Advinus Therapeutics, a Tata company, has announced that it is about to initiate clinical trials for a potential drug molecule to eventually treat diabetes.
This will be done after its first Investigational New Drug Application (IND) is approved by the the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).
Rashmi Barbhaiya, CEO and MD, Advinus, said the company had filed its IND last week for a molecule to treat Type-2 diabetes and expects to commence Phase-1 clinical trials after approval. “We may have attained a potential breakthrough. This is a first-of-its-kind effort taken by an Indian company. We should be receiving the final approval in three months, after which we will begin with our human trials,” he said. The company might take anywhere from 5 to 10 years to develop the drug.
This drug has already been tried on animals, which was successful and now post-approval, the company will be conducting trials on humans.
The molecule, from which an oral administration medicine will be made, was developed at the company’s Pune facility in three years and was later developed by the company’s drug development facility in Bangalore. The Pune facility is working on several other drug development programmes for diseases, including inflammation and malaria.
The company also has collaborative research agreements with companies like Merck and Johnson and Johnson, among others. The research programmes are carried out by conducting joint research for certain set targets of these companies. The company is also in talks with universities in Europe and the US to develop their research projects into products.
Advinus also announced that it has just commissioned new drug discovery facilities in Pune.