Cancer Research Workshop at RGCB from Today

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) here will host the third of the three workshops being organised in India as part of an Indo-US workshop to boost research, and discuss provocative questions about cancer.

Scientists will discuss questions that reach into uncharted, poorly understood and  forgotten areas in cancer biology as part of an initiative designed to push the frontiers of cancer research.

The Central Government’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has joined hands with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA, for the Provocative Questions (PQ) initiative which is aimed at generating fresh ideas and relevant topics for future research.

The RGCB in the city will host the third of the three workshops as part of this exercise. The first two were held at the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, and the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru.  The two-day workshop in the city, which begins on Tuesday, will bring together ten delegates each from the US and India to identify the critical areas in cancer biology that need strengthening.

An important feature of the PQ project is that the questions are proposed not by the DBT or the NCI leadership but by scientists working in all disciplines of cancer research, including prevention, risk, tumour biology, detection, diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, outcome and clinical effectiveness. The workshop will be moderated by Prof E D Harlow, Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Teaching, Harvard Medical School and senior advisor to the Director, NCI. The focus of the workshops will be questions relevant in the Indian context.

The idea of a PQ initiative in India was first proposed at discussions between Dr K Vijay Raghavan, secretary, DBT, and Dr Harold Varmus, Director, NCI, during the latter’s visit to India in January 2014.