Mestastop Solutions have signed an Agreement with the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bengaluru, to promote collaboration under different research projects of mutual interest. Under this agreement, collaborative research projects at Mestastop that require animal use will be conducted at the animal house at IBAB based on mutual understanding and availability of the facility as decided by IBAB.
Speaking on the collaboration, Dr Arnab Roy Chowdhury, founder and director of Mestastop, said, “The Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre, which incubates us, is on the same campus as IBAB, which has excellent research facility expertise in the area of disease biology and drug discovery. Therefore, it was natural and intuitive for us to join hands. We have created one of the most exciting animal models for metastasis and will create many more under this collaborative agreement. Together, we can make some difference”.
Dr H.S. Subramanya, the director of IBAB, also commented on the collaboration, “Mestastop Solutions is a deep-dive biotech start-up focussed on cancer metastasis, which is responsible for 90% of cancer deaths. Mestastop believes an evolutionary disease like cancer cannot be holistically targeted without targeting metastasis, a complex process. The collaboration between IBAB and Mestastop will provide an excellent opportunity to develop novel tools and platforms to understand and address the issue of metastasis”.
About Mestastop
Mestastop has developed three proprietary platforms, METAssay®, METSCAN®, and METVivo®, to address metastasis drug discovery and predictive diagnostics. The platforms have been validated in both prospective and retrospective clinical studies, presented in international conferences, and a PCT has been filed. Currently, the company is extending the platform into multiple epithelial carcinomas and exploring the role of approved non-oncology drugs for chronic indications of primary tumour progression.
About IBAB
IBAB is an autonomous institution set up by the Department of Electronics, IT, BT and S&T of the Government of Karnataka in 2001 as a non-profit registered Society. IBAB is a pioneering institution with a vision to be an important catalyst for the growth of the biotech, bioinformatics and related industries in Karnataka and India. It’s mission is to grow into a world-class Bioinformatics and Biotechnology institute through its education, research, and entrepreneurship programmes. The institute has many firsts to its name. Its educational programmes currently include a masters’ in biotechnology and bioinformatics (with a 100% placement rate, with the best of academic and corporate institutions), a soon-to-be-launched masters’ in big data biology, a PhD programme (including industrial PhDs), and a large bouquet of short-term courses. Its faculty conduct research in a wide variety of areas. It also incubated 30 start-ups to date.