Contract research
Mission
To provide services to contribute to the realization of client's biotech business goals.
Services
To provide hands-on support in biotech
research projects, sustained by a strong scientific back up through consultancy
and process troubleshooting.
Our group is
very much capable of undertaking contract research projects sponsored by any
company, commercial organization or institution with a predefined work scope
and schedule. We will act as an extension of the sponsoring company's scientific
and engineering expertise, allowing it to leverage resources. We also can work
closely with companies to define project goals and tailor the project to meet
specific needs. Results will be strictly proprietary to the sponsor, and
customer satisfaction quality checks will be conducted immediately following
completion of all contract research projects. The thrust areas of our research
activities include
(a)
Bioremediation, Biomining & Biorefining - for combating environmental pollution by removing heavy metals
and radioisotopes from nuclear wastes and other industrial effluents, detecting
heavy metal and quantifying their concentrations using novel biosensor
technology, for recovering useful metals from ores and for refining fossil
fuels from sulfur and nitrogen.
(b)
Biodiagnostics and Biotherapeutics - for developing effective diagnostic kits for intractable diseases
and cloning in indigenously made vectors and expression of novel genes for
recombinant therapeutic proteins including novel combination of cytokines with
synergistic actions by using molecular biology and genetic engineering
techniques and also for better understanding and therapy against Malaria using
Molecular Immunology and Parasitology techniques.
(c)
Cell and Tissue Culture Technology - for expressing commercially important transgenic proteins of animal
and plant origin for their use as nutritional supplements, edible vaccines, biopesticides
etc. and for producing medicines from herbal extracts.
(d)
Bioprocess Development, Modeling and
Optimization - for the enhanced production and
purification of biotech products of commercial interest by developing suitable
mathematical models and by response surface optimization coupled with genetic
algorithms to facilitate process scale-up.
Consultancy and troubleshooting
BITS-Biotech
team of scientists is capable of providing consultancy to assist in problems
associated with routine quality control monitoring, design and implementation
of SOP's and test protocols in molecular biology and immunology, environmental
biotechnology, cell and tissue culture, bioprocess development, optimization
and scale-up, technology evaluation and assessment to facilitate critical
development and business decisions and also process troubleshooting in custom
bio-manufacturing of fermentation based biotech products using scientific
acumen, skill and bioinformatic tools. We are also able to provide consultancy
in clinical research, toxicological, bioequivalence and bioavailability studies
using the state-of-the-art animal house facility that is coming up.
We can also serve as an adjunct
laboratory to expand and assist in-house capabilities of our clients. On-site
consultations will be made available to resolve specific problems. We can also
design projects for our clients suiting their specific needs and market demand.
Specialised training to industrial personnel
Our team of
scientists is capable of conducting hands-on training programs and workshops in
modern biotechnology techniques involving RT-PCR, Cloning, Gel-Documentation, Microarrays,
2-D PAGE, ELISA, Atomic absorption spectral analysis, Radio-isotope labeling,
bioreactor design and operation for free and immobilized microbial, animal and
plant cells and enzymes, biochemical analyses using HPLC, GC, FTIR, Fluorescence
and UV-Visible spectroscopy etc. The trainees from biotechnology and
pharmaceutical industries and entrepreneurs will also be subjected to
Bioinformatics, one of our core areas, for genomics and proteomics for
establishing structure-function relationships of proteins and protein folding.
Biotech policy research, IPR issues and bioethics
Apart from research and
development activities, we also can offer and provide consultancy and support
in understanding and resolving complex research issues, which involve drafting
biotech policy for public and private enterprises, addressing issues related to
intellectual property rights and focusing on bioethical issues for proper
genetic resource management and conservation, maintenance of biodiversity and
market-driven biotechnology and bioeconomics. We believe that any biotech
policy should aim at deriving and harvesting maximum benefits from biotech
research for the mankind by enforcing certain stringent biosafety
and bioethical norms and regulations pertaining to GM crops/foods and human
cloning and to design a new structure for regulating and supervising research
on and the commercial use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We think
that therapeutic cloning involving microbes and embryonic stem cells for treating
intractable human diseases should be given green signal while completely
banning or forbidding human reproductive cloning. We encourage and advocate for
intellectual property protection through patents and copyrights following TRIPS
as passed and accepted by WTO countries including India. So we are capable
enough to guide and provide support and service to frame biotech policy, to
protect intellectual property of our prospective clients and to address
bioethical issues in right perspective.
