I wanted to make difference to patient care in this country using my research. It requires sound research to commercialize technology and make it available to the medical community. In multinational companies (MNCs) it is easy to carry out good research but to see the product in the market, a scientist has no role to play. There are many reasons for an MNC to change goals or decide not to develop a product. I wanted all the controls in my hands. At AstraZeneca, I found that no company in India has the development capabilities and my Cysticercosis kit had not seen the light of the day for five years.
What are the strengths of Xcyton?
XCyton was incorporated in September 1993 with a mission to develop, manufacture and market immunodiagnostic kits for infectious diseases. India''s first indigenous kit to diagnose antibodies for HIV 1and 2 called HIV-Chex is now developed and ready for marketing. I would say our strengths are in multi product development and manufacture of immunodiagnostics kits for critical disease segments. This company is sound on research, and its technological excellence has been evaluated by reputed AIDS reference laboratories like National Institute of Communicable Disease, New Delhi, National AIDS Research Institute, Pune, NIMHANS, Bangalore, National AIDS Control Organisation [NACO] and World Health Organisation, ITG, Antwerp, Belgium.
Would you briefly tell us about your product development programme?
It took four years of research for scientists at XCyton to come out with a maiden diagnostic kit, HIV Chex in 1997. HIV-Chex is designed for detecting the commonest subtype of HIV 1 in India: HIV 1C. In fact, it is the only kit that has cent per cent negative predictive value and the only one in the world to incorporate HIV IC three peptide based detection crucial for early diagnosis.
Cysti-Chex, our second product was introduced in 1999 and is designed to use excretory/secretory antigens, seen in the human immune system. The product is reliable compared to the reports of bio-chemical tests, CT Scan and MRI. Cysti-Chex provides cent percent diagnostic certainty. The product''s research trails were conducted at the department of tropical disease in AstraZeneca Research Centre, Bangalore and has received patents from 33 countries.
What have been the successful activities since inception?
The success of this company is the acceptance of HIV-Chex by the World Health Organisation [WHO] and the introduction of Cysti-Chex for neurocysticercosis. Both are internationally patented detection kits, and monopoly in the Indian market. We have supplied HIV-Chex kits to WHO funded projects in the India and abroad. Right now we are awaiting for license production for Hep-Chex C detection of kits for Hepatitis C.
What is the technology edge that set your company apart?
What sets this company apart is the technology-edge in research and we have been keen to produce kits that are crucial for India''s medical diagnostics.
What sort of competition do you face in the international and domestic markets?
We are to compete with imported kits in the competitive international market where major players from the US and Western Europe dominate. But, we are confident of product acceptance. We are concentrating on Africa, South Africa, China and Thailand markets.
The domestic front has been lucrative for us. We have cornered 68 percent of the market in Karnataka, 40 percent in Kerala, 25 percent in Tamil Nadu apart from having a strong presence in Mumbai. We done considerable ground work for an opening in north India at least by July this year. What is heart warming is that our diagnostic kits are rated by several customers as reliable. In the last few months we have been extremely aggressive in the Indian market. Right now we have full-fledged sales network is in place at 13 centres in the country.
What has been the performance of your company since inception?
Performance in terms of product development and its acceptance has been good. We have fought all odds to give the world India''s first and only indigenous HIV diagnostic kit. It is important for me to tell you that in 1991, Lupin Laboratories promised a HIV kit. In 1994, Dr. Reddys Laboratories announced their plan to come out with a similar kit. After this it was Ranbaxy and Ace Pharmaceuticals. This apart, the Department of Biotechnology[DBT] allocated Rs. 3 crore for the development of a HIV kit which did not see the light of the day. Then we had the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biology, Thiruvananthapuram wanting to come out with a kit for HIV again. All their efforts did not see the light of the day on account of technology barriers. As a start-up biotech-immunodiagnostic venture, XCyton today has broken the technology barrier by developing and producing the indigenous kit and competing in the international market. In terms of turnover we are at Rs. 1 crore. We have been growing steadily since inception.
What are the future plans you have chalked out for your company?
The first task on hand is that we are on the look out for a joint venture in marketing out two products- HIV-Chex for detection of HIV 1 & 2 and Cysti-Chex for diagnosing neurocysticercosis. By 2003, we will commence the production and thereafter distribution of kits for tuberculosis, bacterial meningitis, cryptococal meningitis, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, typhoid and malaria.
What are the problems in the biotech industry and in immuno-diagnostics sector?
Indian biotechnology is not a major force like the pharma industry. The trend is manufacture, based on technologies purchased or developed abroad. But Indian biotech and pharma need to be research oriented.
However, there have been breakthroughs in research in the academia. Industry academia links are required to achieve new inventions in this field. What is interesting is that compared to the large Indian or MNC pharma companies, it is the small pharma/ biotech companies, which are focussed in niche areas. These are headed by academicians who venture as entrepreneurs to bring in novel technologies by collaborating with universities.
What measures do you suggest to give the sector a boost?
The lacuna is that banks and venture capitalists are not willing to fund biotech projects considering the time taken for product development. Our investors should be prepared for the fact that only two percent of research can be ultimately commercialised in biotech. Venture capitalists and financiers are not currently geared to look at the long gestation periods involved in product development and product commercialisation. Investors want biotech projects to be like the successful software development ventures where the development is within one or two years. There are no funds for feasibility studies in biotechnology. There are no specific regulations by the government for this sector. But for the size of this industry, the exports have been rewarding.