Aurigene Discovery Technologies Ltd, the erstwhile independent subsidiary of Dr Reddy's which absorbed its drug discovery operations here last week, will now broaden its scope of operations to handle IND filings.

Come July 1, 2009, Dr Reddy's drug discovery operations will combine to create Aurigene-Bangalore and Aurigene Hyderabad. This will see doubling of workforce to 485 and doubling of infrastructure from the current 170,000 sq. ft to 320,000 sq. ft.

The increased bandwidth of operations to phase-I from pre-clinical studies comes in because of the capability and capacity emerging from the post fusion of the two entities, CSN Murthy, chief executive officer, Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited told Pharmabiz.

"Our core business model at Aurigene which is collaborations and partnerships, along with services will continue," he added.

In the last three years, Aurigene has been continuously investing in its facilities. While it will continue to invest in physical infrastructure for further growth in the overall operations size, it will also acquire new technologies, such as an imaging system, to enhance the overall capabilities.

So far, since its inception in 2002, the Bangalore-based company has a track record of successful partnerships with 10 big and medium-sized pharma and biotech companies globally. The company's major research orders are from Orion Corporation, Finland and Debiopharma and Forest Laboratories US.

The company's core strength is in its fully integrated Drug Discovery capabilities, with strengths in small molecule and peptide therapeutics, structure based drug design (SBDD), pre-clinical profiling (including ADME/ PK studies and efficacy studies). Its strengths in terms of therapeutic focus are oncology, metabolic disorders and autoimmune diseases. It also has a pipeline of 15 discovery programmes. "With these strengths already in place, extension of our capabilities in terms of new therapy areas such as pain and anti-bacterials, as well as the ability to take programmes forward now to IND/phase-I studies is a definite addition with this merger," said Murthy.