The Hindu Business Line : Japanese co picks stake in Strand Genomics

Dr Vijay Chandru, CEO, Strand Genomics (right), and Mr Ramesh Hariharan, Chief Technology Officer, at a press conference in Bangalore on Thursday. — G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , Sept. 16

BIOINFORMATICS company Strand Genomics today announced that Japan's MediBic Alliance has taken a minority equity stake in Strand.

MediBic Alliance is the investment arm of MediBic, a leading Japanese pharmacogenomics and life sciences consulting company.

The strategic investment for five years will help Strand to speed up its activities in informatics and modelling technologies, the Strand CEO, Dr Vijay Chandru, told a news conference. The company was looking at emerging fields such as molecular diagnostics, which is estimated to grow to $15 billion in the coming years.

The investment was not disclosed. However, post-funding, the Japanese company gets 10 per cent of stake in Strand, said Mr Yasuhiro Hashimoto, President & CEO of MediBic, in a teleconference.

Strand will also be their partner in putting together a virtual pharmaceutical discovery pipeline, Mr Ali R. Zareh, Chief of MediBic's US operations, added.

This would open up the Japanese market for consulting and bioinformatics. Along with access to data, it could lead to collaborations with Japanese pharma R&D industry, said the Strand Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Kas Subramanian.

Strand was increasing its focus on the chemistry side of its activities and building chemical libraries — of potential high-value drugs that were not there and that could be developed — and was talking to companies to market them. Such a market could be several million dollars.

With its latest product truPK set to push up revenue three-fold this year, Strand expected to turn cash positive this year, Dr Chandru said.

Strand, the first Indian bioinformatics company, was formed in 2000 as a spin-off of the Indian Institute of Science. It recently received $0.9 million from ICICI Spread Fund. Strand has also received $0.4 million under the CSIR's NMITLI grant and $1 million from the Technology Development Board. Since 2002, it also raised $4.6 million venture fund from West Bridge Capital Partners and UTI Venture Fund.

Among its partners and customers are Clinigene, Eli Lilly, Abgenix, Syrrx, Sequenom, which recently granted marketing rights for two of its products, and AstraZeneca Research Foundation for in-silico drug design.

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