Jubilant Chemsys, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jubilant Life Sciences and a leading  drug discovery research services organizations, has announced an extension of collaborative partnership with Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), a not-for profit Foundation  for TB drug discovery. The additional grant of $3.4 million will enable to develop new drugs to combat tuberculosis. The Foundation recently awarded $3.4 million to IDRI.

The collaboration in chemistry support has been in existence since 2009 as part of a joint effort with the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative (LTI) and so far has generated hundreds of Novel Chemical Entities (NCEs) – some of which have now been identified for further exploration. Jubilant Chemsys, under the terms of agreement, so far had been offering philanthropic support and expertise in synthesis of NCEs to support the early research in TB.

Commenting on the collaboration, Dr Subir Basak, president, Jubilant Drug Discovery Services, said that our partnership with IDRI is to identify and discover novel chemical entities in the area of tuberculosis. We are glad that the collaboration is leveraging our chemistry talent and experience in anti-bacterial research. The research outcome will address the current unmet medical need in the field of TB therapy - a growing concern in under developed and developing economies including India.

“We have been impressed with the commitment and engagement from Jubilant Chemsys in support of TB drug discovery over the past few years.  We are excited to expand our efforts with them to access additional synthetic and medicinal chemistry capabilities. This will take us another step closer to our goal of developing much-needed new drugs to combat tuberculosis”, said Dr Tanya Parish, vice president of drug discovery, IDRI.

IDRI is a founding member of both the LTI and the TB Drug Accelerator, a unique partnership funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that targets the discovery of new TB drugs by collaborating on early-stage research.

“Jubilant has been extremely successful in advancing several validated hit series for the Lilly Initiative, and we are very pleased to see this progress recognized through the ability to expand the Jubilant collaboration with IDRI.  We are very grateful to Jubilant for all they have done to get us to this point, and look forward to reaching our goals through this expanded partnership,” said Dr Philip Hipskind, Lilly, Distinguished Research Fellow and Leader of the Lilly Initiative.