Avesthagen launches community genealogical project for novel therapies

Our Corporate Bureau
20 March 2007

Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd., (Avesthagen) a leading biotechnology company today announced the launch of the trademark protected AvestaGenome project, a unique project to build a complete genetic, genealogical and medical database of the Parsi community.

In today's biotechnology driven medical care the quest for new, more effective therapies and diagnostic tools have become essential to understand linkages between genes, diseases and environmental factors. Avesthagen hopes to use the database information arising out of this project to provide information on these linkages for other communities.

The project results will find application in disease prediction and accelerate the development of new therapies and diagnostics.

Parsi Zoroastrians, who now number about 69,000 in India, down from around one lakh in the '80s are an in-bred population resulting out of religious proscription against inter-community marriages. Such in-bred populations are required to more accurately implicate inherited genes for diseases.

Avesthagen and its partners will collect samples from members of the community along with complete genealogical and medical information. The samples will be processed through the highly sophisticated genomics facility at Avesthagen, equipped with high-speed polymorphism analysis systems (Sequenom, USA's MassARRAY) and ABI sequencers to identify the causative genes. The data will be statistically analysed through Avesthagen's bio-informatics channels for processing and creation of the database.

Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, founder and managing director, Avesthagen said, "AvestaGenome is a pathbreaking project which would be instrumental to establish linkage between genes, disease and environmental factors. It would help us predict diseases and would play a catalytic role in development of new therapies and diagnostics."

This Rs 125 crore project is expected to be completed within five years and is being implemented by a body of eminent stakeholders and opinion leaders within the Parsi community,  comprising leading industrialists, clinicians, scientists and others. Avesthagen will bring in seed capital in the form of its high throughput genomics and bioinformatics facilities and other special expertise.