically for assessing their quality and microbiolological contamination. The various records of the inbred and out bred animals are maintained through in-house developed specialized software system (CAFMS) in addition to manual record keeping. Waste disposal is carried out through environment friendly incinerator. A team of well qualified veterinarian/scientist and technical assistants, who are experienced and trained in modern methods of animal care, breeding and husbandry, manage this facility.

Central Animal Facility (CAF) at NIPER S.A.S. Nagar

The routine works at CAF are carried out as per the standard operating procedures adopting GLP principles to achieve the high quality maintenance and supply of the animals for biomedical research. In addition, CAF conducts the certificate course every year to train the internal investigators on humane handling, care and use of laboratory animals which may be extended to outsiders on payment basis if requested.

Details of the various inbred and out bred species/strains of animals available for supply and present price and terms and conditions of supply, and ordering procedures are furnished for the convenience of buyers. For More Information Click Here
Institutional Animals Ethics Committee (IAEC)

The National Bioavailability Centre of the Institute is capable of conducting bioequivalence studies in healthy human volunteers. The centre has 24 bedded air conditioned volunteer room, a dining hall with attached kitchen, doctor's room, two sample collection rooms and a sample processing room. It has analytical laboratory equipped with sophisticated equipments required to carry out the in vitro and in vivo analysis of samples. Already many industrial projects have been completed and many more are planned. The centre has been accredited by WHO and is one of the two centres in the world for conducting bioequivalence studies of the fixed dose combination (FDC) formulations of antitubercular drugs. The centre, in close collaboration with hospitals around Chandigarh, is also involved in conducting pharmacokinetic studies in patient population.

NIPER is the first institute in the country to initiate impurity profiling studies that are required as per the latest international regulatory requirements. Already, several industrial projects have been handled involving method development for separation, synthesis and isolation of impurities and their characterization. A laboratory has also been set up for carrying out stability tests as per ICH/US FDA/WHO guidelines. The laboratory is equipped with thermostatically controlled humidity chambers with computerised data recording facilities.

Specialized services are offered with respect to the following: stress test (forced decomposition) studies and establishment of stability-indicating assays; stability storage and testing services, establishment of analytical methods for impurity profiling studies, determination of the levels of individual and total impurities, and isolation of impurities and their characterization. A good number of impurities have been synthesized which are supplied to industry on regular basis.

NIPER undertakes sponsored projects for the development of economically viable processes for bulk pharmaceutical chemicals of synthetic or natural products origin, conventional and novel dosage forms.

The Computer Aided Drug Design Laboratory of the Institute has Silicone Graphics Octane and Silicone Graphics Fuel main frame computers with various molecular modeling packages such as SYBYL, PC SPARTAN PRO, CHEM-X, AMBER, Gaussain 98, Protein Data Bank, and Alchemy etc. The objective of this laboratory is to rationally design new chemical entities for various therapeutic areas. The laboratory also imparts training in molecular modeling to scientist, research students from other universities/Institutes.

NIPER has recently created state-of-the-art solid phase peptide synthesis facility. The peptide synthesis is carried out on a fully automated CSBIO-136 peptide synthesizer by a team consisting of expert peptide chemists. The facility is capable of synthesizing up to 12 amino acids containing peptide in 24 hours by using both t-Boc and Fmoc peptide synthesis protocols. Institute is open to inquiries related to custom peptide synthesis from various pharmaceutical companies, research institutes and agencies interested in peptides for research.

The Institute has recently created a Combichem Research Laboratory. The fully automated Multiple Organic Synthesiser with on-line analytical facility will enable high speed solution and solid phase synthesis of libraries of molecules. The multiple vessel reaction platforms make the synthesis feasible under various conditions such as low temperature (uo to -80°C), high temperature (up to 200°C), and high pressure. Apart from its own research needs, the Institute makes this facility open for custom synthesis of small molecule libraries and training researchers from pharmaceutical companies and other institutions/organisation.

	Central Instrumentation Laboratories
	Computer Centre
	Library and Information Centre
	Central Animal Facility
	National Bioavailability Centre
	Impurity Profiling and Stability Testing Laboratory
	Technology Development Centre
	Pharmacological and Toxicological Screening Facilities
	Computer Aided Drug Design Laboratory
	Peptide Synthesis and Research Laboratory
	Combichem Research Laboratory