The money for the research school came in 2008 from an old boy of the college who
graduated in 1969, i.e. $5 million from Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Symphony
Group.
Expanding its mandate in research, the Indian Institute
of Technology-Bombay decided to invest its energies in bio-sciences and bio-engineering
and threw open a dedicated centre for the same on Friday 27th , Jan. The money for
the research school came in 2008 from an old boy of the college who graduated in
1969. The centre, which will specially focus on cancer-related research, is the
outcome of one of its largest private purses that the institute has received $5
million from Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Symphony Group. The Wadhwani Research
Centre in Biosciences and Bioengineering will try to understand the mysteries that
cells and proteins hold, of deciphering cell motility and cancer invasion and the
reason why cancer spreads in the human body.
A focus area of the centre would be
to understand how cancerous cells move from one localised area to other parts of
the body. Cells in the human body are normally fixed. But cancerous cells grow in
one place and move to another and this is how cancer spreads. The phenomenon is
called metastasis and we want to understand what gives them the ability to move
when they become cancerous, said Narayan Punekar, professor and head of the biosciences
and bioengineering department. IIT-B director Devang Khakhar, said: With its initial
thrust area we intend to have top-class faculty conduct research using emerging
technologies with the purpose of changing lives for the better.
Courtesy: Times of India
