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India is brimming with biotech companies and a young and skilled workforce. In this article, we take a look at six of the top biotech companies in India that are carrying out innovative healthcare research, many of which are primarily based in Bangalore, the country’s leading biotech hub.
Table of contents
Bugworks Research
Bugworks, which is headquartered in the U.S. with subsidiaries in India and Australia, specializes in the development of antibiotics that could address the growing crisis of antimicrobial resistance. It has discovered a novel broad-spectrum antibacterial agent with a lead candidate currently in clinical trials.
Bugworks’ lead candidate antibiotic compound, called BWC0977, works by blocking the replication machinery in invading bacteria. In addition, the drug is designed to bypass normal resistance mechanisms in bacteria, which could make it harder for strains to become resistant to the treatment. It has the potential to treat infections that are becoming progressively difficult to treat, such as Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae.
The company is testing its antibiotic in phase 1 trials for the treatment of multi-drug resistant infections in collaboration with the nonprofit initiatives CARB-X and the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP).
Bugworks has also developed a portfolio of novel anticancer agents, with the lead candidate, called BWC2094, ready for investigational new drug (IND) submission. The company says that the candidate has a potential for combination with approved immune checkpoint drugs, cytotoxics, and targeted therapies, as well as with cell-based therapies.
Biocon
Biocon takes pride of place in India as the country’s biggest biopharma company, with the aim of reaching a billion patients worldwide with affordable, life-saving medicines. Continuously trying to find new ways of treating diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases, the Indian biotech company has developed and commercialized novel biologics, biosimilars, and complex small molecule APIs in India and several key global markets, as well as generic formulations in the U.S., Europe, and key emerging markets. It also has a pipeline of promising novel assets in immunotherapy under development.
Being such a huge company, Biocon has four global businesses, each one focused on four specific areas: generics, biosimilars, research services, and novel biologics.
In particular, Biocon’s biosimilar company, called Biocon Biologics, has had a lot of success of late, highlighted by the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of Yesintek, a biosimilar to J&J’s Stelara, marking another step forward for the company in pushing into the U.S. biosimilar market, which it has had a presence in for a few years now, thanks to its long-term partnership with Viatris (previously known as Mylan).
Biocon Biologics has also formed several other key partnerships, including with Novartis’ generics and biosimilars spin-off Sandoz, with the intention of developing, manufacturing, and commercializing multiple biosimilars in immunology and oncology for patients worldwide.
Eyestem
Eyestem focuses on developing cell therapies for eye disorders. Its long-term vision is to create a scalable cell therapy platform to treat incurable diseases and to provide the bottom 99% of the population globally with access to these newer technologies.
The Indian biotech company’s lead product, called EyeCyte-RPE, is aimed at treating geographic atrophy, an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD), a condition characterized by the thinning and breaking down of the macular layers located at the back of the eye, leading to blurred or reduced central vision.
Because dry AMD leads to a loss of retinal pigment epithelium – a fundamental component of the retina that plays a major role in visual functions – EyeCyte-RPE works by replacing the lost retinal pigment epithelium cells and is designed to restore sight for patients in the early stages of dry AMD, as well as to arrest losses for those in the later stages. In April 2024, Eyestem received approval from India’s Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO) to commence human trials for the candidate, and completed the first set of patient injections in September 2024.
The company raised $6.4 million in a series A funding round in August 2022. Last year, it also announced that it had appointed Ravi Achar as head of North American Strategy and engaged Stardling Yocca Carlson & Rauth as its U.S. law firm, in an attempt to lay the groundwork for its global expansion.
GangaGen Biotechnologies
Similar to Bugworks Research, GangaGen Biotechnologies – a wholly owned subsidiary of Bactoclear Holdings – is working on tackling serious, drug-resistant bacterial infections by discovering, designing, and developing highly specific and safe protein antibacterials.
The company’s platform technology, the Protein Antibacterial Technology Platform (PATP), is based on knowledge of phage biology, naturally occurring proteins, and the ability to identify and model functional domains of putative antibacterial proteins using bioinformatics, allowing GangaGen to rapidly confirm antibacterial activity by targeting different bacterial proteins.
P128 is the Indian biotech company’s lead candidate. It is a recombinant, chimeric protein that targets Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that has developed a resistance to some commonly used antibiotics, potentially causing serious bloodstream infections, pneumonia, and bone and joint infections. P128 has been shown to be effective both in vitro and in vivo against multidrug-resistant pathogens, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant S. aureus (VRSA), and has been tested in a phase 1/2a study directed towards the treatment of nasal carriage of S. aureus.
Immuneel Therapeutics
Because CAR-T cell therapies are generally extremely expensive, they are mostly only available in wealthy countries. However, Immuneel Therapeutics wants to change this, as its ultimate aim is to make these types of therapies affordable and accessible to people living in India, offering hope to cancer patients throughout the country.
In 2022, the CAR-T company announced that it had raised $15 million in series A financing to help it advance its development pipeline and scale. At the same time, it also announced that it had begun patient dosing in a phase 2 CAR-T trial called IMAGINE, which marked the first industry-sponsored CAR-T trial in India.
Immuneel gained exclusive rights to the CD-19 CAR-T cell therapy, ARI-0001/IMN-003A, from Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer in Spain to develop, manufacture, and commercialize it in India via technology transfer. The therapy had already been approved in Spain, and has since also received approval in India under the brand name Qartemi for the treatment of relapsed and refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In July 2024, Oman-based taiba Healthcare Group made a strategic investment in Immuneel for $12 million. The deal is intended to advance CAR-T cell research, with a particular focus on making CAR-T cell therapy commercially available at affordable prices and developing the first phase 2 trial for IMN-003A targeting B-cell malignancies, including leukemia and lymphoma.
Zumutor Biologics
Founded in 2013, with headquarters in the U.S. and research and development (R&D) facilities in Bangalore, the biotech Zumutor Biologics is an immuno-oncology company working in the area of targeted natural killer (NK) cell therapeutics.
The company has developed a proprietary technology platform, INABLR, that consists of multiple high-diversity human antibody libraries, which are mined through a combination of yeast and phage display technologies. The platform facilitates the rapid identification of selective and potent monoclonal antibodies with the potential to enhance antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity.
Zumutor’s lead candidate, ZM008, is a first-in-class monoclonal antibody that disrupts the interaction of LLT1 and CD161 between NK cells and tumor cells, which plays an important role in cancer immune surveillance. This subsequently activates NK cells, establishing a downstream tumor-killing mechanism of action.
In June 2024, the company announced that it had dosed the first patient with ZM008 in its phase 1 trial, which is evaluating ZM008 in patients with advanced solid tumors, as a single agent and in combination with pembrolizumab.
A growing biotech sector in India
India is among the top 12 destinations for biotechnology worldwide. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), under the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology, has placed great emphasis on developing an ecosystem for the development of excellence and research in a variety of biotech-related fields in India.
The bio-economy in the country has already grown from $10 billion in 2015 to $130 billion in 2024, contributing 2.6% to the nation’s GDP, as of 2021, and is expected to continue its growth into the near future, poised to reach $300 billion by 2030.
Furthermore, India is currently home to more than 3,500 biotechnology companies, according to its Ministry of Science and Technology, with that figure expected to rise to an incredible 10,000 by late 2025.
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