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Reliance Life Sciences: The state's great biotech promise

Our Bureau, MumbaiThursday, October 9, 2003, 08:00 Hrs  [IST]

Reliance Life Sciences (RLS), the healthcare venture of the Rs 65,000 crore Reliance Group, with its recently created comprehensive Genetic Centre as part of its Cell Biology initiative, is an emerging biotechnology giant in the country and certainly a great industry landmark for the state of Maharashtra. The company has been listed, by the National Institutes of Health, USA, as one of the ten companies and research institutions working in the area of embryonic stem cells and eligible for federal research funds under the new US Presidential guidelines. This development places the fledgling company in the global league of players in the area of biotechnology, particularly in cell biology. Incorporated in January 2001, the company's cell biology research centre in Mumbai is the first of its kind in Asia. The cell biology centre is focusing on research and development in stem cells and tissue engineering. Various teams in the centre are engaged in the areas of assisted reproduction, embryonic stem cells, haematopoietic stem cells, skin cells, genetics, molecular diagnostics, gene therapy and tissue engineering. Stem cells are undifferentiated and immortal cells in the body with the ability to grow into different types of cells to regenerate cells or tissues. The centre aims to deliver novel, affordable cell-based therapies and engineer tissues to address unmet medical needs in the Indian and global healthcare markets. Therapies developed by this centre would provide better alternatives to existing medical approaches, such as stem cell enriched cord blood transplant vs. bone marrow transplant, cultured skin vs. wound dressing or offer new therapies such as gene-based therapies. RLS is also creating one of the largest cord blood repositories in the world, as part of the cell biology centre. The repository would cryopreserve stem cell enriched cord blood at -196 degrees centigrade in a computer controlled robotics-based bioarchive system. As an adjunct to the cord blood repository, the company is also creating a molecular diagnostics facility for HLA typing and infectious diseases testing. In the company perspective, stem cell enriched cord blood units from the cord blood repository could be used for treating a range of diseases such as thallasaemia, hemophilia, leukaemia, sickle cell anaemia, Fanconi's anaemia and stroke. He plans to have the repository to also offer services in expansion and storage of stem cells from peripheral blood stem cells for patients who are to undergo aggressive chemotherapy. The cell biology centre would have a facility to make cultured skin; covering cultured epidermis, cultured dermis and composite skin. Cultured skin has a strong value proposition in treating burns, vitiligo and in cosmetology. This will be the first facility for cultured skin in India. Under this area, it plans to use cultured skin to address the problems of morbidity and mortality for burn patients. Every day about 300 patients die of burns in India. In his view, the value proposition for cultured skin is strong, given the ability to treat patients with very high degree of burns, avoid hospital infection and reduce hospital stay, with consequent benefits of lower overall cost and higher bed turnover. The genetic center of the company is an adjunct to the embryonic stem cells research facility and the assisted reproductin facility and is involved in providing testing using contemporary techniques such as Karyotyping, Fluorescence In-Situ Hybridisation and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). These state-of-the-art tests are used for diagnosis of pre-natal and post-natal genetic mutations and disorders, chromosomal abnormalities and cancer conditions. These contemporary techniques can be used to diagnose specific numerical and structural chromosomal anomalies like Down's syndrome, Patau syndrome, Edward syndrome and for rapid detection and quantitative analysis in the area of oncology and ß-thalassemia. The centre, which would be involved in pre-natal and post-natal genetic diagnosis, cancer genetics and microarray-based screening for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. The cell biology centre currently has a team strength of 51 members. Of these, 30 are technically qualified and include 20 Ph. Ds and 4 MDs. In the second phase of the cell biology initiative, the company would establish a full-fledged regenerative medicine centre in Mumbai. This facility will have a dedicated clinical environment for development and application of cell transplants and research labs for additional disciplines such as pancreatic, hepatic and retinal stem cells. The cell biology initiative is uniquely integrated - both horizontally, across several cell biology disciplines and vertically, from repository infrastructure through basic and applied research to the clinical environment.

 
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