NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Shantinagar, Karnatka, India, 01/07/2008 - Cellworks Research India Ltd, the R&D wing of CA based company Cellworks Group Inc and the first company in Asia to build Systems Biology based drug discovery solutions has successfully helped Orchid Chemicals & & Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Cellworks.

Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Cellworks entered into a collaborative agreement in early 2006 with an aim of incorporating new technologies to New Chemical Entity (NCE) research program being initiated by Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Cellworks with its expertise in Systems Biology leveraged its Inflammation in silico platform comprising of various cell types like Macrophage and T-Cell. The aim behind this project was the identification of mechanism of action of key drugs being used in Industry to treat Inflammation disorders. Getting a clear understanding of the underlying Drug Mechanism and associated toxicities were the driving factors behind this project.

This collaborative research helped in understanding the comprehensive pros and cons of the various drug targets and mechanism. Cellworks technology of automated assertion helped in the identification of the key cellular-level bio-markers in the system for each of the drugs individually and in combination and their corresponding implications. Using Cellworks platform of Systems Biology made it possible to overlay the effect of all the drugs and visualize how a given biological node or an endpoint is affected by the different drugs.

According to Dr.C. Bhaktavatsala Rao, Deputy Managing Director, Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd. - “The need to understand the detailed mechanisms of actions, biological targets and associated pros and cons of the landscape of key drugs is essential for a differentiated New Molecule Entity project. We've been closely working with the Cellworks solution for one of our key internal Drug Discovery projects and were able to quickly ascertain which biological receptor target to focus on. We believe that the adoption of the Systems Biology platform from Cellworks will significantly improve our overall Drug discovery methodology. Close collaboration with Cellworks expands our disease biology skills and enables us to deliver better efficacy drugs with contained side-effects to our customers”.

According to Dr. Anandkumar, Chairman Board of Cellworks Research India Ltd – “The collaboration between Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Cellworks is ongoing in different drug discovery areas pertaining to Inflammation. It’s very exciting to note than an India based company is taking the lead in incorporating bleeding edge ideas into drug discovery related Research and Development. On behalf of Cellworks – we really appreciate this partnership opportunity and look forward to building up this collaborative research in coming years.”

According to Taher Abbasi, CEO of Cellworks – “We are today working with several partner-collaborators and it is gratifying to see that our very first Industrial overture is starting to produce high value results. We are very happy at providing value to Orchid’s Drug discovery program and in the process Cellworks has taken a leadership position in very important but poorly understood areas like disease progression”.

About Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals
Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd a globally recognized, integrated pharmaceutical company with core competencies in the development and manufacture of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and Finished Dosage Forms as well as in drug discovery. Orchid has been investing aggressively for establishing modern research and manufacturing facilities aimed at global markets, thus emerging as a world-class pharmaceutical company covering the entire value chain from “Discovery to Delivery”.

About Cellworks
Cellworks Group Inc. is a California Incorporated company with its R&D facility (Cellworks Research India Ltd) based in Bangalore, India. Cellworks adopts a multi-disciplinary and analytical approach to solve biological problems and is part of a new technology wave that will change people’s perception of the diagnosis and treatment of human disease.

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