The life sciences division of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is currently working on various new products such as Bio-cluster and Bio-appliance. TCS hopes to launch Bio-cluster by end of 2005 and Bio-appliance by February 2006, Dr M Vidyasagar, executive vice-president, Advanced Technology, TCS told Pharmabiz.

Bio-cluster seeks to provide computational biology software that harnesses the power of Linux clusters. Several computationally intensive algorithms with performance tuned for Linux clusters are currently being implemented. The product will include functionalities such as— fast database searching of sequences, molecular simulations and virtual screening of libraries of molecules for drug like properties. TCS aims at developing a cluster-based Bio-suite. Pharma companies will be benefited by Bio-cluster as the problems faced are usually complex in nature, he added.

Bio-appliance is an internally funded project and is aimed at integrating Bio-suite and Bio-cluster. It involves pre-processing and integrating the data with Bio-suite. This will find use for analytical purposes. Bio-suite and Bio-appliance combination can also be useful to companies, Dr Vidyasagar, added.

The company has found lot of scope in structure-based drug designing (SBDD), which is increasingly used to speed up drug discovery. The company has made its foray into early drug discovery with a contract from Congenia, an Italian biotech company. TCS will use its proprietary software Bio-suite to come up with drugs leads for Congenia. Thus, TCS will be involved in lead selection and optimization.

TCS has launched Bio-suite during November 2004, comprehensive portable and modular software for computational biology and bioinformatics. The suite includes a graphic user interface (GUI) with sequence and structure display and editing facilities. Bio-Suite implements well-established algorithms that are publicly available. Bio-suite has been a technology demonstration and is helping academic institutions. TCS has received some overseas enquiries too.

TCS has established the Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) in Hyderabad as part of the corporate R&D activity of TCS, and it complements the R&D activities undertaken by the Tata Research, Design and Development Centre (TRDDC) located in Pune. ATC has initiated research activities in various areas of Bioinformatics such as comparative genomics, gene prediction using machine learning approaches, identification of gene function, secondary & tertiary structure prediction of proteins, and analysis of protein-protein interaction surfaces.

TCS believes that diagnostics sector will find its products and services useful. Many diagnostics companies have already shown interest in TCS’s products, Dr Vidyasagar added.

As part of its expansion, the life sciences division is planning to increase its core R & D team from the current 24 to 60 in another 12 months. The delivery team will also be expanded depending on the number of projects, by comparable size, he mentioned.