The Hyderabad-based Celestial Labs Ltd., an ISO 9001:2000 certified company, providing customized enterprise solutions, bioinformatics services, has developed 'Celsuite,' a computer aided Drug Design Tool.

Celsuite consists of two modules. The first module is a collection of programs useful in prediction of Active Site, when given the 3D coordinates of a target protein (MAZE CRACKER) and a ligand-building program called INLIB. These programs are supported by a Visualizer for visual inspection of bio-molecules and the results from the programs.

The other module is "Insilico Predictive Toxicity" module. The idea behind the development of this module is to supersede the disadvantages in the existing established approaches, viz., Expert Systems and Linear Free Energy Relationships.

Being an innovative product, the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India, has part funded the product development, AN Singh, managing director, told Pharmabiz.

By using the tool, Celestial has developed the peptide drug through rDNA techniques. The drug for vitiligo shall be ready in a year's time for licensing. The company is in talks with the US and UK based bio-pharmaceutical companies. Clinical trials are currently in progress, Singh informed.

Further, while strengthening the fermentation expertise, Celestial has acquired industrial biotech products technology like Alpha Amylase and Alkaline Protease from IMTECH, Chandigarh (a CSIR institute) for manufacturing and marketing.