The country's first government- institution- industry partnership project in genome research has turned operational with Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), New Delhi and Chatterjee Group, Kolkotta announcing the establishment of "The Centre for Genomic Application (TCGA) Core Share Facility at the new premises of IGIB in Delhi. The TCGA is offering its research facilities to all other R&D institutes on a sharing basis. The centre is to take up contract work in sequencing, genotyping, protein sequencing and finger-printing, primer design and synthesis and expression profiling using micro arrays as well as provide incubation facilities for biotechnology start-ups.

This is the first time, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has involved a private sector company in developing a national facility for basic research in biotechnology. The centre is the sixth national facility developed through the Drugs & Pharmaceutical Research Programme (DPRP) of DST and the first one in the country to be set up through a private-public initiative.

TCGA, a Rs 26-crore project, has been developed on the land provided by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

TCGA is expected to help Indian scientific community utilize state of the art facilities without really owning it. Among the sophisticated machines in the centre is the Sequenom Mass Array, it is learnt.

With the advent of genomics and proteomics, custom-based laboratory services and products is estimated to be worth approximately Rs 100 crore with a 30 per cent growth year-on-year predicted over the next five years --meaning the market would be worth Rs 300 crore in '06-07.

The Chatterjee Group will have the "first right to commercialize" certain applications developed through TCGA research.