GADVASU Scientist to Handle Cancer Research

Ludhiana 14-June, 2012

Dr. B.V. Sunil Kumar, Assistant Biochemist from the School of Animal Biotechnology, GADVASU, has been sanctioned a project titled "Development and evaluation of sero-diagnostic assay for timely diagnosis and prognosis of mammary tumors" by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, under its Rapid Grant for Young Investigators (RGYI) 2011-12 scheme. The project envisages easier ways and means to diagnose these tumours at an early stage with dog as a model animal. Canine mammary tumour is comparable with human breast cancer therefore dog is one of the commonly used model animal for studying mammary tumour progression. The project envisages developing recombinant tumour associated antigens' based sandwich ELISA for timely detection of the aggressive mammary tumours. It also highlights the need to identify serological markers to diagnose the disease.

The incidence of breast cancer is rising in every country of the world especially in developing countries such as India. It has overtaken cervical cancer to become the leading site of cancer and is expected to double by 2015. This is because more and more women in India are beginning to work outside their home which allows the various risk factors of breast cancer to come into play. These include late age at first childbirth, fewer children and shorter duration of breast-feeding. Worldwide, breast cancer comprises 22.9% of all cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) in women. In India, the number of new breast cancer cases is about 115,000 per year and this is expected to rise to 250,000 new cases per year by 2015.

Mammography i.e. X-ray of the breast, done at regular intervals, say every 2 years, is most popular diagnostic technique in the west. However, mammography is expensive, technology driven and requires stringent quality control and extensive experience on the part of technicians and doctors involved. If these are not available, mammography can do more harm than good by falsely diagnosing cancer or missing it when it is actually present.

Dr. G. S. Brah, Director, School of Animal Biotechnology, while congratulating Dr. Sunil for winning the competitive extra-mural project, revealed that Dr. Sunil is the youngest faculty member of the University to garner such a national grant as he joined GADVASU in October, 2011 only. With the sanctioning of this project, the number of extra-mural projects won by the School of Animal Biotechnology has increased to sixteen. The school which is offering Master's and Ph.D programme has student strength of 33. Its PG programme is in great demand, the admission to which is through All India level common entrance test conducted by Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi.


News From: http://www.7StarNews.com