The Hindu Business Line : Suven Life in talks with US co for drug discovery

The Hyderabad-based company has almost finalised the pact for joint research in central nervous system (CNS) segment, Mr Venkat Jasti, Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Suven Life Sciences, told Business Line here on Wednesday, while not disclosing the name.

“In addition, we are currently in talks with three more big players in the US for collaboration which are likely to be firmed up soon,” Mr Jasti said.

The company is at present collaborating with Eli Lilly on pre-clinical research of molecules in the therapeutic area of central nervous system (CNS) disorders.

The collaborative projects in the offing would yield long-term results. “There will be long term growth as they fund the project, pay certain fee to Suven upon discovery which would be followed by royalty on global sales of the product later,” he explained.

The discovery pipeline of the Rs 114-crore company (2006-07) includes a compound on Alzheimer’s which will be entering clinical trials in March, two on schizophrenia (in toxicology studies) and six in various phases of pre-clinical development.

“As a full-pledged biopharmaceutical company, we will be focusing more on discovery research through collaborative and in-house research. By 2010, we will have 25 collaborative research projects in association with global majors,” Mr Jasti said.

R&D centre

The company is in the process of setting up a greenfield R&D centre near Hyderabad with $30 million which will be operational by 2010. The number of scientists would also be doubled to 500 over next two years.

“Various options including equity dilution are being considered to raise $30 million. We are, however, in no hurry as we need funds over a period of time,” he added.

Suven had filed 29 product patents and nine process patents so far out of which five had been granted. “We are expecting more patents soon,” Mr Jasti said.

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