Direct-to-consumer whole-genome now in India - Personalized Genomics to your doorstep

Avesthagen launches commercial Whole Genome Scanning Bringing Personalized Genomics to your doorstep.


Avesthagen will use Affymetrix technology to decipher the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)/ mutation and predisposition to the disease. The DNA chip used by Avesthagen for whole genome scanning features more than 1.8 million markers of genetic variation that include SNPs as well as probes for copy number variation (CNV).


A whole genome scan of an individual would provide information to understand his/her own genetic make-up that would lead to an increased awareness about the predisposition to a disease(s). The diseases, which are offered by Avesthagen, include major types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, asthma, anemia, arthritis and others. The technology platform at Avesthagen is able to interrogate the genetic markers (SNPs and CNVs) across an individual’s genome to decipher the association of the markers to the diseases.


By employing a streamlined sample collection and delivery system, Indian customers will now have access to personalized genomics services, which until now were only available in the developed markets. Avesthagen will leverage its expertise in genomics technology and state-of-the-art high throughput facilities for carrying out genomic analysis. The facility can process 200 samples per month.


The whole genome scan will be carried out on DNA extracted from saliva / buccal swab provided by the individual. The collection kit for saliva can be ordered by writing a mail to info@avesthagen.com. The results of the analyses will be available to the individual through an on-line secure web portal. The entire process is completed in 15 days after receiving the sample at Avesthagen.


Do you wish to know more?

BIOCON, Inc., Pfizer Inc. In Potential $350 Million Insulin Licensing Deal

Creating an alliance to deliver insulin treatments worldwide, Biocon and Pfizer have entered into a global commercialisation agreement. Pfizer will make an upfront payment of USD 200 million in a licensing deal for Biocon’s biosimilar insulin portfolio for diabetes treatment. As per the agreement, Biocon will also be eligible to get additional payments of up to USD 150 million. These payments will be linked to sales of Biocon’s insulin biosimilars.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Vikas Dandekar of pharmasianews.com gave his perspective on the deal.

Excerpts from Reporter's Diary on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show »

Q: What do you make of this arrangement? First of all tell is what is the potential the market size as far as this insulin is concerned and what does this mean both for Biocon and Pfizer?

A: A number of biosimilars are scheduled to be launched in the European market. A number of trials are going on, on insulin and this is a big potential of about USD 4 to 6 billion in all of the total market. These are also for analogs of insulin. There is Glargine which is Lantus developed by Sanofi-Aventis. Then we have Novo Nordisk's Novolog which is Aspart. We also have Lispro which is Eli Lilly's product.

These are all very big products, very big companies which have dominated this insulin scenario for many years. Once the patents for all of these insulin expire, it will be a very big opportunity which Pfizer does not want to miss out right now.

So the question is how will Pfizer share the revenues. The fact that it has already committed a massive sum of about USD 200 million, the question is Biocon has a deal going on with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). So there will be a couple of issues there which have still not come out. Maybe from Biocon's side it will be explained later.

But all in all, it makes a very strong revenue projection for Biocon. There will be a lot of price issues because a number of companies are going to be launched. So those are a couple of doubts.

Q: Why do you think that Pfizer has actually chosen to go ahead with Biocon for this arrangement?

A: Biocon has developed a strong portfolio of the insulin and insulin analog. As I pointed out earlier that there are only 3-4 companies which have been dominating this insulin scenario - Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis and Eli Lilly.

Going forward being the largest company in the world and diabetic population is also going to rise, and also earlier in 2007 Pfizer actually failed in its oral insulin ambition when Exubera was called back because of certain adoption issues. So the ambition for Pfizer to be a strong player in diabetes remains that way.

Probably insulin is also something that is close to Biocon. They are also developing their IN105 which is the oral insulin. They have filed the IND (investigational new drug), and phase-III data is still awaited. Going forward there is a lot of potential that Biocon has in this particular segment. Probably this is what opens the doors for them.

Q: So this is the first kind of arrangement for Biocon as far as BMS is concerned?

A: No. Biocon has a very strong collaboration with BMS. They are working together on a large number of pre-clinical candidates through their Bangalore R&D centre. They also have some work going on insulin as well.

That will be a big question to be answered as to how this model is going to be shared if BMS is also one of the parties to be playing a role in this insulin opportunity. Also biosimilars is a wider opportunity for Biocon because Mylan has also got a deal with Biocon. So there are a number of big players which have got gravitated towards Biocon.

Do you want to know more?

Bioinformatics Workshops @ Lucknow

Workshop: Developing Bioinformatics applications with Bioperl 
Duration: 5 days, Registration Fee: Rs. 2000 /-  
Starting date: November 05 - 09, 2010 

Workshop: Biological sequence analysis
Duration: 3 days, Registration Fee: Rs. 1000 /-
Starting date: November 26 - 28, 2010 

Venue:The Bioinformatica Solutions,lucknow

Fee should be deposited through bank draft in the name of

"The Bioinformatica Solutions" payable at Lucknow. 

Follow this link to apply http://www.thebioinformatica.com/Registration.htm 

Opening at AstraZeneca for Senior Statisticians

AstraZeneca is searching for 10 qualified statisticians with experience in delivering statistical impact - one or two of these positions will be located in Lund, SE. A strong technical capability combined with well-developed communication, consultancy and influencing skills are essential pre-requisites to successfully perform these roles. Application deadline: February 12, 2009.

Be part of XTractor community.

• XTractor the first of its kind - Literature alert service, provides manually curated & annotated sentences for the Keywords of your choice
  
• XTractor maps, extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies
  
• Enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biologically significant relationships
  
• The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users
  
• Provides users with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms
  
• Users could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs
  
• XTractor thus proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate
  
  

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Opening for Scientist (Bioinformatics)

Designation: Scientist (Bioinformatics)

Qualifications: M.Sc/ PhD

Experience: M.Sc 3+ years / PhD 1+ years

The role offers an exciting opportunity to work alongside molecular biologists and experimental scientists on cutting edge platform technologies and customer projects. The primary role of the Scientist will be to assist in the analysis of gene expression data & genomics. Extensive knowledge of genomics and statistical analysis methods, as well as a solid foundation in biology, are therefore necessary. The role requires actively help, capture and refine requirements pertaining to specific customer's scientific use cases. Successful candidate will also be given freedom and encouragement to publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals, to further develop statistical techniques for data analysis, lead in-house product development programs and propose new initiatives.

Requirements:

• Candidates will have strong knowledge using—and coding functionality that interacts with—public nucleotide and protein sequence databases, sequence alignment software, and related computational genomic resources
• Strong background in sequence analysis, genome annotation, analysis of gene or protein expression, protein structure or docking prediction, comparative genomics is a must. A broad knowledge of statistics and statistical methods used in analyzing genomics data is preferred
• Others:
  

Able to work independently
Excellent interpersonal skills
Outstanding communications skills
Strong team spirit and commitment to success of all team members

Desirable:

• C# under the .Net Framework as well as Perl
• Knowledge of the R programming language
• Strong background in multi-univariate and Bayesian statistics, and some experience in machine-learning techniques (SVM, NN)
• We welcome expertise in Python, Ruby, Java, C++/C, and Matlab
• Understanding of scientific workflows, laboratory instrument interactions and scientific data
• Ability to discuss informatics software specifically, bioinformatics, chemo informatics, LIMS, SDMS, other Life Science analytical applications, at varying levels of detail
• Ability to gather market / prospect requirements and scientific use cases and contribute to effective implementation of scientific use cases in complex data environments
• Writing research papers, posters, participation in conferences seminars

HOW TO APPLY:
Qualified applicants should send their CV and have three references

Send it to Ms. Shilpa Ramdurg (preferably by e-mail) at shilpa.r@polyclonebio.com.

Address:
Polyclone Bioservieces Pvt. Ltd.

#47, 25th cross, 4th main,
Karesandra, BSK 2nd Stg,
Bangalore – 560070

Be part of XTractor community.

• XTractor the first of its kind - Literature alert service, provides manually curated & annotated sentences for the Keywords of your choice
  
• XTractor maps, extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies
  
• Enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biologically significant relationships
  
• The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users
  
• Provides users with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms
  
• Users could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs
  
• XTractor thus proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate
  
  

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Molecular Connections to acquire firm in Europe

The company provides database products to pharmaceutical companies for drug discovery and development. Betting big on the transition taking place in the global pharmaceutical industry, the company is now looking to grow through both inorganic and organic routes. Molecular Connections is a joint venture between Idea2solutions, a venture capital arm promoted by the founders of Dr Reddy's group and a bioinformatics research centre in Singapore. The mid-sized company has on its rolls about 200 employees with expertise in drug discovery, informatics and information technology.

With a view to gain newer customers and market access in Europe and Japan, Molecular Connections, headquartered in Bangalore, is planning to acquire a firm in Europe. The European firm, employing around 200, is a provider of bioinformatics for customers mainly in Europe and Japan. The deal, involving 100 per cent buyout of the European firm, would cost about $10 million to Molecular Connections. Molecular Connections has its corporate and development centre in Bangalore and a marketing office in London. It has its distribution network in Japan, the USA and Germany. The company is also planning to invest about $3-4 million to facilitate its growth through the organic route. It involves setting up offices in Europe and the US this year and opening a development centre in Singapore.

Do you want to know more?

Thermo Fisher Acquires Indian Analytical Instruments Firm

Thermo Fisher Scientific said after the close of the market on Monday that it has acquired Chemito Technologies, a Mumbai, India-based supplier of analytical instruments for life sciences and environmental monitoring applications.

Thermo Fisher said that Chemito has annual revenues of roughly $10 million and manufactures its own instruments for gas chromatography, atomic absorption, and UV-Vis spectroscopy. The Waltham, Mass.-based firm will integrate Chemito into its Analytical Technologies segment.

“The strong reputation Chemito has developed through its extensive sales network, now complemented by Thermo Fisher’s breadth of scientific and environmental instrumentation, extends the services we can provide to our customers throughout India,” Thermo Fisher President and CEO Marijn Dekkers said in a statement.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

Dr. Reddy’s Expands U.S. Presence with Purchase of BASF’s Contract Manufacturing Franchise

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories plans to acquire BASF’s pharmaceutical contract manufacturing business and related facility in Shreveport, LA. The transaction is expected to close by the first quarter of fiscal year 2009.

This segment of BASF involves the manufacturing of generic prescription and over-the-counter products for branded and generic companies in the U.S. It reportedly recorded revenues of $43 million for 2007.

A price tag of around US$1 billion to map human proteome

Ambitious plans to catalogue and characterize all proteins in the human body — a Human Proteome Project — are being drawn up by a small group of researchers. But with a price tag of around US$1 billion, some question whether the organizers can raise enough money or momentum for such an undertaking.

Project aims to characterize all human proteins. Talking about characterizing human proteins; there are several organizations working around the globe towards this initiative, spanning across both the public and commercial domains. Having missed out on HGMP, this time the industry in India is all geared up towards the mapping of human proteome.

Molecular Connections collaborates with Plasma Proteome Institute and with Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Proteomics & Biomarkers Research Group that would significantly aid them in the development of their new knowledgebase CliPro.

Dabur Sells Anticancer Business

Indian company Dabur India has sold its pharmaceutical division to German healthcare firm Fresenius Kabi. The asset mainly sells generic anticancer agents, and the purchase price was INR872 crore (US$219mn). BMI believes Dabur's real motivation behind the transaction was to focus on its core competency of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), rather than the official line. According to Dabur's founder and director, Anand Burman, Fresenius is much better equipped in terms of international marketing capabilities to realise the full potential of the division. By not selling, Dabur would have being doing a 'disservice to the shareholders', he added.