World Cancer Day: University of Hyderabad holds symposium

Hyderabad: The NSS unit of University of Hyderabad (UoH) organised a half-a-day symposium on the occasion of World Cancer Day on Friday, on the theme "Close the care Gap" proposed by the Union for International Cancer Control to support the goals of the World Cancer Declaration written in 2008.

As a part of the awareness programme, Prof. BJ Rao, Vice-Chancellor, emphasised the heterogeneity of cancer cells, how they fall in Darwinian evolution model and evolution of drug resistance cell over time.

Dr Raghunadha Rao, chief medical oncologist, KIMS ICON, Visakhapatnam, established by Tata Memorial hospital, enlightened the audience on evolution of therapy way from use of arsenicals during early 1900s till today with use of personalised immune cells (CAR T-Cells) in types of cancers. He threw light on a study conducted in migratory population from where changing more vegetarians to non-vegetarian correlate with higher risk of cancer.

Dr Kumar Somasundaram of IIS, Bangalore, well-known experimental cancer biologist, shared some of his recent experimental findings in helping formation of new blood vessels in glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor, how it is helping in growth of tumor. He explained how one can use such findings in development of new drugs and treatment strategies.