Bangalore: Three Indian companies are forming a consortium, combining biotechnology domain expertise with hardware and software skills, to market services in bioinformatics to pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe.

Biotech major Biocon's subsidiary Syngene has got into a strategic partnership with California Digital (India) and an Indian Institute of Science (IISc) start-up, Strand Genomics, in a bid to get a slice of the $ 250 million global bioinformatics market that is expected to multiply to $ 3 billion in the next four years.

“Each of us complements the other. The domain knowledge of Syngene with the hardware and partly software skills of California Digital and the software solutions of Strand Genomics are a rare combination. Even six months makes a difference in testing or modeling a molecule for drug research,” Rajeev Gowda, founder and director of California Digital (India) told reporters.

“Pharmaceutical companies abroad have to set up bioinformatics units because of the large amount of data that is generated for molecule research in the drug discovery process. Not all of them can afford such units and even those who have such units will need to outsource that work.

“We step in there to provide services,” says Gautam Das, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Syngene, a $ 5 million contract research subsidiary of the Biocon group.

The strategic alliance comes in the wake of information technology (IT) professionals not finding the field of bioinformatics attractive enough so far to join biotechnology companies.

In an obvious move to fill this gap in the biotechnology companies, California Digital Corporation, founded by Indian American B J Arun, and others set up a life sciences group that would provide its parallel supercomputers for Syngene's domain expertise with the software solutions provided by Strand Genomics.

Syngene has already signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with California Digital as well as Strand Genomics, while California Digital signs another MoU with the IISc start-up.

This is the first major signing of a MoU against the backdrop of Bangalore Bio.com 2001, a trade and exhibition initiative of the Karnataka government to make Bangalore the biotechnology capital of India.

India Abroad News Service Bangalore: Three Indian companies are forming a consortium, combining biotechnology domain expertise with hardware and software skills, to market services in bioinformatics to pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe.

Biotech major Biocon's subsidiary Syngene has got into a strategic partnership with California Digital (India) and an Indian Institute of Science (IISc) start-up, Strand Genomics, in a bid to get a slice of the $ 250 million global bioinformatics market that is expected to multiply to $ 3 billion in the next four years.

“Each of us complements the other. The domain knowledge of Syngene with the hardware and partly software skills of California Digital and the software solutions of Strand Genomics are a rare combination. Even six months makes a difference in testing or modeling a molecule for drug research,” Rajeev Gowda, founder and director of California Digital (India) told reporters.

“Pharmaceutical companies abroad have to set up bioinformatics units because of the large amount of data that is generated for molecule research in the drug discovery process. Not all of them can afford such units and even those who have such units will need to outsource that work.

“We step in there to provide services,” says Gautam Das, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Syngene, a $ 5 million contract research subsidiary of the Biocon group.

The strategic alliance comes in the wake of information technology (IT) professionals not finding the field of bioinformatics attractive enough so far to join biotechnology companies.

In an obvious move to fill this gap in the biotechnology companies, California Digital Corporation, founded by Indian American B J Arun, and others set up a life sciences group that would provide its parallel supercomputers for Syngene's domain expertise with the software solutions provided by Strand Genomics.

Syngene has already signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with California Digital as well as Strand Genomics, while California Digital signs another MoU with the IISc start-up.

This is the first major signing of a MoU against the backdrop of Bangalore Bio.com 2001, a trade and exhibition initiative of the Karnataka government to make Bangalore the biotechnology capital of India.

India Abroad News Service

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