TCS signs €1-million first of its kind drug discovery deal with Italy''s Cingenia

Our Corporate Bureau
05 August 2005

This is the first time an IT company has entered into an agreement to develop molecules. The Italian company has been promoted by Genextra SpA group of Italy.

M Vidyasagar, executive vice-president and head of the Hyderabad-based TCS Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) said, "This is a historic occasion for TCS, and the first contract for us where the deliverable is not a software code, but a molecule."

Vidyasagar said TCS was serious about entering the area of drug discovery, as the global pharma research and development market was about the size of $40 billion annually, and the addressable market was an estimated $6 billion a year.

The contract is worth over €1 million with a duration of 18 months and payments would be made based on the number of optimised lead molecules delivered. According to Vidyasagar, the agreement with Congenia would provide advanced fragment-based solution for drug discovery and had the potential of being ramped up in future. The research division of TCS'' life sciences department will work on "P66", identified by Congenia as a key protein involved in several age-related diseases, and will develop optimised drug leads based on this. This will be executed in the Advanced Technology Centre of TCS in Hyderabad, where the bulk of research and development work related to life sciences is done.

Genextra holds the patent for research and commercial utilisation of the gene P66 and has done pioneering work on the subject in Italy.

TCS would put in place a complete suite of offerings in the life sciences segment, including genomics and proteomics, database integration, drug discovery and preventive healthcare. It will screen a "virtual fragment library" of tens of thousands of potential lead molecules to predict which of these might bind themselves to the target protein and thereby inhibit its function.