GVK Bio, Takeda Pharma in JV for drug research

GVK Biosciences and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company have joined hands in a novel partnership. It’s a bold attempt to recycle shelved or failed drugs and find new indications.

The confidence to venture into this comes from the GRIP-GVK Bio Repurposing Integrated Platform. It is a combination of repurposing database, 8 different algorithms, analytics tools and a visualisation engine, says Nandu Gattu, Vice-President and leader of the group.

After initial successes, the two have agreed to evaluate the pre-clinical proof of concept for certain indications of select therapeutic compounds to develop novel indications for the previously failed compounds, he said.

There are more than 200 drugs in the market, which have been repurposed or recycled with a totally new indication, after their initial failure either at Phase-2 or 3 or totally shelved. The market is also estimated to be over $10 billion, he told Business Line.

GVK Bio has leveraged its over a decade long experience and expertise in drug discovery and working with global majors to develop the GRIP. "With Takeda, we have taken a number of their failed compounds are working on potential, alternate indications", he added.

The Hyderabad-based company plans to leverage the strengths of the platform to approach major pharma companies and work with their failed or shelved compounds. In a way success here can recoup big losses or investments in the initial drug discovery research, which is risky, he said.

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