HYDERABAD: At the TiE Women — Regional Finals on Wednesday, Dr Jugnu Jain, who is the co-founder of Sapien Biosciences, walked away with the top honours. Her start-up, founded in 2012, is a bio bank or a repository of patient samples. These samples, which can be tissues, blood, urine or other body parts and fluids, are used for research to find out better drugs and cures for diseases. Researchers can gather molecular data from human bio-specimens to gain great insight into the genetic and molecular basis of diseases.
“We are the first commercial bio-bank in the country and our aim is that everyone should get personalised treatment. We collect samples from hospitals and try to understand why a person ends up getting a particular disease. For example, in the case of Covid-19, we see that a few have severe symptoms, others have mild and many are asymptomatic. Extensive research will help us understand why a disease behaves differently in different people,” says Dr. Jugnu Jain.
The samples are collected from hospitals as per guidelines mandated by the Indian Council of Medical Research, in which the patient’s consent is included. The company collects bio-samples from hospitals in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mysuru, and New Delhi. One of the fields in which the company has done vast research is breast cancer. They have created a database with 15,500 cases which can help find better drug combinations to cure the disease. “Breast cancer is the most common cancer striking women in India.
After surgery, the drugs that are given to the patients do not suit everyone. We can use our data to improve both the quantity and quality of life of cancer survivors. Most new drugs are manufactured abroad, and they are made for a different population. We make copies of those drugs and use them. However, those medicines do not act the same in our bodies as our structure, height, genes and other biological attributes are different. That is why, there is a need to manufacture our own original drugs, and we can do that only through research. Unfortunately, we have not received any government funding so far,” adds the researcher.
Besides Dr Jugnu, there were three other winners at the event. The first runner-up position went to reusable face mask and headgear creator Dibbu Solutions. Luxpack, founded by Silpa Reddy, bagged the second runner-up spot while Hemis, founded by Prashansa Shahani, bagged the third runner-up spot.
Dr Jugnu, the winner, bagged a paid Boot Camp organised by empoWer (a tech accelerator exclusively for women entrepreneurs) and will be representing Hyderabad at the TiE Global Competition to be held in December. If she wins, she will get an equity-free fund of $100,000 for her business pitch. The three runner-ups will be eligible to attend a paid boot camp by empoWer and have an opportunity to be incubated at the technology business incubator SRiX.