Koul's key achievement has been as one of the core scientist at J&J involved in discovery of
multi drug-resistant tuberculosis drug
Bedaquiline. Bedaquiline has been conditionally approved in US, Europe and several high TB burden countries like India, China and South Africa. In 2013, the
World Health Organization (WHO) put bedaquiline on list of its
essential medicines. Bedaquiline received a prestigious Prix Galien Award for most innovative
Orphan Drug (UK) in 2016. In 2019, India's Health Ministry made bedaquiline available across more than 500 drug-resistant TB centers in India to help India's End TB program. To date, bedaquiline has been approved for use in more than 60 countries and is part of national TB eradication plans across the world. In 2020, US FDA approved new pediatric formulation of Bedaquiline (>=5 years). Koul has extensive scientific contributions to drug discovery and translational research. Koul and his team have discovered more than 3 other drug candidates, two of which are into late stage human testing including one for serious respiratory viral infections (RSV). Koul has several publications in leading journals like
Nature and
Science and more than 25 international patents to his credit. As Director
IMTECH, he oversaw R&D and non R&D staff of more than 350 people and was responsible for scientific strategy, finance, general administration, business development, procurement, communication & public relations. At
IMTECH, Koul played a pivotal role in establishing new research divisions like medicinal chemistry, and virology centers. He established several industry-academia partnerships like
Zydus Cadila and a high end skill development centre in partnership with
MERCK. In 2018, IMTECH's Bioinformatics Unit was among top institutions in world in number of biological databases. Koul made policy changes including 'ease of doing science' and a new centralized admin block. Koul has played key roles in several high level government committees. == Awards and honors ==