TCG Lifesciences to Foray Into Bio-Tech Medicine

TCG Lifesciences, a Kolkata-based contract Research organization (CRO), will foray into the field of bio-tech medicine in the next two years.

"We are a chemistry based drug research company but we plan to venture in the field of bio-tech medicines in the two years. The bio-tech segment is an emerging market which has been witnessing explosive growth," company managing director Swapan Bhattacharya said.

"Most of the drug companies are mainly focused in the field of chemistry based medicines, but we think bio-tech is a challenging sector and we are preparing ourselves to enter it," he said.

The company, which provides contract research services along with clinical research and laboratory informatics also announced the nomination of a pre-clinical development candidate (candidate) under a R&D collaboration it entered with pharma giant Pfizer Inc. in 2009.

"The candidate is a small molecule new chemical entity developed by us. We have now handed over it to Pfizer which undertake the further research in developing the new molecule into a drug," Bhattacharya said about the 'candidate'.

The new molecule has been developed by a team of 40 scientists in two years. The new component has been tested on animals by the company and has '15 percent of probability to become a drug.'