India holds a huge potential for driving the whole genomics industry: Tony Jose, Clevergene – ETHealthworld.com

Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Tony Jose, Co founder and CEO, Clevergene, to know more about current trends in Genomics and the opportunities it offers amidst challenges in India.

Genomics MarketGenomics is a comparatively new field, it has been just 10 years since this field has come into existence. If you really look at the Indian Market for Genomics, its just about 500 cr. This comprises of the discovery genomics as well as the Genetic Diagnostics which is driven by genomics.

If you really look back, 5 years, Genetics was really nonexistent with about 2-3 players, but today we have about 13-14 companies that are operating in this space, both in the discovery genomics as well as the genomics driven diagnostics space. Of these companies, we have 3-4 companies which have the capability and infrastructure to lead this space.

The universities and the academia should also develop the skills that are important for driving this whole industry. When I talk about the skillsets, I am talking about an interdisciplinary team of molecular biologist, Geneticist genomics experts, statisticians and such being trained and given to the industry.

There are mixtures form various races throughout our history and that also gives us a background for looking for Biomarkers to drive diagnosis for personalized medicine and even for drug development so I believe that the country should really grab the opportunity and work towards making India the leader in Genomics for the world.

Clevergene: Journey so farI started my career as a genomics scientist with training at Delhi university. I also had the opportunity to establish the very first high thruput DNA sequencing lab in the country and managed that for about 4 years. This was before I really understood the potential of this field and thought about starting myself. Back in 2013 I didnt have the wherewithal to start a full-fledged genomics laboratory and therefore I started a consulting firm and slowly and steadily we started this company by attracting highly talented individuals. We all come with a basic foundation in human genetics, and this gives us a uniqueness in driving this whole field.

Initially we got into certain strategic tie-ups with publicly funded academic institutions which gave us the infrastructure that is required. We went on to acquire another company which was reasonably funded by equity swapping which gave us the infrastructure that we were looking for and then we built this whole organization to a stage where in Clevergene can boast of being one of the top 3 genomics companies in India in terms of capability as well as capacity.

Within Clevergene we do have 2 business verticals. Genomics has two aspects to it one is in the discovery of novel biomarkers, where we work with academic institutions and Pharma companies that need high end DNA analysis for a particular project for e.g. they are looking for particular biomarkers for breast cancer or identifying biomarkers that can personalize certain cancer treatments etc. and on the other hand we have an applied genomics vertical, we call it The Gene Lab which focusses on diagnosis of pediatric genetic ailments.

There are about 10000 known genetic disorders categorized by the WHO. But the interesting fact is that if you take all of them individually, they are all rare, the incidence rate would be 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 20,000. But if you combine all of them together, we have about 1.6 mn children who are born with any of these disorders every year and there is a huge opportunity gap, or there is a huge gap in diagnosing these disorders.

So The Gene Lab focuses in providing comprehensive genomics based diagnosis for these diseases so that the doctors can manage the patient and even pro-actively prevent the birth of children with genetic disorders in the future.

Clevergene: Future plansSo the roadmap for Clevergene has been discovery diagnostics, screen, prevent and cure. So we have already established ourselves in the discovery genomics field. We are establishing ourselves in the genetic diagnostics field and as we move forward we will expanding our verticals into genetic screening where we are looking at Non-Invasive Genetic Pre-Natal Testing to identify genetic anomalies in fetus. We are also developing a carrier screening method where in the prospective parents can screen and check their carrier status for genetic disorders and therefore identify their risk of passing on a genetic disorder to the child and also look at alternative preventative methods for preventing such events in the future. The active preventative screening would be the way forward for Clevergene so that we together can eradicate many of these rare genetic disorders from the face of the earth.

In a longshot we are also looking at the development of technologies in the space of genome editing, genetic engineering etc. which should provide us with the power to edit a patients genome and even correcting a genetic ailment.

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India holds a huge potential for driving the whole genomics industry: Tony Jose, Clevergene - ETHealthworld.com