The need for developing affordable indigenous solutions for many healthcare problems in low and middle-income countries is very urgent. Without a concerted effort in this direction, we will be dependent on imported high-cost technologies to address our most basic needs. The Institute already has built up extensive cutting-edge research facilities for health care related research. The Institute has strengths in several areas of basic and applied research in health sciences. We are thus uniquely poised to become contribute to health science research and take world leadership in niche areas related to affordable healthcare. Under this proposal, in addition to specialised research equipment, two major facilities are proposed: (1) Animal facility in order to be able to take health sciences research to the next step and (2) BSL3 facility to handle risk group level 3 pathogens, for example M. tuberculosis etc.
Research Impact
The new WCRL small animal surgical and imaging facilities will facilitate preclinical translation in in vivo small animal models. The high throughput live imaging and computational biology facilities will enable imaging at subcellular levels and thus promote research in the areas of image processing, machine learning, and disease pathogenesis. The next generation sequencing facility will be used for high throughput genomics with fast and large-scale DNA sequencing to understand myriad biological events. The optical tweezers will be used to study the biophysics of infectious agents and subcellular machines towards enhancing our understanding of pathogen-host interactions. The 3D bioprinting facility will be used to develop organ-on-chip models (such as skin-on-chip, liver-on-chip, etc) for efficient, high throughput drug screening or for studying disease progression in vitro.
We expect that approximately 80 faculty members and 250 research students across different Departments will benefit from these facilities.
Details of Convenor/Co-Convenor:
- Convenor: Prof. Santosh Noronha, Department of Chemical Engineering
- Co-Convenor: Prof. Debjani Paul, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering