Mascon Life Sciences is a Bioinformatics Firm providing world-class products and services in Bioinformatics and is trying to establish itself as center for excellency for contract research and development in Computational Biology, Drug Discovery and Design and current research thrust areas .
Mascon Life Sciences is a Division of Mascon Global Limited (MGL) set up to provide solutions requiring combination of expertise in Biotechnology and Information Technology. Mascon Global Limited is an Indian company, established in 1981. In its early days MGL provided specialized IT solutions to leading Indian manufacturing companies. MGL today is a leading IT solution provider with annual revenues (2001) of Rs 310 Crores (US$63 million). Mascon has over 1200 professionals with a wide variety of skills and domain expertise. It has development centers at Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi in India. The overseas offices are in Chicago, Princeton, Los Angles, Toronto etc. It provides solutions to vertical segments such as Manufacturing, Finance, Insurance, Retail, Healthcare etc. It has been working with prestigious global clients like Citibank, GE, MasterCard, Walmart, Motorola, 3 COM etc. (www.masconit.com)
Mascon had been working with several customers in Healthcare sector. Some of the prestigious clients include MerckMedco, Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Abbot laboratories etc. Mascon had also started work with a few clients in the area of clinical trials in US. Based on the initial feedback from the US market, it was recognised that considerable potential exists to offer Bioinformatics Services to Pharma and Biotech industries. The Human Genome Project had opened a large number of opportunities for accelerating the drug discovery process, thereby offering substantial savings in resources and time.
It was also recognised that the Mascon expertise in IT solutions, data mining, product development will have to be complimented by domain expertise in related areas such as Biotechnology, Human Health Care etc. This is critical to understand the customer needs and evolve appropriate solutions. Keeping in mind the exponential increase in the use of high power information technology and systems to collect and analyze data generated by life sciences systems, Mascon decided to initiate a venture in Bioinformatics by combining the synergies of its IT consulting experience with the domain expertise of Mascon Life Sciences & Bioinformatics Center at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.
Mascon Bioinformatics Center
Mascon Bioinformatics Center was set up in November 2001, at Delhi. It aims to provide world-class products and services in Bioinformatics and will seek to establish itself as world-renowned center for research and development in Computational Biology.
The main Objectives are:
· Develop world-class products in Bioinformatics
· Provide services of intelligent analysis and interpretation of genomic data
· Become strategic partners with Pharma & Biotech companies
· Enable partners to accelerate drug discovery
· Provide customised training to potential users
Mascon Bioinformatics Center has built up a team of about 25 Professionals consisting of functional/ Domain experts and IT developers. The team has experience in a wide variety of skills as well as domains such as Agriculture, Marine Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical Sciences etc.
Activity Profile:
Mascon Bioinformatics Center activities can be broadly classified as:
· Product Development: The initial efforts in this were concentrated on commercialisation of the GeneScan Algorithm developed at JNU. Based on the initial feedback from the market, the features of a Desktop product were finalised. ExomeÔ-An advanced Gene Sequence Analysis Tool was launched in July 2002. Subsequently several new functionalities have been added. Currently ExomeÔ Ver 1.3 has been released. Specifications for Ver 2.0 have been finalised and development work has been started.
The strategy is to evolve ExomeÔ as a versatile analysis platform to support Genomic and Proteomic research. In addition, several new products based on customer needs as well as outcome of collaborations with Research and Academic institutions are being evaluated.
· Customised In -Silico Solutions: The capabilities of functional analysis and Data Mining are being offered to Pharma and Biotech industries to evolve customised solutions to automate their processes. These services could be provided on-site or off shore depending on customer needs
· Drug Target Discovery Platform: The discussions with several Pharma companies indicated a need to evolve tools to accelerate identification of potential drug targets. As a first step a Cancer Gene Data Base-OncoMasterÔ has been designed. This is a Platform to assist the Cancer research to search from a wide variety of relevant information and offer computational modules to carry out analysis. This generic Platform can be customised for specific needs in different areas.
· Corporate Training: Mascon provides short-term customized corporate training to Pharma and Biotech industries in different areas of Computational Biology and Drug Design as well.
