The Parsis or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of the Persian Empire to escape religious persecution. Parsis are the older of the Indian subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities, the other being the Iranis, whose ancestors migrated to British-ruled India from Qajar-era Iran. According to a 16th-century Parsi epic, Qissa-i Sanjan, Zoroastrian Persians continued to migrate to the Indian subcontinent from Greater Iran in between the 8th and 10th centuries, and ultimately settled in present-day Gujarat after being granted refuge by a local Hindu king, Jadi Rana.
The Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited is a Japanese multinational pharmaceutical company. It is the third largest pharmaceutical company in Asia, behind Sinopharm and Shanghai Pharmaceuticals, and one of the top 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world by revenue. The company has over 49,578 employees worldwide and achieved US$19.299 billion in revenue during the 2018 fiscal year. The company is focused on oncology, rare diseases, neuroscience, gastroenterology, plasma-derived therapies and vaccines. Its headquarters is located in Chuo-ku, Osaka, and it has an office in Nihonbashi, Chuo, Tokyo. In January 2012, Fortune Magazine ranked the Takeda Oncology Company as one of the 100 best companies to work for in the United States. As of 2015, Christophe Weber was appointed as the CEO and president of Takeda.
The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is an international organisation which conducts agricultural research for rural development, headquartered in Patancheru, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, with several regional centres and research stations . It was founded in 1972 by a consortium of organisations convened by the Ford- and the Rockefeller- foundations. Its charter was signed by the FAO and the UNDP.
Dr. Reddy's Laboratories is an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company based in Hyderabad. The company was founded by Kallam Anji Reddy, who previously worked in the mentor institute Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited. Dr. Reddy manufactures and markets a wide range of pharmaceuticals in India and overseas. The company produces over 190 medications, 60 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for drug manufacture, diagnostic kits, critical care, and biotechnology.
Tom Maniatis, is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center.
UCB is a multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. UCB is an international company with revenue of €4.178 billion in 2016 which focuses primarily on research and development, specifically involving medications centered on epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and Crohn's disease. The company's efforts are focused on treatments for severe diseases treated by specialists, particularly in the fields of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, inflammatory disorders, and oncology.
The pharmaceutical industry in India was valued at an estimated US$42 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach $130 billion by 2030. India is the world's largest provider of generic medicines by volume, with a 20% share of total global pharmaceutical exports. It is also the largest vaccine supplier in the world by volume, accounting for more than 60% of all vaccines manufactured in the world. Indian pharmaceutical products are exported to various regulated markets including the US, UK, European Union and Canada.
Avesthagen Limited is an integrated systems biology platform company headquartered in Bangalore, India. It was founded as an academic startup in 1998 by Villoo Morawala-Patell, a Rockefeller Fellow and grantee within NCBS-UAS, Bangalore. Avesthagen started business operations on March 21, 2001 with Series-A round investment led by ICICI Ventures and Tata Industries. Villoo Morawala Patell, is the Chairperson and Managing Director of Avesthagen Limited.
Quark Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company that develops RNA interference-based treatments for chronic and acute diseases.
Christoph Westphal is an American biomedical businessman.
Cyrus S. Poonawalla is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman and managing director of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, which includes the Serum Institute of India, an Indian biotech company which is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world and Poonawalla Fincorp a leading NBFC in India. In 2022, he is ranked as the 4th richest person in India on Forbes India rich list with a net worth of $24.3 billion. He is ranked number 1 on the Hurun Global Healthcare Rich List 2022.
Michael R. Hayden, is a Killam Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, the highest honour UBC can confer on any faculty member. Only four such awards have ever been conferred in the Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Hayden is also Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine. Hayden is best known for his research in Huntington disease (HD).
Rajeev Kumar Varshney is an Indian agricultural scientist, specializing in genomics, genetics, molecular breeding and capacity building in developing countries. Varshney is currently serving as Director, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Center; Director, Centre for Crop & Food Innovation; and International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security with the Food Futures Institute at Murdoch University, Australia since Feb 2022. Before joining Murdoch University, Australia he served International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a global agriculture R&D institute, for more than 16 years in different scientific and research leadership roles including Research Program Director for three global research programs– Grain Legumes, Genetic Gains and Accelerated Crop Improvement Program. He has the onus of establishing and nurturing the Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology (CEGSB), a globally recognized center for genomics research at ICRISAT that made impacts on improving agriculture and development of human resources in several countries including India, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, etc. Varshney holds Adjunct/Honorary/Visiting Professor positions at 10 academic institutions in Australia, China, Ghana, Hong Kong and India, including The University of Western Australia, University of Queensland, West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, University of Hyderabad, Chaudhary Charan Singh University and Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University.
Asis Datta is an Indian biochemist, molecular biologist and genetic engineer, known for his research on genetically modified foods and food nutritional security. He was the founding Director of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research and is credited with the discovery of genes that assist in extended preservation of fruits and vegetables. He is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the highest Indian award and in the Science category, and was awarded the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, by the Government of India, in 1999. In 2008, he was included again in the Republic Day Honours list for the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
Surinder Mohan (Suri) Sehgal is an Indian-American philanthropist with a long career as a crop scientist, seedsman, entrepreneur, and leading global hybrid seed industry expert. His research and professional successes in the areas of plant breeding and genetics, ag biotechnology, intellectual property, business management, and seed industry development were carried out in executive capacities in several companies in the United States, Belgium, and Germany. After the divestment of a group of four seed companies that Sehgal founded and ran with his wife, Edda Sehgal, the couple created two nonprofit organizations to promote rural development in Suri's country of origin: Sehgal (Family) Foundation in 1998 in the US, and S M Sehgal Foundation in India. The foundation focuses on water security, food security, and social justice, particularly empowerment. A proponent of corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability, Sehgal has also provided support individually and through the foundations for projects related to agriculture research, the preservation of biodiversity and the conservation of natural resources.
Insilico Medicine is a biotechnology company based in Pak Shek Kok, Hong Kong in Hong Kong Science Park near the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in New York, at The Cure by Deerfield. The company combines genomics, big data analysis, and deep learning for in silico drug discovery.
Anurag Agrawal is an Indian pulmonologist, medical researcher, Dean of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, and the former director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, a CSIR institution. Known for his studies on lung diseases, Agrawal has been a senior fellow of the DBT-Wellcome Trust. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 2014. He is also a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology which he received in 2015 and the 2020 Sun Pharma Science Foundation award in Medical Sciences.
Ganesh Nagaraju is an Indian biochemist, geneticist, cancer biologist and a full professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Indian Institute of Science. He has been studying DNA damage responses in mammalian cells, and mechanisms underlying chromosome instability genetic diseases and cancer. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2015. In 2018, Nagaraju received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Sciences from CSIR. This award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to Science and Technology, and is considered one of the highest awards for science in India.
Ultragenyx is an American biopharmaceutical company involved in the research and development of novel products for treatment of rare and ultra-rare genetic diseases for which there are typically no approved treatments and high unmet medical need. The company works with multiple drug modalities including biologics, small molecule, gene therapies, and ASO and mRNAs in the disease categories of bone, endocrine, metabolic, muscle and CNS diseases.
