Expecting a cumulative of three success stories in systems biology for the current financial year, the Bangalore based Cellworks Research India Pvt Ltd is expanding its operations in India, US and Europe in the second half of 2008. The company is in talks with various investment firms to raise funds to the tune of Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore within six months, for the expansion.

Cellworks will set up an applications team to carry the systems biology services to the client's research sites in India, apart from opening sales channels in US and Europe as the part of business expansion. The company, which currently runs in silico R&D operations in India with staff strength of 65, will add 25 more people in domestic operations including 18 in R&D and another five to eight staff in US in 2008.

Currently, headquartered in California, Cellworks is planning to establish sales channel in Northern America as the first part of business expansion in US. "Once established, the channel will provide a substantial business for us from the US pharmaceutical clients. Within six months of establishing operations in US, we would spread our operations to Europe," said Taher Abbasi, CEO &COO, Cellworks Group Inc.

The expansion works will gain momentum after announcing the success stories on the current projects, in which a project is from a major multinational pharmaceutical company based in India. The company, which has already announced a success story with the collaborative NCE research with Chennai-based Orchid Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals, is expected to complete two more projects successfully in the next two months.

"We have commenced our operations as a self funded company 18 months ago and carried out a minor fund raising programme in early 2007, to complete the establish a full fledged technology platform for systems biology. Now we are concentrating on bringing up success stories in collaboration with various companies, before expansion. Our goal is to collaborate with a total of six to eight logos in 2008, either with Indian or international pharmaceutical companies," averred Abbasi.

With its facility in Bangalore, the company is offering in silico platform based on systems biology to develop a disease physiology aligned virtual experimental system to differentiate a promising and successful molecule in the pre-clinical study itself. The method would help the companies to reduce the number of experiments to cut the experimentation cost to almost 30 per cent.