LAXAI Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. was
established in the year 2007, with a vision to accelerate the discovery chemistry campaign of
global pharmaceutical companies, by supporting the high quality intended compounds in reduced
pricing and timeline. With this vision, a group of highly skilled research scientists have
facilitated the birth of LAXAI Life Sciences.
Our goal is to produce fast and innovative solutions to global pharmaceutical and biotechnological firms within the space of integrated contract research. We combine Science, Innovation and People to help our clients strengthen their competitive advantage, while providing high quality, quick and reliable services.
LAXAI acknowledges and strongly supports international efforts, to advance drug discovery. We especially value the human capacity of creative imagination, and believe that it should be essentially nurtured. The dogma for business ethics at LAXAI is, that humanity should very responsibly use modern technologies to improve the human condition in the present and the future generations.
Chairman & Managing Director
Vamsi Maddipatla
A visionary & an entrepreneur with 17 years of experience in technology and bio-pharma industries. Founder and ex-CEO of LAXAI Pharma Ltd – a clinical data services company based in NJ, USA. Past employment: Pfizer, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Deloitte. Holds a Bachelor’s degree in electronics and Master’s in computer science from Farleigh Dickinson University.
Vamsi provides a unique blend of operational and financial experience – along with a strong and expansive network of key influencers, industry experts and financial partners. He delivers a visionary understanding of client challenges and opportunities, and the instinctive ability to facilitate collaboration between the right people to turn strategic concepts into actionable plans – and, ultimately, into business results.
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Chief Scientific Officer
Raghava Reddy Kethiri, PhD
A German national of Indian origin with over 20 years of experience as a scientific innovator working in Academia and Pharmaceutical industry. His career started as Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) fellow at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany after completing PhD in Organic Chemistry from North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) Shillong, India in 1994. Since then he has held various senior positions in academia & pharmaceutical industry in Germany and India and worked on several drug discovery projects including integrated with various large-/mid-sized pharma’s along with small biotech and virtual companies and has taken compounds from target to clinic and delivered several optimized leads across diverse therapeutic areas viz., Oncology, Pain & CNS, MD and Antibacterial. Co-inventor of two clinical candidate ASN-001 (NCT02349139) & ASN-007 (NCT 03415126) into first in human clinical Phase I&II trials (NCT02349139) for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and metastatic KRAS, NRAS & HRAS mutated solid tumors, respectively. Further two projects are currently at the PCC nomination IND enabling studies.
Published over 50 research publications, patents, invited review articles, perspectives and book chapters. He is a member of several active chemical societies and reviewer of peer reviewed journals and committees.
Dr. Raghava joins LLS from Jubilant Biosys., Bangalore, where he served as Director & Head of Medicinal Chemistry, responsible for all the department scientific and operation functions.
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Head CDMO
Murali Krishna Ukkalam, PhD
Seasoned R&D executive with more than 20 years of multi-functional experience (Strategy, Route scouting, Process R&D, Tech Transfer, Manufacturing and Outsourcing) in leading pharmaceutical companies (Abbott, Aptuit, Shire and Sai Life Sciences) with demonstrated scientific and leadership contributions. Provided expertise in organic synthesis, NCE/API synthesis proposal, process description, DOE study, QbD, strategies for impurity control and specification setting, piloting, morphology of final target molecule. Proactive and effective Team-Builder with special talent for employee recognition, involvement and motivating, empowering the cross-functional teams. Experience in leading, mentoring and providing technical directions to large teams of scientists involved in the Process Development, Tech transfer and scale up of multiple NCEs and API projects (Phase I-III clinical trials). Distinctive innovation track record: patents, 40+ publications in peer-reviewed journals.
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Chief Financial Officer
Nikhil Baheti
He has over 10 years of experience spanning brown field acquisition, International financial operations, strategic and operational leadership experience. His core competencies include Strategic Financial Planning, M&A and Management of Legal Issues.
He has led the inorganic growth of the company by way of brown field acquisitions of plants from reputed companies. He has spearheaded and successfully led initiatives like adoption of corporate governance methodologies, reorganization of investor communication, implementation of cost control mechanism etc. He is known for his energetic & innovative leadership and problem solving approach.
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Chief Human Resources Officer
Aparna Reddy, PhD
She has over 15 years of experience developing and executing human resource strategy supporting overall business plan and strategic direction of the organisation, especially in the areas of change management , organisation development, comprehensive talent acquisition & retention strategies, succession planning and career management. Her core competencies are driving high performance culture, collaborating with business to understand , analyse and achieve goals, being a committed HR Business Partner, leverage HR technology to align and build human capital capabilities and risk mitigation with analytical mindset.
Aparna has been instrumental in accomplishing smooth transition during the acquisition process. She has established HR function aligning the business and people to the vision of the organisation by innovating solid HR strategies and ensuring the design is reflective of dynamic business environment.
She is a thorough HR leader with many awards and accolades to her credit. She does pro bono consulting mentoring budding HR professionals. Her positive approach towards life and people, multi skilled capabilities generates a vibrant atmosphere at the workplace.
Ajit Gill
An experienced C-level pharmaceutical management executive who oversaw operations at Nektar Therapeutics (previously Inhale Therapeutic Systems) for 14 years, including eight years as Chief Executive Officer. During that period, he led the company’s successful transition from a pulmonary delivery company, focused on protein and peptide delivery, to a specialty pharmaceutical company with multiple marketed products incorporating the company’s technologies. Prior to joining Inhale, Mr. Gill worked for many years in the computer business in a variety of roles in general management, finance, business development and operations.
Venkatadri Bobba
Bobba brings over 36 years of corporate leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields in the US, EU and Asia. Bobba serves as a general partner with Ventureeast and prior to Ventureast, Bobba was Vice President of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing operations at Warner Lambert Co. USA. He managed five plants with a staff of about 2000. He served as President of Warner Lambert, Indonesia. He was Executive Vice president of Centocor Inc.(Division of J&J now) and was responsible for R&D, Clinical Development and operations. His group developed Reo-Pro, first successful monoclonal Antibody and Remicade, drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis (Sold about $7 in 2015).
Bobba also served as Senior V.P of Covance Biosciences (Now a division of Merck). He currently serves on the Boards of Sparsha, Diabetomics, Celes Care, Cancer Genetics India and an advisory Board member of Cumberland Pharma.
LAXAI operates a key research and development center at Genome Valley, Hyderabad
Our scientific leadership team brings together broad and extensive experience playing a critical role in managing the success of our partnerships. We have made significant strategic investments in developing state-of-the-art medicinal and biotechnological laboratories, which readily meet the expectations of our clients as well as regulatory agencies. At LAXAI we believe that the most important elements for successful partnerships are strong multidisciplinary research and development team, well-established open but confidential communication protocols and effective program management. We have built a team with an ingrained culture of support, our partners could only envision, we clearly defined and implemented program management processes and developed state-of-the-art research facility that together enables and fully supports open, constructive yet highly confidential communication of data, analysis, and ideas with our partners on a regular basis.