In future, laser treatment for cancer may come much cheaper for patients and the assurance is from the developers of an innovative photodynamic laser therapy machine.
The treatment will begin within two hours after injecting the photo-sensitiser medicine into the patient’s body. The developers of the machine claim that side-effects of cancer treatment can tremendously be reduced with the application of the machine.
“After undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatments, the patient will take time to regain health and the body becomes weak. That can be reduced when the patient is treated using this machine,” says Pius Varughese, general manager of Vinvish Technologies Private Limited, an opto-electronics company based at Technopark here, which developed the machine. Also, it is claimed that the machine will select only cancer-afflicted cells and destroy them.
Usually, such machines are imported from foreign countries and by developing it indigenously, it can be expected to reduce the cost of cancer treatment. “In the early or pre-cancerous stages, laser treatment can be effective and in some cases where surgery turns difficult also it can be applied. It will be more affordable in comparison to the imported machines,” said Dr Jem Prabhakar, additional professor at Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) here.
The machine has been developed over a period of one-and-a-half years. For developing the machine, the firm was presented with a gold medal in the India Innovation Growth Programme held at Delhi recently. The company has also entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the RCC for carrying out clinical trials and with the Centre for Earth Science Studies for getting research support to develop the machine in future.