The affordable and personalized healthcare has been a major concern worldwide. The big pharma and diagnostic companies are now realizing the strong impact of efficient computational methods and simulations in reducing use of biomarkers and drug development cost and time. Such issues are now being addressed with clinical genomics and network medicine concept, which heavily relies on computational algorithms and methods for data analysis.

Bangalore-based BioCOS Life Sciences was formed on Jan 25, 2008, to address this concern of accuracy and reproducibility of the available computational methods. The company was started by Mr Sanjeev Kumar and Dr Shipra Agarwal with some senior scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore in India as its scientific advisers.

The company's focus is on two main things: disease and technology. At present, it is concentrating on specific diseases that are a serious concern in tropical countries. Mr Sanjeev Kumar, CEO and MD of the company, says, "We have established experimentally proven differentiating results in the area of clinical genomics and we take care of the research problems using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Our technological focus is based on computational algorithms to analyze the voluminous data to generate critical knowledge-based understanding through our NGS, systems biology and network medicine tools and databases." The company is also focusing on developing tools and databases to elucidate the role of non-coding RNAs in regulating the key molecular and regulatory mechanisms in human and model organisms.

The first challenge, Mr Kumar recalls, was to establish an efficient infrastructure. BioCOS was able to develop good and sophisticated cluster nodes and other necessary infrastructure to solve the data complexity and efficient analysis specially for NGS data. Talking about some of the milestones, Mr Kumar says, "Since we always aimed at achieving the developments of high quality research and product, the concept required government support. We were awarded the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research recognition in 2010 based on the company's accreditation for R&D achievements and capabilities."

In short span of time, BioCOS has developed reliable, reproducible and good research outcomes that helped it to achieve various national and international R&D collaborations. It has gained recognition in R&D from several reputed institutions, such as IISc Bangalore, JNCASR and National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. The company is also nurturing R&D liasons with renowned scientists from France, Germany, Sweden and the UK to develop landmark capabilities in selected fields. "Our research support and services to the JNCASR and Leon University in Paris, France, have led the discovery of key findings in very important areas of biological research," adds Mr Kumar.