Drug discovery services major Aurigene Discovery Technologies Ltd will invest $ 6 million to expand its facility. For the first phase of development, the company has allocated $2 million to add on chemistry, biology labs and increase the area of its animal house. The funds have been sourced through term loans and internal accruals.
The Bangalore-based company, which is an independent subsidiary of Dr Reddy's, was set up in 2003. It is focused on collaborative drug discovery projects with large global pharma and biotech organizations on a risk sharing and milestone payment business model, which has begun to bear profits.
The company's expertise is in medicinal chemistry (custom synthesis & focused library design/synthesis, peptide synthesis), structure based drug design (SBDD) - hit-lead design, pre-clinical profiling - ADME/ PK services and efficacy studies.
Its therapeutic, the company's capabilities are in obesity, diabetes, inflammation and oncology. Patents are filed for a drug candidate for diabetes DPPIV inhibitors and is targeting for an investigational new drug in two years.
Currently, Aurigene handles 12 projects, which include Novo Nordisk, Debiopharm, Rheoscience, Forrest Labs and Merck Serono. It is in the process of signing up contracts for drug discovery work with two more companies in Europe. Since the immediate effort is to move most of its existing assignments to clinical stage within the next three years and ensure delivery timelines, the strategy to scale up both facility and people was inevitable. Business growth through new projects and additional increase in programmes from existing customers are two critical focus areas which should allow us handle at least 25 projects by 2009, Aurigene Discovery Technologies CEO CSN Murthy told Pharmabiz.
The Aurigene facility is located in the KIADB Area, Electronics City phase II on the Hosur Road. The state-of-the-art research complex spans over 17 acres with a built up area of 220,000 sq-ft. Present infrastructure includes 40 laboratories of 32 chemistry and 8 biology.
Under the first phase of expansion, which is expected to be commissioned by September this year, there will have four additional chemistry and two biology labs for DMPK and bio-analytical service. The animal facility, which houses rodents, will double in terms of mice and area. In addition, the company will also be setting up a new mice facility for oncology research.
The company also has a blueprint plan to utilize the balance $4 million for an additional nine chemistry labs, DMPK facility, cell culture and molecular biology units.
With the infrastructure expansion, personnel increase is inevitable. From the current strength of 165 scientists of which 50 are doctorates, Aurigene will hire 35 experts to bring the total number of scientific personnel to 200 before the year-end. Present ratio of chemistry to biology personnel is 2:1. The four new chemistry labs to be opened under the first phase will have 25 scientists working here. By 2009, company intends to have 350 scientists.
"So far the company has been working only for global customers because US and Europe still find it economical to outsource these services from India. In its area of expertise, Aurigene has a head start over others because of its Intellectual Property generated work, which makes many of the international companies, return to it with value added assignments. Now the company is ready to work for Indian companies, informed Murthy.