Cancer, the second leading cause of death globally, remains a significant challenge for societies, healthcare systems, and affected individuals worldwide said Dean (Sciences) A. Subrahmanyam of GITAM Deemed to be University here on Thursday.
At the inaugural of the three-day international webinar on ‘Advances in Cancer Biology and Therapeutics’, organised by GITAM Biochemistry and Bioinformatics Department, Prof. Subrahmanyam briefed about the scientific breakthroughs in controlling cancer, and highlighted how the research on cancer brought the world onto a single platform and the global approach in fighting it. He hoped that the combined research efforts would help the international community in the coming years.
In his keynote address, former Director of Tata Cancer Hospital HBCH and RC (Visakhapatnam) Digumarthi Raghunadha Rao, highlighted the milestones in cancer discovery immune therapeutics, and underscored the importance of engineered T-cell for cancer therapy, and the challenges of CAR-T cell-mediated cancer therapy. He said that immunotherapy was a type of cancer treatment that helps the immune system detect and destroy abnormal cells and prevents or curbs the growth of many cancers in the body.
Dr. Raghunadha Rao explained that tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes or TILs, were a sign that the immune system was responding to the tumour. People whose tumours contain TILs often do better than those whose tumours do not contain them. Several types of immunotherapy are used to treat cancer like immune checkpoint inhibitors and T-cell transfer therapy, he said.
GITAM Institute of Science Principal M. Sarathchandra Babu spoke on the importance of nanotechnology in the early detection and management of cancer. GITAM Biochemistry and Bioinformatics Department head Ch. Surekha briefed on the ongoing cancer research in the department for early diagnosis of cancers.
Webinar convener Rama Rao Malla spoke on the impact of patient-driven cancer research and precision medicine. He said that top scientists from India, the U.S., the UK and researchers would deliver lectures on related topics during the next two days.
