The Hyderabad-based Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) said it has installed 'Pre-Biotechnology Process Generator' (PBPG) with auxiliary facilities for cell culture, media preparation and related downstream services.

The IICT officials said that the facilities created in the PBPG is first of its kind in Andhra Pradesh. "It is very much useful to support the biotech projects as this is an essential component of BTIC (Biotechnology Incubation Centre) to prove bench scale technology with process viabilities to its clientele".

PBPG, the state of art equipment, would be made available to the prospective biotechnology institutes for carrying out bench scale process and product development in the area of biotechnology. The facility was being presently used for enzyme purification, biotransformation of acrylonitrile to acrylic acid employing nitralases, lipse-mediated resolution of pharmaceutically important intermediates to obtain them in their optically pure forms, officials said. Some of the first level scale up laboratory process that had been developed in-house and as well as in collaboration with industry would be improved in BTIC.

Besides, the IICT had initiated process towards drug development in the areas of cancer and arthritis. Project on design and synthesis of new chemical entities as inhibitors towards anti-arthritis was being processed. More than 200 different skeleton compounds were being synthesized and evaluated for their biological activity for exploring their therapeutic potential.

The IICT was now partnering with EVOLVA, a Switzerland based company, to facilitate synthesis of several analogues for lead compounds. They would be screened for various activities, such as anti-fungal, anti-cancer, etc.