Event Summary:

Vyas Cancer Research Park, India’s first privately operated Start-up Bioincubator was established in Vishakhapatnam in 2019 with the objective of fostering an innovation-focused ecosystem to facilitate equitable access to Indian population to cancer diagnostics, therapeutics, and related services. Accordingly, a 3-year vision roadmap was announced in the 1^st Global Oncology Conference “The Global Innovation Forum” in February 2018. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, VCR team and network partners continued operational activities unabatedly to achieve their respective goals.

To review these activities and to pave the way for the next phase of VCR roadmap, a Vision Meets Action (VMA) event was organized on 8^th of April 2022 at the VCR Park. This event agenda included

• Inauguration of the VCR-BioNEST by the secretary of DBT
• Highlighting the VCR incubation activities with existing startups
• Showcasing new startups interested to partner with VCR Park
• Announcing key programs for upcoming projects such as venture fund, data science partnerships and training programs
• Enabling face-to-face discussion with technology enabling Instrumentation partners about the next generation of solutions in oncology.

The event began with the introduction by Dr. Mandar Kulkarni (CEO, VCR Park) on the vision and roadmap for next phase of activities for the future at VCR Park with the support from the BioNEST program launched by BIRAC. Dr. Manish Diwan (Head of Strategic Partnerships and Entrepreneurship Development, BIRAC, DBT) inaugurated the VCR-BioNEST and talked about the various BioNEST incubators across India and their importance in the Indian biotech and pharma domains in the future.

Dr. Ravi Kannan (Director, Cacher Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Silchar, Assam) was felicitated at the event for being awarded the Padma Shri, the 4^th highest civilian award of India on the 26^th pf January 2020 for his exemplary contributions to providing cancer care to low-resource communities of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura.

Dr. Vijayakumar M (Vice Chancellor, Yenepoya University), a former Director and professor, Department of Head Surgical Oncology at Kidwai Cancer Institute, was one of the esteemed guests at the event, who was felicitated for being chosen for JRD Tata Memorial Oration 2022, a lecture series organized by Population Foundation of India as a tribute to the visionary leader JRD Tata.

To showcase a success story from VCR park incubatees, Dr. Viswa Colluru (Founder and CEO, Enveda Biosciences) briefly discussed about his experiences of working with the VCR Park ecosystem. He acknowledged the impact of VCR Park in facilitating the growth trajectory of his start-up to the recent milestones of Series A financing of USD 51 million and shifting to Enveda-owned operational facility in Hyderabad.

Dr. Suresh Poosala (Founder and Director, Acasta Health) then talked about how VCR park facilitated critical needs for their company in developing therapeutics for solid cancers using innovative therapeutics based on antibodies and oncolytic viruses, especially against prostate cancer. Acasta Health was successful in working on the Regen Med Program while being incubated at VCR Park and initiated the collection of body fluids from Queens NRI at Visakhapatnam and purify protein and growth factors thereof. With the work initiated at VCR Park, they have recently been successful in attracting funding from two angel investors.

The next session was focused on new start-ups interested to incubate at VCR park gave a brief introduction about their company’s capabilities, future plans and expectations from VCR park. This session included presentations by Ms. Shipi Sen (Founder and CEO, Prayasta) about their innovations in 3D printed breast prostheses and Dr. Shraddha Puntambekar (Head, Computational Biology, NonExomics).

The subsequent session was aimed to announce major initiatives undertaken by VCR Park for future activities. These included

• Emerging Markets Cancer Ignition Fund (EMCIF) 

  Dr. Himabindu Gaddipati (Founder, EMCIF) explained the detailed strategy for this venture fund aimed at supporting promising Oncology start-ups across the globe. Dr. C.S. Pramesh, (Director, Tata Memorial Hospital and Fund Advisor, EMCIF) highlighted how important such funding would be to address Indian issues.

• Oncology Data Science Partnership
  In light of the growing importance of advanced data analytics for Oncology innovations, VCR Park and Persistent Systems have entered into a strategic partnership in April 2022. Mr. Shreekanth Joshi, (Vice President, Engineering, Persistent Systems) discussed how this partnership and Persistent Systems expertise will support Oncology start-ups via accelerating data sciences integration with laboratory sciences.

Several Oncology start-ups companies which aimed to become potential partners of VCR park attended the VMA event. To showcase their product pipelines, a session based on short presentations by respective company leaders was organized as follows:

Considering the multi-disciplinary and fast evolving field of Oncology, there is an unmet need for continual capacity building within the professionals from Onco BioPharma industry in India.

With this background, VCR Park announced two training initiatives

• ASCEND
  An executive training program for improving industry ready skills for Onco BioPharma professionals. Dr. Ravi Nair, (Consultant Otolaryngologist at Sakra Premium Clinic and Director, CCamp Bio Medical Innovations Programme, Bengaluru) presented the aims, objectives, and operational details of this upcoming training program.
• Molecular Pathology and Precision Oncology (MPPO) Fellowship Programs
  Dr. Govind Babu, (Consultant Medical Oncologist at St. Johns Medical College and Hospital, HCG Hospitals, Bangalore) highlighted the need for training Indian Onco-community in Molecular Oncology domain to meet the needs of Oncology innovations , He also explained how the ASCEND and  the fellowship programs will enable laboratory and clinician-scientists at all levels (including Bachelors, Masters, PhD student and post doc fellows) to further enhance their skills via training on latest laboratory tools and techniques to enable their industry readiness. 

Since its inception, VCR Park recognizes that the Oncology innovation pipelines of incubate start-ups can be significantly improved by strategic partnerships with laboratory equipment companies. With this theme, a panel discussion was moderated by Dr Santosh Dixit (Consultant, Persistent Systems) on various related topics conducted with senior representatives of leading companies such as Premas Lifesciences, Beckman Coulter, Molecular Devices, Roche, Cytiva and Thermo Fisher Scientific. In this session, these companies showcased their latest instruments and projects such as Labcyte for miniaturization and HTS Dx and drug discovery to AcuityXpress that integrates omics with 3D confocal imaging and Automated IHC/ISH and digital pathology.

To conclude the day-long discussions, Dr. Ravi Kannan presented his observations and expectations from VCR park as a unique Indian Oncology start-up incubator. He highlighted the need for adopting an India-focused, patient-centric pragmatic innovation approach to improve the standards of cancer care in India.

The event ended with a tour of the VCR Park facility and networking sessions for enabling business collaborations amongst the attendees.

As evident from the multiple discussions between experts from government, industry, academic and clinical practice, the VMA event reinforced the need for a unique paradigm in which global oncology innovations are adopted to fulfil local Indian needs. VCR Park remains committed to this cause and will continue to execute and expand on its core vision aimed at improving Oncology innovations to improve cancer care for Indian patients.