Suven Pharmaceuticals, a company with focus on contract research and manufacturing services, has set up a technology development center, Suven Life Sciences LLC, in New Jersey, US.

Through the development centre, the company plans to extend its research services to global majors. "The centre will act as a marketing arm of Suven Pharma. It will source the projects and services as a regulatory & intellectual property rights management and demonstration cell," said Venkat Jasti, the managing director of Suven Pharma.

"Our customers can have seamless transition of their projects from gram to multi-ton level. Now, the company is better positioned to attract new customers by solving their logistical problems in relation to time differences."

It may be recalled that Suven, in which the Norway-based Borregaard holds about 17 per cent stake, has lined up a Rs 40 crore investment to build world-class manufacturing and research facilities to take on the emerging opportunities in the IPR regime that will be in place in the country by 2005.

As part of the two-phased plan, the company has already taken up a Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) project to upgrade the existing process and analytical R&D facility, cGMP kilo lab, pilot plant and manufacturing facilities.

In the second phase, which will be initiated in 2004, the company proposes to set up a greenfield centre for drug discovery services at Hyderabad.

"The drug discovery services centre will have infrastructure to provide entire spectrum of discovery services, starting from preliminary screening to pre-clinical services to life science companies.

The US centre will take up the cream of the activity including IPR management and regulatory management," Jasti said.

Suven Pharma had recently joined hands with the Chennai-based Shasun Chemicals and Drugs and Mumbai-based Innovasynth Technologies (India) to form a research, development and manufacturing alliance in collaboration with the US-based Austin Chemical.