Indigene Pharmaceuticals P. Ltd, with operations in Hyderabad and the US, was in the news recently when the Tata Group picked up equity stake in the company as part of its foray into biotechnology. This four-year old integrated biotechnology and bioinformatics company focuses on convergence between pharmaceuticals and clinical genomics, leading to preventive personalized medicine.

Chemical Weekly caught up with Indigene Pharmaceuticals’ Chairman and CEO, Dr. M. Vaman Rao to know more about the company and its tie-up with the Tata Group.

Dr. Rao has a proven record of managing and leading the growth of technology, strategy, business development, and operations across the value chains of global pharmaceutical and life sciences companies in Europe, Japan, and the US. He founded LifeTecNet and served as its Chairman and CEO until the end of 2001. Prior to launching LifeTecNet, Dr. Rao successfully led and managed the worldwide synthesis business of PE Corporation/PerSeptive Biosystems (USA). At Cruachem Ltd. In the UK, he was responsible for global business activities and served as a member of the Board of Directors for over three years. Dr. Rao has also served on several policy and decision-making committees in the UK and in the US.

Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about Indigene Pharmaceuticals, its business model and how it differs from the conventional Pharma model? Indigene is a rapidly growing biopharmaceutical company with operations in the US, Europe and India and is structured to fully leverage the advantages of globalization. The company was founded in 2002 with a mission to develop and deliver innovative safe and effective molecular combination based drugs, which we call ‘Multiceutics’. We have brought together a leadership team with global Pharma/biotech experience, proprietary knowledge base, technology platform and leading partners who share our vision. Leveraging our core strengths in product discovery, product development and marketing, we have built a sustainable pipeline of innovative products. Our products are targeted for global prescription and consumer healthcare markets.

The primary rationale for our ‘Multiceutics’ development approach is that most diseases and symptoms are due to asynchronous function of multiple biological pathways in the human body. Molecular combinations are optimized to work simultaneously on multiple pathways that are associated with diseases and symptoms in the human body. ‘Multiceutics’ = Multiple molecules >> targeting Multiple pathways >> addressing Multiple symptoms >> delivering Multiple benefits – is the best way to describe it.

This is different from the classical Pharma industry approach of using a single molecule to target a single pathway and the resulting product may not necessarily deliver the optimal solution.