Mr. Prashant & Mr. Uday Kumar
Achiever's Success Story
VRise- A successful journey of an organization managed by the successful duo Mr. Prashant and Mr. Uday Kumar
The founders of VRise Therapeutics, Mr. Prashant K. Bhavar and Uday Kumar S, aim to accelerate innovation of cancer therapeutics and making them accessible at affordable cost to all the patients globally. VRise is a Cambridge, MA, based biopharmaceutical company, with presence in India, UK, and the United States. India is known as the ‘pharmacy of the world’ being the 3rd largest supplier and manufacturing hub for low-cost drugs and vaccines in the world. India also leads in biosimilars, with the greatest number of biosimilars approved in the domestic market. However, when it comes to new drug innovation, India has no presence on global map. Innovation, in general and more specially biotech research for therapeutics is equated to huge expenditure with un-predictable outcomes; and hence attracts very minimal investments. In contrast, the biotech industry in the West and developed economies in Asia receives substantial private investment and government support, enabling them to explore opportunities for future growth.
Undeterred by the gloomy ideology in India, the duo chose to take up the challenge and traverse the path less travelled. Founded in 2021, in the US (with research base in India), with an aim to develop a proprietary platform enabling development of new therapies for treatment of hard-to-treat cancers by not only leveraging a global pool of talent, but strategically embracing new age technologies. The company leverages on machine learning, artificial intelligence, along with traditional drug development methodologies, to discover new targeted therapies. The team at VRise comprises of scientists backed by globally renowned subject knowledge experts. This diverse research skills helps VRise to build agile platforms, ultimately accelerating research and development efforts.
Within a span of an year, the company filled multiple patent applications, seeking global coverage, and is working on drugging-the-undruggable targets in unmet cancers. The company has collaborated with universities and research entities to enhance its reach. The company expects to launch its first human clinical trials in the latter half of 2023 with a plan to advent into diagnostics and cell therapy, and eventually bring personalized medicine approach to India.
Uday and Prashant have extensive background including four decades of global drug discovery expertise in inflammation, pain, diabetes, and oncology and their active contributions has led to several out-licensing deals globally. The duo bring in unwavering zeal and complementary skill set to, enable decisive decisions at VRise. Noteworthy, they also significantly contributed to the discovery, and clinical development of a new drug, named UkoniqTM for the treatment of lymphoma, approved in 2021 in the US. Prashant Bhavar has masters in medicinal chemistry, from Birla institute of technology. He also did his law graduate from Pune university. Uday Kumar has masters in pharmaceutical sciences, and a management degree from Indian institute of management.
