Dr Nimish Vachharajani appointed as the vice president of Advinus Therapeutics
May 8, 2006

Dr Nimish Vachhrajani has been appointed as the vice president of pharmaceutical and agrochemicals development of Advinus Therapeutics with effect from May 2006, with immediate effect. Advinus Therapeutics is a joint venture between Tata Group and Dr Rashmi Barbhiya, the former head of research at Ranbaxy. In this capacity, Dr Vachharajani will be responsible for heading operations of company’s site at Bangalore.

Dr Vachhrajani brings over 13 years of drug development experience from a large pharmaceutical company in the US. Dr Vachharajani has published over 40 scientific and review articles in various peer-reviewed journals.

Prior to joining Advinus, Dr Vachharajani was with Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ, USA. During his tenure with Bristol-Myers Squibb, he worked in many therapeutic areas including metabolic diseases, neuroscience, and cardiovascular. Dr Vachharajani has made contributions to non-clinical, clinical pharmacology, clinical safety, and clinical overview modules of eight NDA/sNDA submissions on aripiprazole, irbesartan, and buspirone projects. He has also played a key role in filing 11 Investigation New Drug (IND) applications in US and Europe.

Apart from certain regulatory submissions, Dr Vachharajani led the Diabetes Early Development Team at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He was responsible for developing strategies and plans for the pre-clinical and early clinical development (up to Phase IIB) of the entire portfolio of drug candidates for the diabetes franchise.

About Advinus
Advinus has been set up as a venture between the Tata Group and Rashmi Barbhaiya, the former head of Research at Ranbaxy. Advinus is focused on new drug discovery and development of pharmaceutical and agrochemical products. The Drug Discovery at Advinus is focused on generating novel small molecule therapies for indications in three disease clusters: metabolic disorders, inflammatory diseases, and neglected diseases of the developing world. With a centre of excellence for pharmaceutical and agrochemical R&D, Advinus is eyeing the opportunities in the companies based in the US and Europe who are looking at cost-effective, high quality solutions for their R&D programmes. Advinus marks the foray of the Tata Group in the burgeoning business of drug discovery. The Group has been keen on developing businesses in the knowledge sector and the investment in Advinus is seen as a part of this focus.