Suven Life Sciences—Drug candidate enters Phase I

Suven Life Sciences commenced its business operation in 1989 and is promoted by Venkat Jasti. The company subsequently converted into public limited company in 1995. Today, the company is present in the US, Europe and Asia.

Its goal is to offer contract research and manufacturing services (CRAMS) to its customers and to achieve excellence result in drug discovery activities. During 2006, Suven has launched Collaborative Research Partnership (CRP), which provides end to end solutions from discovery, development and manufacturing. The company concentrates on CRAMS and in-house drug discovery activity. It has created the basic infrastructure to do Drug Discovery and Drug Discovery and Development Support Services (DDDSS).

Suven's CRAMS segment brings in new technologies and cost savings in manufacturing. Its DDDSS provides speed in preclinical development and clinical trials thus reducing time and money spent. And CRP brings in innovation thus helping Big Pharma boost up their anaemic pipeline. With these three components under one roof, Suven provides seamless transition of the project from phase to phase by offering end to end solutions thus becoming a strategic partner to global pharma majors.

Infrastructure

The company has its R&D unit at Jeedimetla, Hyderabad and is recognised as an in-house R&D unit by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. All the process research laboratories, pilot and manufacturing plants are certified for ISO 9001-quality management system, ISO 14001-environmental management system and OHSAS 18001-occupational health and safety management system.

Suven has the basic infrastructure facility to do drug discovery and collaborative research partnerships based on drug discovery. It has plans to set up a dedicated drug discovery facility including an animal facility. Activity is exected to commence during the current year and it is estimated that operations will commence by end 2009.

Achievements

Suven has entered into its first major collaboration with Eli Lilly for identifying potent, oral compounds that selectively modulate the specified G-Protein Coupled Receptor for the target CNS disease which is going very well. With the positive outcome of the first ever research collaboration Suven expects Lilly to extend this collaboration into a second collaboration for a new disease during this year. During the past year, the company also secured a patent from the European Patent Office (EPO) on novel serotonin receptor ligands and the treatment of disorders associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

Latest update

"Recently, we have commenced our phase I clinical trials of SUVN-502, a potent, safe, highly selective, brain penetrant and orally active antagonist at a non-peripheral, CNS receptor site 5-HT6, intended for the symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other disorders of memory and cognition like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Parkinson Syndrome, Schizophrenia. The study is being conducted at Basel, Switzerland under a Clinical Trial Application (CTA) approved by SwissMedic, the regulatory authority of Switzerland. And we are expecting the study will be completed by Dec 2008," a company's representative explained.

Outlook

The company is targeting that its Phase-I of the clinical trial, first dosing of healthy volunteer to take place in the third quarter of this year and the trial to finish by first quarter of next year. Its several other candidates are at various phases of pre-clinical development for various CNS diseases like Parkinson's, anxiety, depression and obesity. Suven targets to file at least one investigational new drug application (IND) every year.