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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, FEB 25: The US-based Life Technologies Inc (LTI), a world leader in manufacturing and marketing high-technology products in agricultural bio-technology, is acquiring 100 per cent stake in GIBCO BRL (India) Ltd.
The company would provide improved healthcare, higher agricultural yields and improved environmental controls by providing the country’s research scientists access to developing technologies. It has submitted a business plan to the government, which was recently cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB).
The plan includes test-marketing of LTI products for a period of two to three years and to facilitate research and development activities at Indian research institutes in areas of agricultural bio-technology, cell and gene therapy, vaccine production, human and genome research, forensics. LTI would provide consulting, technical testing and resources and products to pursue specific research activities.
Life Technologies plans to set up laboratories in the country forproduction of DNA libraries for LTI’s customers after the success of test marketing period. A standard molecular biology laboratory is being set up with equipment, facilities, consumable reagents, supplies and trained personnel for the purpose.
Other optional services include RNA isolation, poly(A) selection, library amplification, sequencing of the clone, screening with the clone, screening with the LTI proprietary Gene Trapper technology. LTI spends $20 million to $25 million annually on research and product development. It supplies more than 3,000 products to over 40,000 customers worldwide, primarily consisting of university laboratories, medical research centres, agricultural research laboratories at bio-technology, pharmaceutical, energy, agricultural and chemical companies.
LTI also wants to set up a 100 per cent subsidiary keeping in view the proprietary and qualitative nature of the research technologies and for accessing its international brand name. The department of bio-technology hassupported the proposal.
