RGCB’s New Campus to Focus on Ccancer Therapy Research: Union Minister

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Union Minister of Science and Technology and Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan today said the upcoming second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) at Akkulam in Thiruvananthapuram will be developed as a major facility on translational applications of immunotherapy and development of therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer.

Addressing the 13th General Body meeting of RGCB through video conferencing, Dr Vardhan said RGCB’s close association with multiple cancer hospitals in Kerala is a good model that is expected to facilitate the advanced Cell based therapy against cancer at affordable costs to needy patients.

A lead anticancer molecule discovered by RGCB team has been licensed to a multinational company and is in the final stages of preclinical testing at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, USA.

The BSL3 plus facility being established at its Akkulam campus will support RGCB to undertake natural product based drug discovery using live virus and carry out research on any emerging pathogen requiring high containment. This facility will be a big boost to Kerala in managing highly pathogenic viral and bacterial diseases, as currently there is no BSL3 plus facility in the state. This unique facility will also support their new research programme to develop new generation protein and nucleic acid based vaccines.

“India has demonstrated before the entire world its prowess in the frontier areas of scientific and technological research. Our institutions have contributed immensely in addressing the unprecedented challenge posed by COVID-19, by imbibing the spirit of ‘AtmaNirbharata,” the Minister said.

It is also significant that these path-breaking R&D activities are taking place when the country has successfully rolled out one of history’s largest vaccine outreach. This massive exercise has made it amply clear that the nation is capable of taking up serious scientific challenges, thanks to the dedication of our scientific community, he said.

The Minister, however, cautioned that lowering the guard against Covid-19 at this juncture will be dangerous, even though the daily caseload has declined sharply.

“We have managed the Covid-19 crisis commendably. But it will be unwise to lower our guard. This virus is still around and it could even mutate and pop up to create a more dangerous situation. This means that people should continue to wear masks and maintain social distancing and hand hygiene to insulate themselves from getting infected by the virus,” he said.

As the premier Biotechnology Research and Development center under Department of Biotechnology, RGCB has made outstanding contributions in managing the COVID-19pandemic. The quick response of the scientists of the institute to this grave challenge has added a new chapter in the annals of the modern science, he said.

Immediately after the outbreak of the pandemic, RGCB dedicated its diagnostic facility to extend all forms of support to the people of Kerala.

In addition, the RGCB’s R&D wing, in association with industry, co-developed several diagnostic kits and support reagents to facilitate effective Covid-19 management, he said.

The innovative cell-based and cell- free anti-Covid drug screening platforms developed by RGCB are currently being used by Industry and academia for their product validation and is of high value for vaccine efficacy testing.

Patients with advanced stage Covid-19 requires human neutralizing antibodies with high neutralizing activity. The RGCB scientists are working with their international collaborators from Emory University and Mayo clinic to generate human neutralizing antibody, using an innovative B cell immortalization approach.

The action taken report for 2019-20, placed before the General Body, said a function would be organized to name the second campus at Akkulam as “Shri Guruji Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar National Centre for Complex Diseases in Cancer and Viral Infection”, on completion of the phase 1.

In his presentation, RGCB Director Dr Chandrabhas Narayana explained the proposed facilities at the Akkulam campus and said it would have a National Centre for Drug Target Design and Development (Therapeutic Antibodies and Biosimilars) , National Centre for Molecular Medicine, RGCB Spin-off companies and bio incubators and New initiative in Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy with Clinical centres of Kerala.