Hyderabad: Startup incubated at UoH wins award

Gachibowli : ReaGene Biosciences, a startup company of ASPIRE-BioNEST incubator at the University of Hyderabad, has been identified as an emerging start-up company by an independent jury panel of ChemTech- Biopharma conference 2021.

The award is in recognition of the unique 3D models being developed by its group companies, such as ReaGene Innovations Pvt Ltd. These models are focused on discovery of new products for high value unmet diseases such as sepsis and COVID19.

To date, majority of preclinical research is conducted in animals for both efficacy and toxicity, however, proved to be poorly translated to clinical outcomes.

There is a strong need for better translational models to improve clinical translation and decrease clinical attrition rates.

Currently used in-vitro human single-cell static models do not mimic human physiology, cell-cell and organ-organ communications those play important role in drug efficacy and toxicity in humans in-vivo.

ReaGene mission is to build proprietary Humanized 3D proprietary tools containing multiple cell types of different organs to allow communications of different cell types and organs.

These models represent closest to human in-vivo condition recapitulating human physiology to measure efficacy and toxicity simultaneously and make informed decisions on clinical liabilities before moving drugs into clinical trials. These models are much superior to organoids and spheroids to mimic human physiology and communications.

The founders of ReaGene Biosciences, Dr. Uday Saxena, an alumnus of the University of Hyderabad and Dr. Subrahmanyam Vangala, expressed their happiness at the recognition and are hopeful that, these proprietary disruptive 3D bio printing platforms will revolutionize drug discovery research in India and rest of the world.

Both founders each have nearly 30 years of extensive experience in big pharma companies including Pfizer, Wyeth, JNJ, Purdue Pharma and Dr. Reddy's Labs in innovative drug discovery and drug development research.

ReaGene Biosciences has ongoing collaborations with Tech Mahindra, Issar Pharma, ProdigY on Sepsis and COVID projects using human vascular 3D lung model. Their larger mission is to apply these tools to elucidate disease pathways, identify novel drug targets, biomarkers, and discover novel drugs or re-purpose other drugs on market.

UoH-BioNEST is managed by ASPIRE (Association for Scientific Pursuits for Innovative Research Enterprises), a Section 8 not for profit organisation that manages all incubation and innovation activities in the campus.