HCL Tech lines up life sciences offering

HCL Technologies is finalising a product targeted at pharmaceutical companies working in the drug discovery area. "The product, 3D Qsar, is initially aimed at the Japanese market," Mukul Jain, head of research and development at HCL Technologies said while speaking on the company's tie up with IIT Delhi for collaborative research.

HCL Technologies has about 500 people working in its three-year-old life sciences division.

"The MoU with the 'Supercomputing Facility for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology' (SCFBio) at IIT Delhi to work collaboratively on high-end projects in the area of drug discovery and development including genomics and proteomics projects is a step forward in developing our capability on the functional side," Jain said emphasising that life sciences was as a very important vertical for HCL Technologies.

HCL plans to team up with premier Bioinformatics research institutions across the world to build fundamental capabilities and grow talent pool in India in this domain.

"We would look at jointly developing marketable products based on the research work done at IIT," Jain said. The company would also hire some scientists for its life science division in the future.

HCL is working with 6 of the top 10 leading global pharmaceutical companies including Novartis and Aventis. It currently provides tested solutions in areas like Pharmacogenomics, RFID-based drug counterfeit solutions, medical devices and diagnostics, contract manufacturing, and hospital information systems.

SCFBio is dedicated to developing novel scientific methods and new software for genome analysis, protein structure prediction and active site-directed drug design.

This partnership will also provide the researchers access to HCL's software development expertise.

"This MoU brings an opportunity for us to focus our R&D more concretely in meeting industry's requirements and standards," said Pankaj Sharma, Project Scientist & System Administrator, SCFBio IIT Delhi.

HCL has setup India's first network dedicated to Bioinformatics research - Biogrid. Currently twelve research institutes are using this network to collaborate on research projects.

This network would help the scientists and students across the country to access Supercomputing resources from any of these centres.

The centres that have been currently linked to Biogrid are IISc, University of Pune, IGIB, NII, NBRC, IIT Delhi, University of Delhi South Campus, Madurai Kamraj University, University of Pune, IMTech Chandigarh, JNU, CDFD and DBT.

These centers are pursuing R&D in bioinformatics besides disseminating biotechnology information to the researchers around the world.