Harvard Scientist Interacted With LPU Students

Jalandhar, April 18, 2016 (Newswire.com) - The School of Biotechnology & Biosciences of Lovely Professional University conducted interactive sessions on “Recent Trends in Genomics & Personalized Medicine” for LPU students and faculty-members. Renowned bio-informatician Dr Manoj K Bhasin and Dr GPS Raghava, Post- doctoral fellow at Oxford & Cambridge universities, reached LPU Campus for this great research boosting expedition to ultimately improve upon the prevalent medical prescriptions. Their interactions with LPU scientists motivated all to research in the area of treatments through personalized medicines, and big genomic data transfer for exact analysis. This is an ability to modify treatments for the unique characteristics of each patient, particularly in the cases of fatal considered diseases like cancer. It is being understood world over that personalized medicines provide better treatments and fewer side effects, in comparison to traditional common treatment through radiotherapy & chemotherapy.

Dr. Manoj K Bhasin is a Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is also senior investigator for Mind Body Medicine in Boston. Dr Bhasin has strong track record in computational vaccine design, functional genomics, proteomics and systems biology with numerous scientific publications, multiple patents and copyrighted software. Whereas, an IITian Scientist, Dr GPS Raghava has wide research experience at prestigious universities of the UK, USA and South Korea including Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Dr Raghav shared: “Human ‘Genes’ are responsible for different special characterizations and are found in DNA of both plants and human beings. A researcher should have strong will-power to probe, learn and analyze on these lines. Now a days, the successfulness of the drugs to be prescribed can be well checked through computers rather than using those on animals. Through computer aided vaccine developments, identification of drug targets, personalized drugs can be made even against deadly diseases like Ebola, Zika virus, HIV or any other disease, as per case to case or individually. Earlier it was challenge to prepare drug for HIV as its virus mutate very fast. But after doing research on it we are helpful in making drugs for HIV treatment.”

Discussing certain case to case analysis, Dr Manoj Bhasin informed students: “In a pancreatic type of cancer no medicine, no drugs and no specific treatment has been diagnosed. Life of such a patient can be extended at the most up to 5 years, by using drugs, if cancer is diagnosed during the first stage. For using personalized medicine, tests are to be made to know what the requirements of the body of a particular patient are. So, personalized medicines are as per the ‘Gene’ of the patient, and these differ from person to person. In fact, now, doctors decide how to control cancer by researching in depth about the specific molecular and genetic makeup of their individual patient’s tumor instead of locating where in the body the cancer started.” He also shared a particular challenging case of a USA lady, who was affected by breast cancer, ovarian cancer, reoccurred ovarian cancer, leukemia, and blood cancer. This case proved as a supreme example out of genes affect, and also a great challenge for medical stream. He also laid stress on big genomic data transfer in a proper way for exact analysis.

Source: LPU