Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has chalked a concrete plan of action to assist pharma majors like Ranbaxy, Cipla, Suven Pharma and Glenmark in their development of bio-pharmaceuticals by providing newer methods of assaying compounds through cell-based systems by offering reagents.

With the current focus among Indian majors to enter the drug discovery, Avestha has begun to share its expertise with pharma companies who are actually specialists in chemistry about novel technique of assaying compounds. “We will help to transfix cells with GPCRs (G-Protein Coupled Receptors) or with certain proteins that would easily bind into becoming a potential drug candidate", Dr Villoo Morawala-Patell, founder and CEO Avestha Gengraine Technologies told Pharambiz.com

For pursuing drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies need to develop transgenic cell lines for development of certain genes. As a part of the discovery process, it is also mandatory to prove that there is an expression in the genes. "Scientists now need to create a communication between the different cells through chemical signalling. Avestha has the expertise to assist the pharmaceutical majors by offering right reagents for the assays to aid cell binding," she stated.

The project to associate pharmaceutical companies took off early this year and is gaining ground. It is based on profitable revenue driven model. Under the terms of the sponsored research agreement, Avestha will focus on the research and product development all the way through clinical trials, while the pharmaceutical companies will concentrate on scale-up, marketing and distribution.

Avestha has the capacity and the technology-edge in the field and will continue to make investments in such models. Its holding company- Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd has already spun of three companies: Avesthagen Research Pvt. Ltd. which is an RPO (research process outsourcing), Avesthagen Seed for Food is called 'AQUAS' and Avesthagen Food for Medicine is known as Avesthagen Inc in the US, she informed.

Both the RPO wing -Avesthagen Research and Avesthagen Inc are in the process of raising $7.4 million $ 9 million respectively from strategic investors.

Some of the other promising and ongoing earlier research based alliances with AstraZeneca Research India in the drug discovery programme for tuberculosis and the collaborative initiative with BioMérieux, a US-based major in vitro infectious disease diagnostics, BioMérieux for development of a diagnostic chip for latent TB have been encouraging as far as results of research findings go.

The recent collaborative programme with Cipla Ltd. is expected to result in the release of new generation of targeted therapies for auto-immune disorders. It would also to cater to research for drugs in cardio vascular diseases and cancer. The release of the first bio-therapeutic is expected in two to three years time.

The three-year-old Avestha registered a turnover of Rs. 5 crore ending December 2003 and is growing at 200 per cent per annum. There is a massive recruitment expected to increase its current manpower strength from 120 to 200 by end of 2004. To support its expansions in business and infrastructure, Avestha plans to go in for an IPO in the next 18 months, added Dr. Patell.