Indian scientists-turned-entrepreneurs at Strand Lifesciences crack the genetic code to save lives

by Peerzada Abrar,ET Bureau 

A seven-year-old Japanese boy suffered from a neuromuscular disorder that impaired the functioning of his muscles. Since the age of two, he had trouble releasing his grip or in getting up from a sitting position, which rendered him immobile. Japanese doctors suspected that he was suffering from a rare genetic disorder characterised by abnormalities of the skeletal muscles, including muscle weakness and stiffness.

However, a clearer picture emerged when they used a software application built by a Bangalore-based bioinformatics firm Strand Life Sciences. Avadis NGS, a data mining and visualisation platform, helped doctors to make a rapid analysis of the boy's genome mutations after sequencing his DNA. They identified the biology responsible for the disorder and the correct medication was given.

"Human DNA is around three-billion-letters long and in that you have to search for a few letters of mutation," says Vijay Chandru, chief executive of Strand Lifesciences, who co-founded the firm with Ramesh Hariharan, Swami Manohar, and V Vinay over a decade ago.

The co-founders were all professors at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Unlike many academicians, their approach to biological research has been extremely practical. This helped them to become financially successful lifesciences entrepreneurs.

As academicians, besides taking consulting projects for the industry, they also developed various technologies at the institute. Among them was Simputer, a hand-held computer released a decade ago as a low-cost alternative to personal computers.

The entrepreneurship bug bit the professors, when salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group head Ratan Tata, who is also the IISc court president, in his address said that though scientists were doing good work, that was not translating into private enterprises. After negotiations with the administration, they turned Strand into a spin-off from the IISc - India's first example of sanctioned faculty entrepreneurship in a public institution.

Soon, they bagged a contract from Boston-based biotech firm Genomics Collaborative. Genomics, which was headed by Michael J Pellini, now chief executive of Foundation Medicine, wanted an elaborate system that would collect and analyse half a million samples of nucleic acids or biological molecules essential for known forms of life on this planet.

When Strand started, it was already earning revenues of half-a-million dollars. Strand then moved up the value-chain and built a technology platform named Avadis, a software that could access, visualise, analyse and discover to solve data problems in biotechnology. To scale up its operations, it raised a total of $5.5 million from investors - UTI Venture Fund, Westbridge Capital Partners and a Japanese strategic investor.

However, the biggest challenge for the entrepreneurs was not fundraising, but the terrorist attack that happened at IISc in 2005, when Dr Chandru suffered grievous bullet injuries in both arms and chest.

Strand was in the middle of some critical product deliveries and was planning to enter the US market, when the incident occurred.

"However, my colleagues at Strand and co-founders stepped up to the plate and ensured that the company ran smoothly in my absence," said Chandru, who remained out of action for almost a year to recuperate. Strand has seen its margins go up by 15-20% in fiscal 2012 and now has a strength of 150 employees, many of whom have Phd and IIT-degrees.

Today, Strand's tools are being used by 2,000 laboratories all across the world, including Karolinska Institute in Sweden, one of Europe's largest medical universities and USA's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, focused on nuclear and basic science. The other top laboratories include University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Koch Institute, a cancer research centre affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.