Media Release

Udupi, Jun 26: Manipal Academy of Higher Education added yet another feather to its cap as assistant professor Dr Sanjiban Chakrabarty, a young researcher from Manipal School of Life Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) has developed a novel microfluidic cancer-on-chip technology that enables direct assessment of drug response in cancer patient-derived tumour biopsy material.

This provides functional readouts to identify drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tumours. These findings have immense prospects while managing various cancers in personalized cancer treatment.

This research was done in collaboration with the lab of Dr Dik C van Gent at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The MAHE-Erasmus MC Centre on Genome Stability at Manipal School of Life Sciences, MAHE, Manipal, India, established collaboration between Dr Sanjiban and Dr Dik van Gent.

Speaking about the cancer-on-chip technology Lt Gen (Dr) M D Venkatesh, vice-chancellor, MAHE Manipal, said, “International collaboration with Erasmus MC will further facilitate the development of a state-of-the-art advanced microfluidic cancer-on-chip technology at MSLS and foster academia-industry collaboration for translational oncology. These findings have immense prospects while managing various cancers in personalized cancer treatment.”

Dr B S Satish Rao, director, MSLS, MAHE said,“Novel microfluidic cancer-on-chip technology has immense translational potential for studies predicting drug response, identification of novel drug targets, understanding of tumour evolution, and targeted drug delivery.”