CONTRACT RESEARCH
Contract research and bioinformatics – a global perspective
TCG Lifesciences Limited is a provider of contract research services and informatics with a focus on preclinical outsourcing and drug discovery operations in India, the USA, Europe, Japan and Australia. In an exclusive interview, Swapan Bhattacharya, the company’s managing director, gives his perspective on international trends in outsourcing of R&D in the life sciences sector.
TCG Lifesciences (TCGLS) started operations in Kolkata, India in 2001 and has since grown to a size where it has a global footprint. Starting as a chemistry outsourced services company, it evolved into an integrated drug discovery services company and now partners in discovery programmes with global pharma and biotech companies. It is part of the New York, USA-based global investment conglomerate The Chatterjee Group (TCG), founded by Dr Purnendu Chatterjee, a leading global investor. “TCG Lifesciences originated in line with the chemistry outsourcing model that developed in the 1990s to tackle productivity issues and the high cost of drug discovery and development,” says Swapan Bhattacharya, the company’s managing director. “Realising India’s potential to assist the global pharma industry in addressing the discovery and development challenges being faced by them, TCGLS was structured in a manner to connect India’s extensive scientific talent with the scientific leadership and management
expertise of the West.” TCGLS’ discovery research facilities include high-end chemistry and biology facilities including animal facilities, a modern electrophysiology lab, BSL 2 and 3 labs, and cGMP facilities at its R&D centres in Kolkata and Pune, India. In addition, its subsidiary Clininvent is located in Mumbai, India and its Labvantage business is headquartered in New Jersey, USA. Labvantage is now the world’s second-largest laboratory information management system (LIMS) company.
New paradigm for drug discovery and development
“TCGLS offers a new paradigm for drug discovery and development with seamless integration ‘from bench to bedside and back’, meaning it has the capability to assist in translational research projects by combining the skill sets of its three divisions,” says Bhattacharya. “From the business strategy point of view, by recognising the future needs of the pharma industry, TCGLS has
developed an integrated research platform that will connect chemistry, biology, clinical research and bioinformatics to pursue research, together leading to cost containment by reducing failure rates and speeding up the discovery and development process.”
New capabilities, new deals Recently, TCGLS entered into a strategic agreement with JSW Lifesciences, an EU- based CRO, to strengthen its R&D offerings in the area of central nervous system diseases. “This collaboration will add a new dimension to TCGLS’ present offerings in the integrated drug discovery domain” says Bhattacharya. This year, TCGLS, its clinical partner Prince Aly Khan Hospital, Mumbai, and academic partner Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, have been funded by the Government of India (CSIR) to discover and validate new biomarkers for head and neck cancer in India. TCGLS has also signed a three-year contract with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) to provide its scientists and researchers with unlimited access to CAS’s SciFinder to help the company grow its position as a CRO in drug discovery and development. “Our scientists now have on- demand access to the largest collection of small molecules and related information, including references to millions of peer- reviewed research papers and patents. SciFinder gives our researchers the insight they need to produce the flagship laboratory data for which we are known,” says Bhattacharya.
A researcher in one of the chemistry labs at TCG Lifesciences. 30 sp2
November/December 2011
Another development at the company was a strategic alliance with Japanese company Carna Biosciences Inc to collaborate and provide jointly high-end drug discovery services focusing on kinase targets to the global pharma and biotech sector. “CarnaBio and TCGLS possess complementary capabilities and, by virtue of this alliance, we expect to jointly address the research and development needs of existing and future
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