Apollo Hospitals and Saarum Innovations have formed a joint venture (JV) to create a world-class human bio-bank and personalized medicine company Sapien Biosciences in Hyderabad. Sapien Biosciences is one of the first of its kind companies in India enabling innovative research and clinical applications in the country.

Apollo Hospitals with Saarum Innovations has launched its joint venture ‘Sapien Biosciences’ in Hyderabad to create a world-class bio-bank and personalized medicine company.

The bio-bank will comprise of collections of high-quality, ethically-consented and anonymized human samples along with associated medical and sample-level data across various diseases e.g., cancer, cardiovascular and diabetes. This will enable cutting-edge life sciences research and support the discovery and development of novel biomarkers, diagnostics and personalized medicine applications. Sapien plans to collaborate with healthcare enterprises and drug discovery companies globally to study disease epidemiology, validate new diagnostics, identify new drug targets and evaluate new drugs.

Sapien has exclusive access to the entire Apollo network for its bio-banking needs but expects to partner with additional research-oriented hospitals and clinics for their personalized medicine and bio-banking needs. Further Sapien has entered into an alliance with Apollo Hospitals that allows Sapien to front-end Apollo’s personalized medicine initiatives. This allows Sapien to bring novel cutting-edge diagnostics to Apollo, either on its own or in collaboration with best-of-breed institutions world-wide thereby enabling world-class healthcare and improving patient outcomes.

Speaking on the occasion, Shobana Kamineni, executive director, New Initiatives, Apollo Hospitals, said, “It is a landmark initiative in the history of Indian Health care. Apollo Hospitals has long had a vision of creating Asia’s largest bio-bank which is being realized in partnership with Saarum Innovations. Sapien will help fulfill our vision of delivering better clinical outcomes through bench-to-bedside innovation.”

Sreevatsa Natarajan, co-founder & CEO, Sapien Biosciences said, “Apollo’s passion for world-class healthcare combined with Saarum Innovations’ proven research expertise will bridge healthcare and life-sciences and enable cutting-edge research and diagnostics applications.”

Sapien Biosciences also announced the launch of its first and novel personalized medicine test,‘ which determines patients’ response to their blood-thinning medication and supports decision-making by their cardiologists to personalize therapy for better outcomes. This is the only test in India that combines both genetic and platelet function response to enable tailored anti-platelet therapy for each patient.