Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd is expanding its business in Research Process Outsourcing by launching a few projects. Nearly 200 professionals will be required for these new projects and for the ongoing works. Avestha will also be moving to larger premises in the International Tech Park in Whitefield near Bangalore to accommodate the increasing number of staff. To support its expansions in business and infrastructure, Avestha plans to go in for an IPO in the next 18 months.

The company, which focuses on discovery-based biotech activities, is a regular supplier of reagents to pharma majors like Ranbaxy, Cipla, Suven Pharma and Glenmark. This provides these companies newer methods of assaying compounds through cell-based systems in their development of bio-pharmaceuticals.

"For new drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies must develop transgenic cell lines for certain genes," said Dr Villoo Morawala-Patel, founder and CEO Avestha Gengraine Technologies.

Avestha will focus on research and product development till clinical trials, while 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, she said.

Its holding company-Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which has already spun off three other companies -Avesthagen Research Pvt. Ltd. which is an RPO (research process outsourcing), Avesthagen Seed for Food (AQUAS) and Avesthagen Food for Medicine, known as Avesthagen Inc in the US- is raising $9 million from strategic investors, she informed.

The company has received Rs 2.75 crore under the New Millennium Initiative for Technology Leadership (NMITLI) grant from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), for pursuing its DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) research project. The product is expected to be out by 2006.

The company has filed five new patents in 2004 and the total number is expected to go up to 15 by the end of 2004.

The company has also gone in for research-based alliances with AstraZeneca Research India in drug discovery for tuberculosis and a collaborative initiative with BioMérieux, a US-based major in vitro infectious disease diagnostics for development of a diagnostic chip for latent TB. The collaborative programme with Cipla Ltd. is expected to result in the release of new generation of targeted therapies for auto-immune disorders.