Entering into the collaboration with Corning allows Advinus, the pharma R&D unit of India-based Tata group, to use the Epic technology for service provision and its in-house activities. Bringing the technology to India will increase its use in the region’s growing drug discovery sector.
“This collaboration on Corning’s Epic technology emphasises Advinus' commitment to set up unique pharma R&D services in India and to explore new and cutting-edge technologies to enhance our drug discovery capabilities”, said Kasim Mookhtiar, chief scientific officer at Advinus.
The technology has applications in: high-throughput primary and secondary screening; toxicology, pharmacological profiling; adsorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME); and G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pathway identification and validation.
Indian expansions
Expansion of drug discovery operations is planned at Advinus, moving the company into new therapeutic fields, plus formulation development and expanded toxicology capabilities are in the pipeline.
For Corning the deal makes the Epic technology, which uses biochemical detection and cellular analysis to give biological data, more accessible to life science researchers in an emerging region.
"This collaboration is in line with Corning's strategy of bringing innovative technology to India through collaborations with leading Indian companies", said Rustom Desai, president of Corning India.
Epic technology
Corning Epic is a high-throughput label-free screening platform that uses optical biosensors to identify targets, pathways and interactions. Epic performs label-free biochemical cell-based assays in a 384-well microplate at throughputs of up to 40,000 wells in eight hours.
The optical biosensors measure the aggregate response of cellular signal transduction process at a sensitivity that allows biologically relevant cells, such as stem cells, and engineered cells to be measured.