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C.R. Sukumar

HYDERABAD, April 22

INDIANS can in the near future hope to experience the benefits of `personalised medicine' with `signature drugs' and `guided missiles' acting on an individual's ailments, if the efforts of the Hyderabad-based Credence Laboratories to develop the technology platforms required for producing such drugs prove successful.

Tailor-made medicines mean, the drugs used on a patient suffering from, say, cardiac problem would be entirely different from those used on another patient with similar cardiac disorders.

This line of medical care would be drastically different from the existing treatment methods such as chemotherapy, which not only kills cancer cells but could also harm healthy cells. The proposed bio-pharmaceutical drugs would act as `guided missiles' — targeted to kill only the cancer-effected cells. The `tailor made' therapeutic drugs — derived from monoclonal anti-bodies and DNA vaccines — would be produced through genetic engineering and gene cloning, with the help of an ambitious programme of developing technology platform by the newly-started Credence Labs, its Chairman, Dr Jayaram Chigurupati, who has recently stepped down from the position of Chief of Dr Reddy's Laboratories Emerging Businesses strategic business unit, told Business Line.

Six years ago, Dr Jayaram started his contribution to Dr Reddy's Laboratories with small diagnostics business then built up the company's biotechnology, oncology and international branded formulations businesses. He is happy with his success at Dr Reddy's in various roles, from research and development to manufacturing to marketing.

"Biotechnology has been my core competency and my passion and the rich experience I gained at Dr Reddy's gives me an opportunity to do things on my own. That's how I floated Credence Labs," Dr Jayaram says.

He plans to focus on developing and building technology platforms for biotechnology products. "I always believed in technology platforms and my focus in the last six years at Dr Reddy's revolved around it. I strongly believe that technology platform is like a golden goose and once you have the golden goose, it keeps laying eggs. So, you need not worry about what product you need to produce. The technology platform continues to keep producing various products. My efforts for the next one year would be focussed on developing technology platform so that it starts releasing products from next year onwards."

The first technology platform that Credence Labs plans to focus on is biogenerics, an unmet need around the world. While admitting that several companies in the country and across the globe were putting efforts to develop technology platforms, Dr Jayaram said, "However, it is not a crowded business and in fact, an unexplored territory. There is a huge demand for biogenerics from the emerging markets and regulated markets."

Expression profiling, target identification, genotyping and pharmacogenomics are the other technology platforms that figure among the priorities of Credence Labs. "These are the future technologies that enable drug discovery. They are aimed at developing customised or personalised medicines. If you know your genotype, then it would become easy for you to select the drugs that suit you. This is going to be the business game for the global pharmaceutical industry."

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