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Research and Development
Artemis Health Sciences aims to bring cutting edge translational
research into India as a major pillar of its new comprehensive
healthcare platform. With the availability of technology
intensive, cutting edge tertiary care hospitals and research
facilities under its umbrella, it presents a unique opportunity
to bring together scientists and clinicians at the same
table to markedly reduce the time to application of new
ideas across various specialties.
An independent free standing research and development
facility will be set up as a separate unit at a location
5 miles south of the site for the first Artemis Health
Institute in Gurgaon in the National capital region. This
is being designed as a 25,000 square foot center with
an independent small and large animal facility as well.
R&D Focus
Artemis will initially focus its R&D and translational
efforts on two areas that affect not only a large majority
of the Indian population, but the population worldwide,
namely, cardiovascular disease and oncology. Within these
two areas, Artemis will focus on stem cell research as
well nanotechnology applications. Both these upcoming
fields have a great potential to change the way healthcare
is practiced with the promise of immense benefits to patients.
Cardiovascular
Disease Focus Areas
- Congestive Heart Failure
- Peripheral Vascular Disease
- High Risk Atherosclerotic Plaque
- Endovascular Therapy
- New, less invasive imaging techniques
- Molecular imaging
- Predictive and Therapeutic imaging
Oncology Focus
Areas
- Anti-Angiogenesis
- Tumorgenesis
- Stem cell- signaling / trafficking
- Nanoparticle enabled targeted chemotherapy and radiation
therapy
- Predictive Screening Technology
- Immunology of Neoplastic Disease
Stem-Cell
Therapy
Stem cell therapy has preliminarily been shown to regenerate
diseased and degenerated myocardial tissue in patients
with heart failure. A concentrated translational program
in this field, established in India can make a huge difference
in patient care and management. The main components of
this “Translational stem cell research program”
at the Artemis R&D center will include:
- Collection, isolation and processing of putative
stem cells from tissues such as placenta, bone marrow
and peripheral blood.
- Culture, growth, differentiation and amplification
of stem cells in defined media.
- Characterization and validation of the phenotypic
and biological properties of the stem cells isolated.
- Cryopreservation and storage of the amplified cells.
- Laboratory studies to explore in vivo utilization
of the putative stem cells to validate their use in
therapeutics.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology has the potential to have a revolutionary
impact on cancer diagnosis and therapy. It is widely accepted
that early detection of cancer at a molecular level is
possible even before anatomic changes are visible. A major
challenge in cancer diagnosis in the 21st century is to
be able to determine the exact relationship between cancer
biomarkers and the clinical pathology, as well as, to
be able to non-invasively detect tumors at an early stage
for maximum therapeutic benefit. In breast cancer, for
instance, the goal of molecular imaging is to be able
to accurately diagnose when the tumor mass has approximately
100-1000 cells, as opposed to the current techniques such
as mammography, which require more than a million cells
for accurate clinical diagnosis.
In cancer therapy, targeting and localized delivery are
the key challenges. To wage an effective war against cancer,
the ability, to selectively attack the cancer cells, while
saving the normal tissue from excessive burden of drug
toxicity, must exist. However, because many anticancer
drugs are designed to simply kill cancer cells, often
in a semi-specific fashion, the distribution of anticancer
drugs in healthy organs or tissues is especially undesirable
due to the potential for severe side effects. Consequently,
systemic application of these drugs often causes severe
side effects in other tissues (e.g. bone marrow suppression,
cardiomyopathy, neurotoxicity), which greatly limits the
maximal allowable dose of the drug. In addition, rapid
elimination and widespread distribution into non-targeted
organs and tissues requires the administration of a drug
in large quantities, which is often not economical and
sometimes complicated due to non-specific toxicity. This
vicious cycle of large doses and the concurrent toxicity
is a major limitation of current cancer therapy. In many
instances, it has been observed that the patient succumbs
to the ill effects of the drug toxicity far earlier than
the tumour burden. Nanotechnology applications within
oncology can cause a paradigm shift in patient care starting
from preventive and predictive imaging to targeted drug
therapy and therapeutic imaging.
The focus of the Artemis R&D center will be on the
translational aspect of nanotechnology research and applications
within the sphere of oncology in collaboration with the
imaging and pharmaceutical industry including but not
limited to:
- Technology development for cancer diagnostic and
imaging using nanoparticles as reporter platforms
and contrast enhancing agents.
- Bionalaytical nanotechnology for detection of biomarkers.
- Development of nanoparticle platforms, polymeric
nanoparticles, lipid nanoparticles, metal nanoparticles,
magnetic nanoparticles, and self-assembling nanosystems.
- Synthetic chemistry required to design and optimize
new strategies for nanoparticle preparation and functionalization.
- Therapeutic targeted and intra-cellular drug and
gene delivery using nanocarriers.
- Nanoparticles for delivery of electromagnetic energy
for hyperthermia and thermal ablation of tumors.
- Theoretical modeling of nanoparticle processes in
biological and medical environments, and of drug and
gene delivery.
- Combination therapies (drug and energy delivery)
using nanoparticles.
- Clinical diagnosis and therapy of lung, prostate,
breast, liver and other cancers.
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