Arun Balakrishnan

About Arun Balakrishnan

Dr. Arun Balakrishnan, Presently the Chief Innovation Officer of OmniActives Health Technologies has a wide experience both in academia and industry. He joined Omniactives in 2015 to head the R&D. The team has been successful in building new product pipeline and have several products that have entered the international markets.His background as a Professor and Director of Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University, where he spent 15 years of his research career was fruitful and productive. He was actively involved in various programs that were acclaimed nationally and internationally. He subsequently moved to corporate sector to work with Piramal Enterprises Limited as a Senior Vice President Naturals and Head of Operations in 2005. He spent 10 years of his career working in drug discovery. His background in Cell biology and Natural Product research were widely used for discovering novel molecules. He was also responsible for the overall operations of R&D Centre. Dr Balakrishnan ran a Multiinstitutional research program which was jointly support by DBT and PEL and one of the largest screening programs in Natural product research in the country. He received his Ph.D from Cancer Institute in Chennai and spent 5 years at University of California, Berkeley undergoing Post-Doctoral research training in the area of Cancer Biology. He is the member of several Advisory Boards and Committees and has published more than 83 papers in national and international journals. He has several patents to his credit. With this diverse knowledge and experience, he has interacted with many different groups both in basic research and development and clinical trials for nutraceutical product development. The cross functional interactions between chemists, biologists,marketing and sales are the primary drivers that help us to develop globally accepted products.With these skillsets and the gaps presently in discovery research, he wishes to address the same and help in the development of new products related to nutraceuticals. During th last few years in Omni actives, he has been actively managing the new product pipeline and customer oriented R&D. Keeping in line with the changing regulatory scenario across the globe, the company uses scientific approaches in the validation of their extracts, enable improvements of bioavailabity by formulation technologies and validate process vide management and technology improvements. The approach has been to build novel products with definite competitve advantage.

Experience

1. Chief Scientific Officer

   OmniActive Health Technologies

   Apr 2015 — Present · Mumbai, IN

   R&D and Management

Education

• Univ of Madras, Chennai

  Bachelor of Science (BSc), Chemistry

  1978 — 1980

• University of Madras

  MSc, Biochemistry

  1982 — 1984

• Don Bosco and Asan memorial, Chennai

  secondary education, Life science

  1962 — 1978

Skills

• Biochemistry
• R&D
• High Throughput Screening
• Assay Development
• Cancer Research
• Pharmaceutical Industry
• Cell Culture
• Lifesciences
• Cell Biology
• Life Sciences
• Molecular Biology
• Patents
• Clinical Trials
• Protein Chemistry
• Drug Discovery
• Validation
• Hplc
• Technology Transfer
• Biomarkers
• Biotechnology
• Laboratory
• Drug Development